Call Us

Monthly Archives: October 2017

Helping your team to make a great first impression

Posted on by

Make a good first impression

First impressions are incredibly important in the world of business. If you get off on the right foot you might create a professional relationship that will last a lifetime. Make a poor impression, however, and your B2B contact could be over before it’s even begun. Ensuring that your telemarketing team are making good first impressions whenever they pick up the phone is therefore essential. Your business should create long lasting relationships with other companies and see real results from its telemarketing campaigns.

Avoid scripts

Though keeping a few notes and bullet points handy isn’t a problem, you should avoid having telemarketers follow a complete script. Reading text out word for word will instantly make a call sound robotic and boring. The prospect is likely to view your company as impersonal and lose interest in what your telemarketers are offering.

Ideally, you want your telemarketers to have natural communication skills and be familiar with the products and services that they’re talking about. If they’re able to engage quickly and easily with the prospect and talk freely about your business and your company’s USP, they’ll be able to navigate past the gatekeeper and get a real, two-way conversation going without a script in sight.

Create a targeted call list

The call list you provide to your telemarketers will form the base of the campaign. If you have a list that’s been well researched and well put together, every call your team make has the potential to produce results. This is great for morale and will help every telemarketer in your company to approach each call in a motivated and positive way. If you have a poor quality call list on the other hand, your team may strike out again and again. As well as creating a negative atmosphere in the office, this can cause your team to become complacent and to reduce the amount of commitment they invest in each call.

Get them excited about your business

Positivity is incredibly important when it comes to making good first impressions. Try to get your team motivated about your company, your products and your services. Before they pick up the phone – or while they’re calling – have them think of five to ten of your business’ main benefits. This will help them to sound enthusiastic and passionate when the prospect answers, two things that can help to make a great first impression.

Smile and sit up straight

Two of the simplest ways to improve the way you come across on the phone are smiling and sitting up straight. Encourage your team to ‘smile as they dial’ so that the prospect hears the positivity in their voice the moment they answer the call. Sitting up straight will help your telemarketers to feel more awake and more alert.

Make communication, not selling, the focus of the call

Although you want to see results from your telemarketing campaign, it’s important that your team focuses on building relationships with other businesses rather than just selling. If the main purpose of the call is sales, the decision maker may be put off, damaging your chances with the prospect for good. Encourage your team to see communication as the goal. If your telemarketers can create a good first impression, find out more about the company’s needs and arrange a time for a future meeting, it will help to produce long term results.

Find out more about improving your telemarketing technique by exploring our site today.

Helping your team navigate past the gatekeeper

Posted on by

Do not enter

If you manage a sales or telemarketing team, you’ll know that selecting good communicators is key to achieving results. Ideally, you need everyone on your team to be able to connect with a prospect, create rapport and get their message across within moments of having their call answered. If they can’t achieve these objectives, your marketing and communication campaigns will suffer and you might find your company under-performing.

However, if your team members can’t navigate their way past the gatekeeper, they’ll never have the chance to work their magic on the decision maker and all their outstanding communication skills will go to waste anyway. Therefore, working with employees to create methods and strategies for getting past the gatekeeper is key. If your team can get their foot in the telephonic door, they’ll be well on their way to hitting their goals.

Remind them that gatekeepers are not the enemy

One common mistake telemarketers make is treating the gatekeeper as the enemy. And although it’s true that the gatekeeper can make or break a telemarketing call, it’s important to remind your team that the gatekeeper is simply doing their job. Being friendly, courteous and polite, even in the face of an immovable gatekeeper, will help your team to keep things professional, something that’s good for your company’s reputation and your relationships with other businesses.

Help them to see the gatekeeper as an opportunity

All too often, telemarketers see the gatekeeper purely as an obstacle to overcome. However, if you can help your team to see their interaction with the gatekeeper as an opportunity, you can not only improve the quality of their calls, you can also mine a wealth of valuable information. Remind your team that the gatekeeper they’re trying to outsmart knows a lot about the business and the decision maker they’re trying to speak to. Encourage them to take advantage of the conversation to check the person they’re attempting to contact is the DM, learn a little more about the decision maker and confirm any unknown facts about the business.

Remind them not to sell to the gatekeeper

Although the gatekeeper is an important person within the organisation, it’s important to make sure your team understands that this person can’t make any purchasing decisions. This means that selling to the gatekeeper is pointless. At best, they’ll waste some of their valuable time, at worst the gatekeeper will decide your product or service isn’t right for the business and cut your company off from the decision maker for good.

Make sure they avoid lying

Lying is the worst thing your team can do when trying to navigate past the gatekeeper. If they’re caught out – which is generally the case – it will reflect badly on your business and could well impact on future relations with the decision maker. Ideally, your team should be so skilled at getting past the gatekeeper they won’t need to resort to lying. However, if the gatekeeper is being especially stubborn, telemarketers could try sending an email to the decision maker beforehand. This will allow your team to then legitimately state that they’re following up on an initial contact.

Continually working with your team to improve their communication and telemarketing skills is key to achieving impressive and consistent results. For more advice on getting the best out of your telemarketing team, explore our site, or get in touch.

How would Donald Trump do telemarketing – what style do we want to adopt?

Posted on by

Donald Trump

Like him or loathe him, there’s no denying that Donald Trump has made a success of his business. Over the years, he’s launched hotels, property developments, golf courses, vineyards and even a university. And although not all of these ventures have been profitable, Trump has built up a recognisable brand that’s present in many countries around the world.

With Trump’s proven track record in business, he’s not a bad person to look to for ideas and inspiration when running telemarketing campaigns. His approach has often been successful, and business people around the world take cues from his business style. Thinking about how Donald Trump would run a telemarketing campaign could help you to decide how you do – and don’t – want to run a campaign of your own.

