rejection Archives | Blue Donkey

How to cope with rejection in telemarketing

Posted on 30 March 2021 by bluedonkey

Like life, telemarketing is full of ups and downs. At times you dial a number, reach someone you need to talk to and get chatting like you’ve known them forever. You just connect in a way that works for you, and them. When this happens, your questions yield perfect answers, and the buyer peppers the discussion with all the things they need from you in order for you to work together. Hence you’re able to present your company’s products and services in a way that dovetails their needs as a business. Almost by magic, your sparkle generates a relationship that can endure over time. You feel valued, and your work holds meaning and reward.

On another day you might dial and dial and dial until you reach someone. When you finally do, you ask the same questions to strike up a dialog, you use the same introduction and features, but the call just flops. So you try again. And again. And again. To no avail. Then you’re left with a feeling that you’ve somehow failed, no one wants to talk to you, people are not interested, nobody is even there to take your call, and telemarketing doesn’t work. You feel the harsh stab of rejection and your job sucks.

Deep breath please

Newsflash! It’s normal to have bad moments in telemarketing. Actually, it’s perfectly normal to have moments that make you want to turn tail and flee, screaming for the hills. Hopefully, the big fat highs you get from the good times are easily worth the bad ones. Nevertheless, there are things we can do to help minimise the rejection we experience during the bad times, and there are things we can do to mitigate the effect of rejection when it does inevitably feature. Next time you’re faced with a situation where your telemarketing gave you a sense of rejection, take a big deep breath, sit up straight, and fix your mind back to the last great call you had. What happened in that call? How did you feel? What did you do that was special? Make time for these kinds of reflections regularly. Unfortunately, people have a shocking habit of remembering and talking about their horror stories, far more than their successes. This makes the negative recollections far bigger and more prominent in our minds than they deserve to be.

Resilience

By shifting your focus away from the negative situations, and firmly towards the positive ones, you’ll quickly shake off the effects of rejection. The great news is that these behaviours are habit forming. Over time your ability to switch away from the negative and towards the positive will happen naturally. We refer to this as resilience. As your resilience grows, the ability to flip your thinking will kick in automatically. Another huge positive is this, the less you allow destructive emotions to dominate your thoughts, the more your internal dialog shifts to ‘expect’ great things to happen. Instead of thinking ‘this is going really badly, no one wants to talk to me’ you’ll think ‘I’m going to have a really good conversation now’. If you expect great telemarketing to happen, you’ll make calls that are laden with possibility and potential, as well as mitigate the effects of any rejection that does manage to sneak into your day.

Re-frame

In fact, if you can learn to accept and label rejection differently, it can actually be really good for us, our mental health and our work as sales professionals. At Blue Donkey, our teams are making calls across many different projects all day long. It’s all we do and we’re a centre of telemarketing excellence, so every dial is measured, benchmarked and reported on by way of the contribution it makes to a paid for campaign. The graveyards of low achievement that in-house telemarketing teams can sometimes experience just cannot happen at Blue Donkey because they would pose a threat to the business. Therefore we see rejection as a signpost. Metrics are carefully monitored for the number of times a call receives anything other than a ‘positive outcome’.

So the simple ‘not interested’ results or rejections are carefully measured and reported on for each hour of telemarketing that takes place. Two things happen with that data. Either we can use it to reassure a team member, because it’s common to overestimate how many negatives and underestimate the number of positives if we’re having a bad day. Or if the number of negative outcomes is unusually high, it indicates the messaging should be adjusted. So it’s not the caller, it’s the call that’s being rejected.

Dealing with rejection in B2B telemarketing

Posted on 22 July 2019 by bluedonkey

Sadly, dealing with rejection in B2B telemarketing is a reality of everyday life, and though we try to embrace a positive outlook, we accept that we’ll come across decision makers who don’t have time to talk, aren’t interested in the services or products we want to discuss, or simply don’t want the hassle of switching a particular supplier.

To help our team cope with these knockbacks, and to ensure rejection doesn’t impact on the productivity of our workforce, we’ve created a range of strategies to help ensure success.

Mindset

Any sales professional will be only too aware of the power of positive thinking. In fact, we believe a positive mindset can make or break a sales call. As well as helping our telemarketers approach each call in an optimistic and confident way, a positive mindset helps to convey the benefits and the appeal of the products and services we’re promoting, more compellingly and with more verve.

