3 Unusual yet Crucial Training Tips for Telemarketers

Telemarketing requires spontaneity, resourcefulness, and confidence. A telemarketing list may consist of the some crucial leads but it is nothing but a useless spreadsheet in the hands of an incompetent caller. There is a lot more to telemarketing than just being persuasive, engaging and cordial when you speak to a client. On that note, we present to you, three telemarketing tips that are not all that commonly heard of, but if and when used rightly, may help close deals with even the most hard-to-crack prospects.

Be firm (but polite) with PAs and Secretaries

When you’re a telemarketer, there are points for speaking politely to clients. Gatekeepers such as secretaries and personal assistants of high-end business prospects get so many telemarketing calls in a day that they are in an ‘auto-reject’ mode. You may not even get a chance to finish your sentence if you are too polite with secretaries or personal assistants. If, on the other hand, you add a little more command to your voice and lead into the conversation with something like ‘I’m looking to speak with…, thank you’ you may end up speaking to the client. This ‘firm but polite’ way to go about things actually increases your chances of getting the clients on the line.

Use Open Questions

Close-ended questions that may only be answered with a yes or a no are not favorable for a telemarketer. Chances are, even if you’re selling something, the prospect may be interested in answering your questions. They might still simply turn it down with a firm no. For instance, if you ask questions like “Would you be interested in hearing out investment options?” the client may directly say no without even considering the benefits. As opposed to this, you need to focus on asking open ended, conversational questions. Examples include ‘What does your budget for this look like?’ and ‘How much time, do you think you can devote to this?’

Short Sale Closing

When we say short say closing, we mean, resorting to the good old hit and trial method. Instead of waiting for the actual sales pitch/telemarketing script to finish, you may take a moment to figure out how the prospect perceives your attempt to sell your product. All you need to do is, stop and ask something like ‘So, how is our product looking so far?’ or ‘Do you see yourself using our services yet?’ If they respond positively, it indicates you are heading the right direction and hopefully, towards a closed sale. If not, you keep on trying to pursue them. Getting to know what’s on the mind of a prospect is always a good thing.

So, those were three unique ways telemarketers may use to close sales. Remember to imbibe them in an effective telemarketing script and overall strategy for best results. Like, with all telemarketing operations, good telemarketing strategies begin with good telemarketing leads.

Debunking 2 of the Biggest Telemarketing Myths

Every other industry has its own charm, own compliances and not to forget its own set of myths as well that do nothing more than inhibiting the success rate of the organizations falling under it. The telemarketing industry is no exception. It has one of the greatest number of myths surrounding it, which only make the daunting task of ‘selling over phone’ more difficult. No matter your call center is equipped with requisite software and accurate business telephone lists for churning sales, ensuring that telemarketing myths, in no way, are hampering the performance of your agents is indispensable. Through this article, we debunk the 2 biggest telemarketing myths. 

The Customer Does not Want to Be Called EVER!

One of the biggest myths in telemarketing is the thinking that customers never want to be called. This negative thought, in fact, is borne in the minds of most sales callers even before the person on the other end of the call picks up the phone. In extreme cases, many agents even arrive to a conclusion that customers just hate sales calls. The snapping of the phone lines, in many cases, however, is more related with ‘bad timing’ than reasons such as ‘customers do not want any sales calls’. If a person does not want to buy a product, of course, there’s nothing you can do about it, but once you keep yourself in the place of the customer you would realize that attending sales calls when you are leaving for something important or are already involved in a serious work is not an easy job. Owing to this reason, it is imperative to study your consumers behavior and plan your actions accordingly. Try to get the right contact time from your customers, and when you reach them, converse with confidence. 

I Can NEVER Reach a Live Customer

The access to mobile phones and less use of telephone lines by consumers has created a strong notion among telecallers that contacting a ‘live customer’ is almost impossible in the current age. Though, using efficient call center sales software helps you quickly get through the answering machines in a list and in connecting to live prospects, what do you about customers who only use mobile phones. How do you plan to reach them live? Interestingly, according to a survey done by Qualcomm, the average age of a person who starts using a cell phone is gradually dropping; 13 years being the current figure at which a person starts using a mobile phone. Consequently, most business telemarketing companies are targeting customers above 50 years, who still depend on traditional modes of communication devices such as a landline phone. 