Language

One of the most notable things about Donald Trump is the way he speaks. He uses very simple language, with The Washington Post assessing his average vocabulary at the level of an eleven–year old. If he were to run a telemarketing campaign, it’s likely the language he’d use would be equally basic. Although this can be useful for getting your message across, overusing words like ‘great’, ‘good’ and ‘best’ can make your claims sound unrealistic and less than reliable.

Communication

Although Donald Trump is good at getting his message across, he hasn’t proven himself to be the best communicator over the past few months. His regular Tweets have often inflamed delicate situations and the President has repeatedly failed to check facts before posting to social media. This is one aspect of Trump’s personality that shouldn’t be allowed in any telemarketing campaign. In order for a campaign to be professional and successful, facts need to be checked, statements need to be honest and telemarketers need to be diplomatic and tactful where necessary.

Forthright

If there’s one thing we can learn from Trump’s approach, it’s not to give up. Throughout his entire presidential campaign, Trump was seen as the underdog, yet he consistently presented an image of himself as the next President of the USA. Being confident in your own abilities, your product and your brand can help to achieve a lot in a telemarketing campaign. And although you want to ensure you keep the crowd on your side, pushing to get the result you want isn’t always a bad thing.

Taking a close look at Donald Trump’s business approach could help to inform your own ideas about communication, marketing and image. To find out more about transforming the way you do business and improving your telemarketing technique, explore our site today.

Who would you have a one-to-one with, and what would you want to say or ask them?

Posted on by

One to one conversations

In the late 1990s and early 2000s telecoms company one2one, now T-Mobile, ran a successful campaign in which it asked viewers which living person or historical figure they’d most like to have a one-to-one conversation with. The promotion won over audiences and become one of the most memorable campaigns of the era.

Reflecting both the company’s name and its ethos, the one2one campaign saw stars like Ian Wright, Vinnie Jone and Kate Moss line up to discuss their all time heroes. While footballer Wright chose Martin Luther King Jr. and Kate Moss chose Elvis Presley, Vinnie Jones opted for his wife Tanya as the person he’d like most to have a one-to-one with.

Thinking about who you’d most want to have a one-to-one with, and thinking about what you’d say to your hero if you met them, can help to crystallise your thinking and focus your mind. Although long departed historical figures may not be able to give you any answers, the exercise is a good way to learn more about your own thought process.

One-to-one

Whether it’s a colleague, an employee, a friend or a relative, sitting down for a one-to-one with another person can be very enlightening. Giving you the opportunity to discuss important issues, find out how another person has lived their life and examine your own professional and personal choices, a one-to-one can be incredibly enriching.

Asking the right question

The key to a productive one-to-one is asking the right questions. Not only will the right questions help you to get the most out of the meeting, they’ll also demonstrate to the person you’re speaking to that you’re familiar with them, their work and their ethos. Knowing exactly what to ask in a one-to-one can give you an invaluable insight into your partner’s mind and help you to get a real conversation going.

One-to-ones and telemarketing

If every time you make a telemarketing call you treat it as a one-to-one, you’ll find you get a lot more out of your marketing campaigns. By bringing the focus, the conversation and the connection you experience in a one-to-one to your call, you can engage your prospect in a real two-way conversation, build a rapport and lay the foundations of a mutually beneficial business relationship. By thinking about the questions you’re going to ask beforehand, you can ensure your call stays on point and that you gain valuable information and insight into the person and the business you’re connecting with.

Learning how to make the most out of a one-to-one conversation is an essential part of telemarketing. To find out more, or to learn how to improve the quality of your calls, explore our site today.

How IIP standards help build a workforce to be proud of

Posted on by

Build a workforce

Investors in People, or IIP, is a standard for people management that offers accreditation to organisations adhering to a specific set of criteria. Developed to help companies achieve excellence in management, these IIP standards have already helped thousands of businesses to raise their standards.

One of the biggest benefits of working towards IIP accreditation is that it helps to bring employees together, raise standards and build a cohesive and productive workforce. In fact, incorporating IIP standards into your business could create and shape the workforce your company needs to achieve its full potential.

IIP standards

The Investors in People standard is based on three core areas: leading, supporting and improving. Each of these categories is then further divided into sub sections, giving business leaders a clear framework on which to build. As companies work to incorporate the specific ideas and criteria of the IIP standard into their business practices, they will receive accreditation from the governing organisation. The highest level of accreditation is Platinum followed by Gold and then Silver.

Leading

The ‘leading’ element of the IIP standard is divided into three areas: leading and inspiring, living the organisation’s values and empowering and involving people. Fully incorporating these ideas into a company’s everyday operations will help the leadership to make the organisation’s objectives clear, inspire their workforce to deliver and create a culture of trust within the organisation.

Supporting

Creating a supportive environment is essential for businesses that want to get the best from their workforce. The IIP standard outlines three core areas that are key to achieving excellence in the area: managing performance, recognising and rewarding high performance and structuring work. When workers feel supported, they’re much more likely to commit to an organisation, come up with innovative ideas and work effectively with other members of their team.

Improving

As all successful business leaders will know, organisations that want to succeed and to grow need to be constantly looking for ways to improve. Within the IIP standard, improving is divided into building capability, delivering continuous improvement and creating sustainable success. Creating a culture in which constant improvement is expected and encouraged is essential for businesses that want to achieve their potential.

IIP standards and your workforce

The IIP standard gives organisations a clear and practical framework on which to build their management structure. Employing these standards, and working to reach the highest possible level of accreditation, can help companies of all sizes to boost morale, get the very best out of their employees and build a workforce to be proud of.

To learn more about getting the best out of your business, or for more information on practical and effective management techniques, explore our site today.