February 2019 | Blue Donkey

Telemarketing is one of the most effective, yet one of the most feared methods of generating sales or nurturing new relationships. Humans are used to using five senses as a means of communication, when suddenly reduced to just two, we find the activity unnerving, and frankly most people would far rather do something else. Yet speaking with friends and family on the phone has become a normal, natural and enjoyable experience that most of us are more than happy to engage in at length.

So how can telemarketing be more enjoyable? At Blue Donkey we think it’s all about maintaining the right mindset. If you dread telemarketing and expect to achieve little, that’s probably what you’ll get. On the other hand, if your mind is genuinely infused with positive feelings about your product, service, and what you can do to help customers reach their goals, guess what happens, we are naturally compelled to want to share those positive feelings.

See a person in your mind’s eye

As you speak with your potential customer on the phone, try to imagine a person in your mind’s eye. For most of us, this means we will be looking upwards, as we need to look up in order to access the creative parts of the brain. Try and imagine eye contact and speak from the heart as you would do face to face. You’ll find this gives you a natural flowing conversation that you’ll enjoy more because it’s closer to what we as humans are used to doing. If you feel better, chances are you’ll come across in a way that makes your calls nicer to receive.

Know your onions

Being knowledgeable about your subject is one of the keys to successful telemarketing. Knowing how your product or service excels compared with others in the market, understanding what customers want, and knowing what makes your offering special is an important confidence builder. Used with good open questions this knowledge is a powerful means for building successful interactions for your brand.

Keep on keeping on

At Blue Donkey we don’t buy in to the narrative that telemarketing is a Numbers game, if anything it’s a Quality game, in that the overriding success factor will always be the quality of the calls that gets results. However, there’s no getting away from it, the numbers matter. If you currently make 2 good quality calls a day, so maybe you dial 20 numbers to reach 2 target decision makers (not an unusual ratio in B2B) which you have a good two-way conversation with: you are probably getting some decent outcomes. What would happen if you ramped that up to double? Double the results, more even, as momentum builds success. Having the discipline to manage metrics carefully, to keep on keeping on could make a world of difference to the results.

Being purposeful and positive in our endeavours makes all the difference, not just to our calls but also to our state of mind. Most of us are pack-animals, we enjoy communicating with other people but only when we feel the communication is meaningful and helpful to the other person. After all, who wants to be making pointless dial after dial. Instead, by investing our emotions and attention fully, we can create interactions that really matter, not just to the results we attain but to the people we touch with our calls, and crucially to our own wellbeing because finding meaning and satisfaction in our work makes us happy people.

To find out more about how Blue Donkey can help you with meaningful telemarketing give us a call on 01353 724 880.

No, we’re not being sexist. In telemarketing one of the first challenges people encounter, is knowing who the right person is to speak with. We all suffer with negative bias to some extent where we think ‘they get hundreds of calls’, or ‘people are far too busy’, ‘I’m disturbing them’. It may be scary but outbound telemarketing is one of the most effective strategies for building a business, and it’s a skill worth harnessing.

Some have suggested that building an initial dialogue with someone lower down the corporate ladder, or a less senior person in the decision-making unit is preferable. The perception is they’re easier to reach and more amenable to a phone call.

At Blue Donkey we don’t believe that should be the case, in fact we advise against it on the basis that the person we reach might take on the role of gatekeeper. Often sales people who choose this method do so because they find the prospect of speaking to someone very senior intimidating. Of course, that’s understandable but at Blue Donkey we would always say results and confidence grow with success, adopting methods that generate real success are always better in the long term.

Keep your eye on the target

Even if you’re confident about your businesses strategies and success, it always pays to speak with your best prospects to understand and adapt to what your market wants. So keep your eye on the key target, the key decision maker. After all who wants to make a call where they have a nice chat but don’t generate success, it’s better to grasp the nettle and aim to reach the decision-makers that will really make a difference to our success.

Ask the MAN

At Blue Donkey we believe there is an important qualification process for who we should be speaking with. We use the acronym MAN to explain methodology.

M stands for the person with the Means (or Money) to make a decision

A means the Authority to make a decision

Need is where someone has the need to make a decision – in other words they benefit in some way because were helping them solve a problem or create an opportunity as a result of what we are offering.

Investing time and energy into reaching the most appropriate MAN is the best way to ensure your telemarketing gets results.

Enhancing a fertile database

Not only are productivity and sales maximised when you habitually aim for and reach the right decision makers, your all-important database also benefits by building new pipelines for future success as it’s continually fuelled with rich sources of information, and key decision maker names that help nurture relationships well into the future.

If you would like to find out more about how Blue Donkey can help you successfully reach your ideal MAN give us a call on 01353 724 880.

The importance of a dress code in the workplace should never be underestimated. Helping to give your office a professional feel and your business a strong identity, a dress code can make a huge difference to the way that employees interact with customers and colleagues.

Whilst the trend over the past decade has been for businesses to adopt an increasingly relaxed dress code, this could be causing havoc with your B2B telemarketing results.

As telemarketers rarely talk to their customers face to face, many companies have a relaxed dress code for employees working on the phones. However, even though these members of staff aren’t dealing with customers face to face, the way they dress is still incredibly important. Impacting on their telemarketing approach and their professionalism, a dress code could make a big difference to the success rate of your telemarketing team.

Boosting confidence

How ever many telemarketing calls a person makes, being on the phone always remains slightly unnerving especially if like Blue Donkey you work in a B2B context. A great way to boost confidence and come across as more professional is to dress appropriately for the office. A smart dress code helps telemarketers to stay disciplined and manage metrics. This is because we all feel more confident and more purposeful when we look the part.

Helping you think outside the box

Creative thinking is an important part of telemarketing. A lot of the time, telemarketers need to adjust their approach to suit the customer they’re speaking to and need to find ways to relate the benefits they’re offering to the needs of their target audience. As @Inc says, “Professional dress, one study found, increases abstract thinking and gives people a broader perspective. So that tie might actually be switching on your creativity button.” This means that the clothes you wear to work could have a real impact on your telemarketing results.

Building your persona

A lot of telemarketers create professional personas when they’re working on the phone. This helps them to feel more confident and to connect with the customers they speak to. Putting on a suit, tie or other smart outfit will help to transform employees into professional telemarketers.

Maintaining your brand

Not only does dressing the part help to boost a telemarketer’s confidence and help them to think outside the box, it also helps to strengthen and maintain your personal brand. A strong personal brand can help telemarketers in a number of ways including when it comes to objection handling. As objection handling is a core telemarketing skill, this can make a real difference to the impact that your telemarketers have.

Although at first glance a dress code may not seem that important in the world of telemarketing, in reality, it can make a huge difference especially in B2B. If you feel your team could benefit from a boost in confidence, creativity and company pride, why not introduce a dress code to your office and see just how much of a difference it can make?

To find out more about optimising performance give Blue Donkey a call on 01353 724 880.

Monthly Archives: February 2019

3 steps to creating meaningful telemarketing

How do you know if you’re speaking to the right MAN?

The importance of dress code in B2B sales