They Are A-changin’: The Secret To Telemarketing Sales Success
Want to enjoy telesales success with more appointments? Get off your dinosaur and get with the times! Prehistoric techniques don't work in our world today. In this article we'll show you the techniques that do work!
A good friend told me about a sales job he started recently. Although it wasn't a strictly telesales job, it did have a large cold calling element to it. The company brought him in a room with other sales professionals and spent a day training him. The mantra of the telesales training was "don't reinvent the wheel" and "if you stick to the telemarketing program, you can't help but succeed."
He tells me about the shock he felt when he looked over the telesales script they were learning. Repeatedly, the sales trainers kept saying "if you follow the plan, you'll succeed"; but my friend related to me that these trainers had clearly not been in the cold calling industry in a LONG time. The telesales script was old, it used cold calling techniques that are ineffective today. Apparently, the sales techniques had been developed and entrenched in its tradition since the company started in 1945!
After the telesales training was over, the new recruits were "unleashed" to the phones and they started dialing. The trainers listened in and delivered strict reprimands whenever someone broke from the sales script (which happened a lot... no surprise there!).
Less than one year later, my friend (who has gone on to a more successful and rewarding sales career elsewhere) says that the company had a turnover close to 85%. Again, no surprise.
Why is it that the telemarketing industry is seeing record turnover? Why is it that cold calling sales professionals are leaving rewarding positions? Plain and simple, one of the biggest reasons is the inability of sales staff, telesales departments, and entire cold calling companies to keep up with the changing times.
By using the old telesales methods of yester-decade(!) you'll end up making failed call after failed call after failed call as you try to find the one promising (and evasive) lead in a mountain of unqualified prospects. The end result? A lot of dialing and no appointments. Meanwhile, qualified sales leads are buying from your up-to-date competition because they know that it takes a new mentality to make cold calling sales in the new century.
What is this new mentality? Cold calling is still a legitimate sales technique but our sales prospects don't want to be pitched something they don't need. The effective and up-to-date telemarketing sales professional knows this and instead takes a different approach to the call: Rather than the sales technique of "pull-on-my-string-and-I-will-begin-a-fast-and-lengthy-sales-pitch", the modern professional asks just a few effective and probing questions without the hype and the pressure. These probing questions uncover one thing: discovering if it makes sense to do business with the prospect. If not, hang up. Quick, effective, painless.
The good news is that many companies are stuck using the old telesales techniques. If you switch over to the more powerful, more effective consultative technique of this century, you'll be miles ahead of your competition.
About the Author: For a collection of more articles and resources offering tips about cold calling and telemarketing visit http://cchighlights4u.com
Source: www.isnare.com
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