Conclusion

Thoughts such as “How many calls do I need to complete my target” or “Will the customer even let me say a word” are only natural when you work as a sales professional in a call center. Any time of the day, disconnections and people not listening to your sales pitch are disappointing leaving behind no sales, but negative thoughts. This is one big reason that many businesses these days consider it wise to spend on auto dialing software that come with features such as predictive dialing - transfers your call automatically to the customer’s cell phone if no one answers the landline. Regardless of this, it is cardinal to remember that there are businesses that are booming as a result of high-performing sales staff. These sales professionals are churning those sales numbers by connecting with people that exist on the same planet. 

Telemarketing List Providers

Pros And Cons of Telemarketing

Telemarketing Software And Scripts

Accelerate Your Business With Fresh Telemarketing Data

Perfectly screened, clean, and well targeted telemarketing data is a key asset for your company because it feeds new businesses to your company. But how do you get clean telemarketing data? Most of the telephone marketing service providers offer professional data cleansing. They pay great attention to the details and ensure that your data does not contain errors, duplicates, and format inconsistencies.

The Law Mandates the Data Cleaning Process

The Data Protection Act in the USA mandates that all records must be correct (fourth principle) and not held for longer than required (fifth principle). If companies do not clean their data, they may be found guilty for not being compliant with the principles.

Data Cleaning Process

Cluttered telemarketing data costs money and negatively impacts the reputation of your company. The following tips can help you keep your data clean and also accelerate your business.

Audit & sync your database: If you are using multiple telemarketing lists, combine them into one CMS or sync them. You can also manually create a process to ensure that updates in one database reflect in all others. There’s no point in cleansing every database if the same records in other databases are still wrong.

Check for uniformity: Uniformity in the data structure is key to a quality telemarketing database, but at the same time it is also a challenge. For example, if you let a telemarketing lists aggregator type the business leads rather than choosing from a drop-down menu, they will give varying results. They may write United States in multiple ways such as U.S., US, U.S.A, USA, and United States of America.

No short cuts: Telemarketing data cleaning is labor-intensive work. One can do this via email, but response rates will be either slow or low, and what if the email address is wrong? The better way is to crosscheck the data using online research, but companies don’t always list their employees’ contact details on their website. In this situation, you have to make calls to verify the data.

Writer’s take

Smart telemarketers segment their telemarketing data at a very detailed level such as profession, region, interest, etc. Before buying the data, they inquire about the quality of data, the format of data, data aggregation method, and more. A well-established fact in the telemarketing business is that data cleansing isn’t a one-off process. Telemarketing companies must set a process in place to clean their telemarketing data at least once a year.

Break Through With A Better Telemarketing Scripts

The cold calling script is your manuscript for success through the telephone. Irrespective of the services or products that you sell, the calling script trains the newbies, refreshes the veteran team member and turns your leads into customers. Best of all, it explains your proposal and your brand better than any advertising campaign, email campaign or direct response program ever will. It all depends on the quality of calling lists for telemarketing.

Better Telemarketing Scripts Writing Tips

Background Research: Before making calls to prospective clients, telemarketers should do their research and learn about who they are calling. If telemarketers want to make B2B calls, they should know exactly what the targeted company does, how many employees they have, and who the key decision makers are in the organization.

Understand Your Prospects: What a prospective client hears is usually based on a script. They may hear anything from questions, features, statements and inflection. The fact is; they receive the call and act through what they perceive. Therefore, the script should be prospect-focused. Wherever the prospect goes, the script should go right along with them. A good script should enable the prospective customer to take control. For this reason, Telemarketing Scripts writers should create a need-based grid for prospects.

Avoid the Overuse of Statistics: Often Telemarketing Scripts writers do rigorous work on statistical data mining for scripts. However, the fact is that you confuse your prospects with too much complicated statistical information. Whatever information you are sharing with your prospects, make sure that you have their ears first; otherwise, all of your efforts will go in vain. It’s better if you use a ‘cheat sheet’ for reference, and use it as and when you require it.

Have Scripted Counters: No matter how good of a communicator the person is who is reading the script, he or she will definitely face some counter arguments over the call. In order to turn their counter arguments to your advantage, you should have a scripted response, which could smartly accept the prospects’ point of view, but politely reiterate why they need your products or services.

Include Time Constraint Factors: Once tele-callers strongly feel that their prospects are convinced, they should immediately explain that it is a time-bound offer and it won’t wait. Placing time constraints is one of the most effective ways of encouraging prospects to make quick decisions, by triggering their fear of missing out.

writer’s Take

Every telemarketer should own their script and be spontaneous. It’s good to have a cheat sheet for reference. The quality of Telemarketing Scripts counters and arguments will depend on the amount of background research that the telemarketer performs.

