April 2018 | Blue Donkey

Factual vs emotional objections

Posted on 26 April 2018 by bluedonkey

Learning how to deftly handle objections is an integral part of telemarketing. Most potential customers will raise at least one objection during a call, and telemarketers need to be able to address it and overcome it if they’re going to steer their conversation towards their goals.

When dealing with objections, it’s important to remember that they can actually be a positive sign. Often, potential customers will raise concerns when they’re interested in a product. This means that, in some cases, objections are actually buying signals. Even if they don’t mean your potential customer is considering a purchase, objections offer the perfect opportunity to provide more information about your product or service and to learn more about their needs and requirements.

In general, objections fall into two main categories: factual and emotional. If telemarketers are going to allay the concerns of their prospects, they need to understand the differences behind these two types of objection and learn how to address them.

Factual objections

Factual objections are often caused by a misunderstanding or a lack of information. For example, the potential customer may not be able to see how your company is different from its current supplier, or how your product or service offers a solution to its professional needs.

If you come across a factual objection, the first step to overcoming it is finding out more about the situation. Once you understand why the prospect is reluctant to make a purchase, you’ll be better placed to help them see how your products or services offer them the perfect solution. For example, if the prospect is having trouble with your price point, you can talk them through the various benefits of your particular product or service. As The Balance says, “when the bottom line is the biggest hurdle for a client, you need to help her justify the cost.”

When dealing with factual objections, it’s important to listen to exactly what your potential customer is saying. Showing empathy and understanding during the call will not only help you to build a positive business relationship, it will also give you the chance to find out a little more about their needs.

Emotional objections

Emotional objections can come in many forms. Some of the most common include things like ‘changing supplier will be too much hassle’ or ‘we’re too busy to deal with this right now’. Again, one of the keys to overcoming this type of objection is understanding. Even if the objection isn’t completely rational, it’s a real concern to the potential customer, so you need to take the time to put their fears to bed.

Try to lay out why your product or service offers the perfect solution to their needs. A good way to do this is to pick one feature that demonstrates the advantages your company can offer. More often than not, people find it easier to remember one strong, valid point than a long list of advantages.

As handling objections is such an important part of running a successful telemarketing campaign, it’s well worth investing time and energy into improving your skills and technique. To find out more about objection handling, or about how we can help you, take a look around our site today.

A successful call isn’t just securing leads

Posted on 24 April 2018 by bluedonkey

Although making introductions and raising interest in a product or service is an important part of telemarketing, there’s a lot more to the task than generating leads. In fact, if you’re running a well-rounded telemarketing campaign, securing leads will be just one aspect of your strategy. As well as creating valuable leads, there are a number of other goals you can achieve through a telemarketing campaign. Many of these help a company to boost brand awareness, increase its customer base, and strengthen its B2B relationships.

Appointment setting

Setting an appointment with a new potential customer is often the first step in making a sale. However, in the vast majority of cases, marketeers won’t be able to make an appointment the first time they contact a new business. As Marketing Donut says:

“Research suggests only one in every 50 deals is struck at a first meeting – yet many sales people give up after just one or two knock-backs.”

Instead of making an appointment the ultimate focus of a call, think about how you can begin to build a relationship with the prospect. This will help you get to know their needs and requirements, and understand their specific circumstances.

As well as helping you to build rapport with your prospect, taking the time to get to know them will help your call to stand out from the crowd and help you to tailor your products and services more precisely in the future. Setting an appointment is an important stage in moving a telemarketing call towards completion. It shows that the prospect is genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

Market research

The more you can find out about your customer base and prospective clients, the better. Understanding their needs, their goals and their objections will all help you to ensure you’re offering the products or services they really need. Asking prospects to spare you a couple of minutes to answer a few questions can take the pressure off. The decision maker won’t feel obligated to make a purchase (or an excuse) at the end of the conversation. Simply getting a dialogue going is a good way to garner valuable market research and to begin building a business relationship with the prospect.

As you start dialing your call, get the company website up. Looking over this will allow you to tailor your questions to suit their needs and give you the opportunity to show how your products or services could make their lives easier. Showing empathy, understanding and expertise during calls should leave an impression on the buyer. When you call back to secure a sales lead, they’ll remember you in a positive fashion.

Looking for further advice?

If you want to make your telemarketing calls about more than simply securing sales leads, we can help. Our training methods help to raise the bar and can give your telemarketing the depth and expertise you need for your brand to outshine others. Get in touch to find out more.