One of the techniques we practice to put our team in a positive frame of mind is to encourage them to recall the last time they had a really good conversation, or generated a B2B telemarking lead that they are truly proud of. For example, those rewarding, mutually beneficial exchanges, where the recipient is engaged and interested, and which result in the telemarketer feeling on a high, long after the dialogue has ended. These calls are brought to the front of the telemarketer’s mind, and reflected on regularly, whenever they pick up the phone. This helps fuel enthusiasm, reflect success, and gives each contact a stronger likelihood of achieving its objectives.

Creating the best chance of success

Often, an unsuccessful sales call comes down to bad targeting or a poor quality list. If a telemarketer makes a call and the recipient isn’t receptive to the sales message, they need to take a look at the type of companies they’re calling. If the product, service or sales message is unlikely to be of interest to the companies on the list, the telemarketer has a limited chance of success, no matter how enthusiastic they are. However, if the list is well targeted, and appropriate, it may be the positivity of the message or the timing of the call that need to be adjusted.

Even if the product or service isn’t right for the recipient at this moment in time, if the telemarketer can stay positive, engage the person they’re speaking to and have a meaningful discussion, there’s a good chance the telemarketer will be able to revisit the company in the future. As well as helping to line up potential customers, this will help to ensure the next time the telemarketer contacts the company, the call is warmly received, because the brand has been presented well in the past and was therefore memorable for all the right reasons.

Nothing personal

Often we feel rejected when we perceive that the person on the other end of the phone is dismissing us. In these instances, it’s important to remember that rejection, in a business sense, isn’t personal. Instead of feeling despondent, we encourage our telemarketers to put themselves in the buyer’s headspace and think about how their language or their explanation can be improved to better get their message across. Failing to win buyers on every call is not rejection, its life.

In business, no one can be successful 100% of the time. Instead of focusing on the negatives of rejection, it’s important to think about how you can create positives from the situation. As well as helping to improve your mindset and make the working day even better, this positive attitude will be reflected in your success rate and could help you achieve more than you ever thought possible.

To find out how Blue Donkey can help you achieve positive outcomes from your B2B telemarketing efforts, contact us on 01353 724880.

Dealing with rejection over the phone

Posted on 10 January 2017 by bluedonkey

When you work in telemarketing, rejection is a part of everyday life. Though we work to ensure our success rates are as high as possible, you’re always going to come up against decision makers who don’t have time to talk, aren’t interested in your products or simply don’t want the hassle of switching suppliers.

Though it’s a hazard of the job, regular rejection doesn’t get any easier, especially for telemarketers who are committed to getting the best results possible from every call. To help our team cope with the knockbacks, and to ensure rejection doesn’t impact on the productivity of our workforce, we’ve developed a range of strategies to help our team cope.

Mindset

If you’ve ever worked in sales, you’ll know just how powerful positive thinking can be. In fact, we believe a positive mindset can make or break a sales call. As well as helping our telemarketers approach each call in an optimistic and confident way, a positive mindset helps to convey the benefits and the appeal of the products and services we’re promoting.

One of the tactics we use to put our team in a positive frame of mind is to encourage them to remember the last time they had a really good call. Those calls where the recipient is engaged, when they had a mutually beneficial conversation and when their message really hit its mark should be kept at the front of a telemarketer’s mind whenever they pick up the phone. This will help to fuel enthusiasm when the telemarketer makes a call, and should give each contact a stronger likelihood of achieving the objectives set.

Give your call the best chance of success

Often, an unsuccessful sales call comes down to an inappropriate call list. If a telemarketer makes a call and the recipient isn’t receptive to the sales message, they need to take a look at the type of companies they’re calling. If the product, service or sales message is unlikely to be of interest to the names on the list, the telemarketer has a limited chance of success, no matter how enthusiastic they are. However, if the list is appropriate, it may be the positivity of the message – or the timing of the call that need to be adjusted.

Even if the product or service isn’t right for the recipient at this moment in time, if the telemarketer can stay positive, engage the person they’re speaking to and have a meaningful discussion, there’s a good chance the telemarketer will be able to come back to the company in the future. As well as helping to line up potential customers, this will help to ensure the next time the telemarketer contacts the company, the call is warmly received.

It’s not personal

Often we feel rejected when we perceive that the person on the other end of the phone is dismissing us. In these instances, it’s important to remember that rejection, in a business sense, isn’t personal. Instead of feeling despondent, we encourage our telemarketers to try putting themselves in the buyer’s headspace and thinking about how their language or their explanation can be improved to better get their message across. Failing to win buyers on every call is not rejection, its life.