Telemarketing: A Necessity For Small Business Owners And Why

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses is to accomplish their high sales aspirations with a limited marketing budget. Small businesses can’t afford big promotional campaigns to inform their prospective clients about their new products and services. In this delicate situation, the use of a telemarketing team can be quite helpful. The telemarketing team can find targeted customers and make them aware of new products and services. There are several providers of telemarketing phone lists in the USA who abide by the Do-Not-Call Registry Act of 2003. This ensures that there won’t be any legal goof-ups for them or you down the road.

Marketing experts observe that telemarketing is inexpensive and one of the most cost effective marketing strategies for increasing sales and delivering superior customer service. They encourage small businesses to embrace telemarketing business leads.

Benefits of Telemarketing Services for Small Businesses

• One can get direct feedback from prospective and existing clients
• It is the only advertising tool that instantly yields a result
• It does not require frequent travel, so small businesses can save time and money
• It helps small businesses expand their sales territory
• It also helps small businesses take a small and authentic survey of their clients, which ultimately provides better market insight in real time

In-house or Outsourced Telemarketing Services

Many small businesses just want to focus on their core business. They don’t want to be involved in other activities. According to telemarketing experts, an in-house team of telemarketers is necessary if the products or services require extensive technical information. On the other hand, outsourcing helps those businesses that require around-the-clock coverage to support ad campaigns or a seasonal marketing program.

Legal Tidbits about Telemarketing for Small Businesses

Of late, governments in many countries have regulated the telemarketing industry by enforcing strict laws. The idea is to completely bar unethical and irritating practices like “robo-calling”, the practice of making thousands of automated calls with pre-recorded messages to any and every one. Experts suggest that with in-depth market research and a quality telemarketing phone lists, telemarketing companies can avoid all types of legal troubles.

For a better understanding, one may contact the U.S. Small Business Administration and learn more about the Do-Not-Call Registry Act of 2003 and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The administration also provides business licenses and permits. Political parties and non-profit organizations are not covered under these laws. If companies are calling their existing clients they also do not fall under these laws.

A common understanding about telemarketing is that for every hundred calls you will get at least ten receptive listeners and maybe one sale. The bottom line is that small businesses stand to lose nothing but gain everything from this inexpensive marketing tool, and it has shown encouraging results for businesses worldwide.

Sources:

http://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/telemarketing.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_4740769_start-telemarketing-business.html

http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/telemarketing.html

The Significance Of Using Professionally-Generated Telemarketing Leads

Telephone lists can easily be purchased on the Internet. Search online and you will learn that there now exist many professional phone list providers who sell telephone list to their customers. In a business, you have to make national and local calls so that you can contact consumers as well as other businesses. Whatever your need, you should probably be provided with the leads that you are looking for. The call lists that are sold online are for businesses that are interested in increasing their revenue and finding new clients.

Those interested in using telemarketing leads know well that one of the best ways to connect with one's prospective customers is to reach out to them over the phone. We are living in a digital age, but no matter how many technological breakthroughs mankind witnesses, verbal communication will continue to hold its own.

So if you have decided that you are going to buy a phone list from a professional phone list provider, you should try to look for someone who offers their services at reasonable rates. But how will you figure out whether you have actually got a good deal? You can come to this conclusion when you are given access to thousands of contacts for a single payment. For those of who don’t know, these kinds of offers are now readily available on the Internet. You won't have to pay any hidden costs or monthly fees, and your list will be completely yours.

Your targeted customers are going to determine the kind of phone list that you will eventually buy from your phone list provider. If getting across to other businesses is what you have on your radar, you can buy business telemarketing list, which will consist of the names of different businesses together with their addresses, contact numbers, descriptions, and codes. Through residence lists, you may try to contact the different residences of any one locality.

Those who sell telemarketing leads are also known to provide their customers with dialer software. With telemarketing software, you can put your leads to use in the most appropriate way, and you can consider yourself extremely lucky if you succeed in getting a sizeable discount on your phone lists, as this normally happens when you buy both phone lists and dialer software together.

When you get a business telemarketing list, you will get to know the physical locations of businesses that you can use to effectively to launch mailing campaigns.

Making The Most Of B2B Telemarketing: A Brief Guide

Most of us have learned to hate telemarketing, as it is annoying to hear a person on the other side reciting a script unsolicited. This is not a good way to earn new customers or even continue a business, and it may even damage the goodwill of the company.

What B2B Telemarketing is All About

Telemarketing is one of the most valuable marketing channels for businesses. Having said so, making random calls to people isn't a good approach and might not get you a high ROI. A strategic and well-planned approach is the key to success of a B2B telemarketing campaign. Let's look at the factors that can help a business run a successful B2B telemarketing campaign.