Giving potential customers a reason to listen

Posted on 19 April 2018 by bluedonkey

One of the first challenges of any telemarketing call is to convince a potential customer to have a conversation. In general, prospects are busy people and many will be looking to get you off the phone as quickly as possible so that they can get on with their day. As Meg Prater says at HubSpot:

“Learning how to capture and keep someone’s attention without physically being in their presence is a skill all salespeople need.”

Although some people try to force their foot into the telephonic door using brash techniques and clichés, the best way to get your call started is to give your potential customer a good reason to listen. If they’re genuinely interested in what you have to say, prospects will be a lot more likely to listen and to respond. This will help you to build up a relationship with the potential client and ensure you call achieves its goal.

Introduce yourself

Although you probably have a fairly good idea of who you are and what it is your company does, there’s a good chance your potential customer doesn’t. Rather than simply declaring which company you work for and then leaping into the conversation, try to introduce yourself properly. Give the prospect a brief overview of what your company does and what makes it unique. Try to stick to a few main points. Prospects are likely to lose interest quickly if you take too long to explain yourself.

As well as telling them a little bit about you, it’s important to research the customer ahead of time. Before you pick up the phone, or as you’re dialling, have a quick look around their company homepage and their social media profile. This should give you enough information to tailor the contents of your telemarketing call. It’s a way of showing them just how relevant your products or services are to their specific circumstances.

Keep positive points at the front of your mind

Before you pick up the phone, think of around five points that make your product or your service stand out from the crowd. Try to fit these into the conversation early on to get your prospect interested and ensure your message hits its mark. Again, it’s important to keep these positives short and to the point if you want to avoid your prospect losing interest or becoming impatient.

Listen

As well as giving your customers a reason to listen, it’s important that you return the favour. Listen carefully to what they have to say during the call. You can glean a huge amount of valuable information this way. It will help you to build rapport with the potential customer and find out a little more about their needs and requirements. By being less pushy and putting the customer first, you should be able to stand out from the telemarketing crowd and steer your call towards a successful completion.

To find out more about making high quality telemarketing calls, or to learn how we can help you to improve your telemarketing technique, take a look around our site or contact a member of our expert team.

3 biggest reasons continuous improvement is important

Posted on 17 April 2018 by bluedonkey

Each campaign is an experience we can learn from, helping us to perfect our telemarketing sales technique. Success isn’t permanent. We need to strive for better and better results, regardless of how happy a client is. There is real commercial advantage to being the best in your field. That’s why we continuously review our efforts, and use calls as a tool to improve future outcomes.

Putting the work into improving the quality of telemarketing calls will help you reap benefits elsewhere, too. Continual improvement will affect other aspects of your professional life, making you a better negotiator, a better listener and a better salesperson.

To help ensure you don’t become complacent with your telemarketing technique, we’ve put together our three most important reasons for continuous improvement.

1. Overcoming objections

As Small Biz Daily says:

“Unfortunately, running a telemarketing campaign is not as simple as just becoming educated about a product or service and then calling people to tell them about it.”

You also need to be able overcome the objections of the prospects you’re speaking with if your calls are going to achieve their goals.

As overcoming objections is one of the most challenging parts of telemarketing, it’s crucial your team continuously works to improve its technique and approach. Have your telemarketers listen to past calls in which they were unable to adequately overcome their prospect’s objections. You can then work together with your team to find other approaches and help them boost their ability to handle this tricky aspect of telemarketing.

2. Appointment making

Appointment making is a common goal of many telemarketing calls. Since gatekeepers and decision makers are adept at avoiding this step, it’s a great technique to practice over and over. Again, listening to past calls and discussing them as a team is very useful. The more confident your team is at appointment making, the easier it will be to move the business relationship forward with a potential customer.

Work together to identify the best moments in a call to make an appointment. More dates in the diary means a more successful campaign.

3. Rapport

When it comes to high quality telemarketing, rapport is incredibly important. If you’re hoping that these telemarketing calls will mark the beginning of a productive business relationship, your telemarketers need to be able to build a relationship with the prospect from the outset. Telemarketers who don’t work to continuously improve their skills may well find they’re distracted by planning their next move and are unable to focus on what the prospect is saying. The more skilled and more capable telemarketers are, the easier it will be for them to concentrate on the challenge of building rapport throughout the call.

Continual improvement is important in all industries. In telemarketing, it’s crucial. To find out more about how we can help you to improve the quality of your calls, explore our site today.