Telemarketing is the most commonly practiced form of sales-prospecting. Every sales person spends some of their time on the phone trying to generate new sales appointments.
Because Telemarketing is so important to your success, Louis has asked me to host this page.
My promise to him, and my commitment to you, is that I will work hard to ensure you receive great advice and best practices from real sales people and industry experts.
I will spend my time searching for information, so that you do not have to.
The approved links and articles will be updated every week to provide you with a constant flow of real advice and proven best practices.
Approved Links
APPROVED ARTICLES
Voicemail: Love It or Leave It?
If you're prospecting and the gatekeeper says the president is busy, would you like her voicemail, always say yes.
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Call Center 101 - How to be Effective Telemarketers
The success of your outbound company will not only depend in your customers, but a great portion of it will depend on how effective your telemarketers in selling and promoting your business. - MORE
Permission Seeker or Pushy Salesperson?
Opening a call is not easy to get right. It’s a question of knowing exactly what you want from the person you’re talking to. It’s also a question of attitude and approach. - MORE
Gatekeepers Are No Trouble Anymore
Administrative assistants, or "gatekeepers," have gotten quite good at blocking access to the executives they serve. I don't know if they go to a school to learn how, but I just learned that they CAN earn an award for doing it well. - MORE
Slaying the Gatekeepers: How to Get to the Leaders and Win the Sale
“GO NO FURTHER.” That might as well be the sign implied, perceived or implanted in most people’s minds when it comes to dealing with gatekeepers. Yet, if left in place, these blockers can kill your chances of making the sale because they control where and how your message moves upward. - MORE
Telesales Scripts: Do You Love Or Hate Them?
With telesales scripts, you have people who either love them or hate them, there is no middle ground. There are a group of people who believe that a person reading a telesales script sounds absolutely computer like and thus fails to make any impression on the consumer. - MORE
Telesales: a Different Approach
Telesales would have to be one of the world’s most underrated skills. It took me over a decade to really understand how to do it. As one who studied law at university, I can safely say law was a breeze compared to the intricacies of selling over the phone! One of the ideas we teach certain companies looking at selling their services or products to other companies is that while credibility is crucial to the face-to-face aspect of their sales process, a fair bit of brazenness is of more importance on the phone. - MORE
Be a Sales Superstar on the Phones
When it comes to selling to customers, there are a few mandatory rules that help to gain trust and ultimately make the sale. Having been a successful salesperson for many years, these are some of the techniques I use to get and keep my customers' attention. Many were taught to me by those with MBA's but some are my own, learned by working with customers. - MORE
Selling By Phone
Selling using the phone is different from the face to face sale in two distinct ways namely the seller has a much shorter time to get their initial pitch across to the prospect and you only have one means of communication to deliver your message, your voice. These factors should be given serious consideration when selling over the phone. - MORE
How To Get Face To Face Over The Phone
One disadvantage of selling by telephone is the lack of face to face contact. Mastering this phone skill will give you an advantage over most sales people. - MORE
How To Write Effective Phone Scripts
Most inside sales reps I speak with tell me that they don't use a script, and when I take a look at the one their company has given them, I can understand why - most of them are terrible! - MORE
Don't Get Left At the Gate When Calling on Decision Makers
Learn how to bypass gatekeepers (GK), those professionals who "guard" the decision makers and often run interference for them, to get in front of decision makers (DM). - MORE
The Death Of A Sales Pitch
Far too many people in business waste time pursuing leads that refuse to pick up the phone or return calls. - MORE
Adventures in Telesales
The manager hung up the phone from his call to his mentor Claudine. They had just finished discussing his telemarketing services superstar "Telesales Tammy". She had a lot of potential and made more calls than anyone else in the office but her closing ratio was no better. - MORE
Are Your Sales Scripts Working For or Against You?
Sales scripts are a double edged sword. On one hand, they can help you present your selling points and sales rebuttals in an organized, strategic way. Used incorrectly, however, they can undermine your sales effectiveness and actually cause you to lose sales. - MORE
How to Beat Gatekeepers - 10 Top Tips
Have you ever made a call where you failed to get through to
the decision maker whether cold call or warm call? I bet you
have. I don't think there is anyone involved with sales who
hasn't! - MORE
The Secret to Setting Appointments with Prospects
Talking to prospects on the phone is like reading those first few lines of Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities. The key is to avoid being the worst, being foolish or incredulous, and to prevent the season of darkness and the winter of despair. - MORE
How To Get Your Calls Returned By Becoming an Industry Expert
Mary Haven, who is a top rainmaker for her company believes that she gets her calls returned because her clients know that she has a wealth of knowledge about what's going on in her industry. She can discuss business trends as well as who's been promoted, demoted or changed jobs. This type of industry knowledge, or gossip, is very enticing. Taking a telephone call from Mary is really an opportunity to get updated on trends and who's doing what in her industry. - MORE
How To Handle Rejection
This sales prospecting technique isn't specifically about how to prospect. It's a technique for dealing with the ill effects of prospecting, how to handle rejection. Being able to overcome the ill effects of rejection is vital to success in sales.- MORE
Becoming a Cold Calling Expert
In today's competitive sales market, preparation is everything. Often it'll mean the difference between getting the opportunity to meet with the decision maker and being able to have a productive meeting with a prospect. Pre call preparation can either be an asset or a detriment to your competitors. You need to be able to understand what the prospect wants and have the ability to embrace their objections. - MORE
Attributes of Top Telemarketers
There are specific attributes the top telemarketing sales appointment setter's posses. Without these traits, they fall into the "also ran" pack of telephone callers who will help your business to the extent a blind squirrel finds an acorn. - MORE
Three Sure-Fire Sales Rebuttals That You Can Use When Your Prospect Says, "I'm Not Interested!"