In-house Team

When a business outsources the telemarketing campaign to a third-party, there are chances that it can result in a complete failure or might not achieve the desired goals. A well-coordinated telemarketing campaign, integrated with the strategic plan of the organization, can get more revenue.

Bridging the Gap

A telemarketing campaign can't be conducted on the silo of sales or marketing department, as both are focused on short-term goals. A telemarketing expert needs to look at the bigger picture and target improving its reputation with the customer along with making a sale.

Hiring the Right People

Telecallers are the face of your business and therefore they need to be smart and efficient enough to handle all types of clients in the right way. Besides being fluent in the language, they should have a thorough knowledge of what the products/services are they deal with and what the company is all about. Hire intelligent people and give them the right training.

Measuring the Results

A pile of leads isn't the only criteria to judge the success of a telemarketing campaign. You always need to consider ROI as an important factor to figure out if the telemarketing measures that you took were successful and what all you need to take care of when running a campaign next time.

Business Telemarketing Lists

A major portion of the credit for the success of the telemarketing campaign goes to the list that the telecallers refer to while making the calls. Picking up contact numbers from a directory and randomly calling people means you are heading in the wrong direction and wasting time as well as resources. It is always better to create a list of the audience you want to target the products/services to. Preparing a Telemarketing Data is a time consuming and long process that requires lot of data, so it is advised that businesses seek the help of a third party to get lists prepared. You need to ensure that you are working with a reputable business telemarketing lists provider.

Conclusion

In the end, remember that building relationships is the basis of any telemarketing campaign. It is a slow and gradual process that can generate great ROI if done strategically.

Source:

http://www.3d2b.com/blog/tele-services/what-is-b2b-telemarketing.html

Does Your Business Depend on Telemarketing Phone Lists?

A major issue blocking growth for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is the lack of qualified leads. Telemarketing is considered by many to be one of the most effective methods in creating quality leads. It’s a method of direct marketing.

Telemarketing Classification

There are two categories of telemarketing:

1) Business-to-business (B2B)

2) Business-to-consumer (B2C)

On one hand, strict industry regulations and negative social stigma have made telemarketing a difficult path to sales and marketing. On the other, market reports show that the response rate to telemarketing is higher than other marketing methods like direct mail, email and paid search.

The Benefits of Telemarketing

With effective telemarketing, your business can immediately real time measure a potential customers’ level of interest in your services and products. Additionally, it provides the following benefits:

• Expansion of sales territory
• Personal sales and customer service for acquisition, retention and upsell opportunities
• Direct research into customer psyche
• The ability to explain detailed technical issues to targeted customers in a crystal clear manner
• Quality leads and fix appointments with potential customers
• Achieve measurable results

Buying USA Residential Sales Leads

There are several USA Residential Sales Leads providers for B2B and B2C in the U.S. and Canada. Users can segregate these lists into different parameters such as income, age, sex, geographic location, interest, hobbies of telephone users and many more. By using the said parameters, one can get a very good success rate from telemarketing. According to telemarketing experts, it is crucial that telemarketing people don’t make calls to everyone who is registered on telemarketing phone lists. They suggest certain tips to target the right audiences. For example, telemarketers could consider:

• Contacting new residents of an area: This audience may require several products and services to set up their newly acquired homes. After calling, telemarketers can get new telephone numbers before potential customers register themselves on 'do-not-call lists'.
• Customizing tele-call pitch to engage targeted audience: From telemarketing phone lists, telemarketing people can get some background information about prospect clients and based-on their age, interest or hobby, they can prepare an appropriate tele-call pitch before making the calls.

Automated Telemarketing

We are talking about an interactive voice response (IVR) service to effectively make large numbers of telemarketing calls inexpensively. According to telemarketing experts, many outbound IVR telemarketing services are gaining huge popularity due to its use. Business people use it to alert targeted customers about new products, offers and services. It is considered by many to be one of the most effective ways of generating quality leads. Moreover, IVR campaigns are less expensive because it does not require people for manual tele-calling. But you need to ensure that IVR-based telemarketing campaigns do not create 'silent calls'. This is one of the major flaws of IVR campaigns that sometimes and the result is that the person who answers the phone doesn’t actually hear the call.

Other Sources:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/success-rate-cold-calling-10031.html

https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/targeting-consumer-audiences-using-telemarketing

https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/legalities-scams-and-protecting-customers-when-telemarketing

https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/advantages-and-disadvantages-telemarketing

https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/how-start-telemarketing-your-business

How to Find Telemarketing Phone Numbers for Your Business?

When you launch a business wherein you have to get across to a huge number of people every time a new offer or product is launched, the first step is to get the right telemarketing list to align with your target customers.

Today, there is no shortage of phone list suppliers selling telemarketing phone numbers. With a detailed consumer list at your disposal, you can launch different campaigns or have one campaign launched in different ways. While going through the contact details in your list, you can sort numbers by postal code, area code, province, city, business size or type. By focusing on one criterion at a time, your sales team can begin to draw correlations between the product you are selling and the sales variable that leads to higher conversion.

Professional telemarketing list companies should update their list at the start of every year. If the company you are speaking with does not do this, you may end up purchasing a list with outdated data. In other words, a waste of money. A good telemarketing list company should also have a holistic expertise about telemarketing, not just lists. Ask about dialer software with your list. Dialer software can be a good investment to speeding up call time and conversions.

Your telemarketing efforts will only be as good as your sales team and your Telephone List so take your time in making these decisions. A bad list is just as damaging as a ineffective salesperson to your sales efforts. Likewise, even a good salesperson will be wasted without the proper tools to do his or her job.

How to Find Telemarketing Phone Numbers for Your Business?

When you launch a business wherein you have to get across to a huge number of people every time a new offer or product is launched, the first step is to get the right telemarketing list to align with your target customers.

Today, there is no shortage of phone list suppliers selling telemarketing phone numbers. With a detailed consumer list at your disposal, you can launch different campaigns or have one campaign launched in different ways. While going through the contact details in your list, you can sort numbers by postal code, area code, province, city, business size or type. By focusing on one criterion at a time, your sales team can begin to draw correlations between the product you are selling and the sales variable that leads to higher conversion.

                     

Professional telemarketing list companies should update their list at the start of every year. If the company you are speaking with does not do this, you may end up purchasing a list with outdated data. In other words, a waste of money. A good telemarketing list company should also have a holistic expertise about telemarketing, not just lists. Ask about dialer software with your list. Dialer software can be a good investment to speeding up call time and conversions.

Your telemarketing efforts will only be as good as your sales team and your telemarketing phone numbers so take your time in making these decisions. A bad list is just as damaging as a ineffective salesperson to your sales efforts. Likewise, even a good salesperson will be wasted without the proper tools to do his or her job.

Canadian Businesses Experience A Boost With Telemarketing Phone Lists

Ever since the Canadian Radio-Television & Telecommunications Commission enforced the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) in Canada, consumers have breathed a sigh of relief. The residents of Canada can choose to reduce the number of telemarketing calls by registering their mobile, residential, fax or VoIP numbers on the National DNCL.

With the DNCL service, businesses in Canada have lost the opportunity of ringing every random number that they have in their database, as breaking the law can invite a heavy penalty.

The biggest hurdle for any business is finding the right customers. Although the World Wide Web is full of information, it is often not possible for businesses to get the near-perfect customer data that they are looking for. A telemarketing phone list is the most feasible way to reach out to the right customers and businesses in Canada. Successful telemarketers usually have a 96 percent chance of being turned down. So, you can understand why they are relentless in keeping you on the phone. On the other hand, if the telemarketer makes an attempt to sell the product/service to a targeted customer, the success rate will be much higher.

Be it a small or big brand, every business needs to be consistent in terms of earning customers, else it will run into losses. However, reaching out to the right people & converting them into loyal customers is no easy task. There are several reputable companies who provide an accurate database of Canadian consumers, and they can successfully open up doors for your business.

Every business has different requirements, customers and their own modus operandi. If you run a website directory and are looking for local businesses to pay your listing price, then door-to-door sales aren’t a good idea. So, how will you target only the quality leads?

Checking out local newspapers is a great idea. Look at the classifieds section regularly; you will be able to make a list of listings that are repeated every day or week. You can contact these business owners to sell a space on your listing website.

This can however be a time consuming process and if your business deals in a specific domain, finding the right customers may become more complex.

Here comes the role of telemarketing phone list providers. There are several companies in Canada who offer a reliable database of customers to businesses from different domains. Whether you want a list of targeted consumers on the basis of their geographical location, age, gender, income or any other criteria, these listing providers are able to get you the right information.

Seeking the services of these companies is often a wise decision, as it doesn’t demand any extra time or data accuracy level. So, take control of your sales the affordable way. Call a professional for help to get in touch with the right customers, the first time.

Accurate data is an asset for any company. When you are looking for easy ways to obtain information in which to establish a connection with a target audience in Canada, take the help of telemarketing & lead generation services providers read more...