What do you say when your sales prospect says, "I'm not interested?" Do you just move on to the next prospect? Or, do you attempt to ask a few more qualifying questions to get to the heart of why they said no? Below are three example sales rebuttals that you can use to take the "not" out of the "I'm not interested" sales objection: - MORE
Cold Calling: Think Your Way to Success
Being mentally prepared for successful cold calling is like being prepared for a verbal game of Table Tennis. - MORE
How to Make Your Cold Calling Problem-Focused
We rarely think about our prospect’s problems when we cold call. It’s just easier to focus on our product or service. Naturally, it’s really tempting to make cold calling all about us and what we have to offer, rather than about the other person. - MORE
Famous Cold Calling Mistakes
Many of us are under the misconception that our hidden agendas and traditional sales tactics are well hidden when making our cold calls and nothing could be farther from the truth. Now cold calling is a feared sales tool simply because of the stress and negative energy it brings to the cold caller and well as those prospects that are being called. - MORE
Overcoming Call Reluctance
Everyone in marketing faces it at one time or another - reluctance to pick up the phone and make calls. Logically, it makes no sense to feel that way. We believe in our product or service. We have a script that’s either been given to us or one that we’ve carefully written out. We have a list of prospects that are at least somewhat targeted. We know that when someone says “No”, it’s not directed at us. And still… the phone weighs a ton. - MORE
Telemarketing for the Complex Sale
The sales process for complex solutions such as high-end software, complex financial instruments and engineering solutions requires a very different approach than simple telemarketing for say, lower telephone costs. - MORE
Disqualifying your Prospects
Disqualifying prospects appears to run counter to everything a sales organization is trying to do. Why would you shut the door and snuff out a possible sale? The short answer is to make a lot more money. - MORE
Successful Telemarketing Appointment-Making Presentation - keep it clear!
Investing time initially will pay huge rewards in the end. Take the time you need to get your appointment-making presentation to the clearest, simplest expression of what you have to say, in the fewest number of words possible. When you do this, it will pay off generously in the improved response you will get. - MORE
Cold Calling The Amazingly Simple Secret for Successful Cold Calls to Company Presidents
Your colleagues are extremely interested in cold calling company presidents-like you, everybody with business savvy wants to reach the executives, quickly to close top dollar sales. - MORE
Cold Calling: 20% of Sales Professionals Tell This Lame Lie
Yeah, yeah, smatterings of sales trainers see fit to advise audiences to incorporate one of these lame lies into their sales presentations. A very few high dollar sales professionals will tell one occasionally. Even you may be tempted to respond like this every once in a great while. - MORE
The Power of Good Timing
Steve was very upset when he called me a couple of months ago. "I did exactly what you taught me. I made 1424 dials and presented 171 prospecting offers. I got two appointments and I only made one sale. Am I doing something wrong, or doesn't High Probability Prospecting work in the insurance industry?" - MORE
How to Cold Call with Integrity
Note from Jessica - This is all about telemarketing, but, out of respect to the authour I did not change the title.
You probably never tell potential clients your real goal in calling them, but you don’t need to. They’re already aware, because we’re all sensitive when the phone rings and it turns out to be someone we don’t know. - MORE
How To Use Telemarketing Effectively
Follow these simple rules, and you can make inbound or outbound telemarketing work more effectively for your business: - MORE
Sales Prospecting and a Targeted Selection Process; Who Are You Calling On And Why?
What’s a Targeted Selection Process? As related to prospecting, it is a process or system of defining whom you want to call on and performing the due diligence of data procurement to understand who you are calling on and why you have chosen them. - MORE
Telemarketing scripts and how they work
A good script can be a brilliant tool for both inside and outside sales. Sometimes it will work because of the specific buzz words being used, on other occasions the structure it provides is the key - MORE
Ten Top Tips for Dealing With Gatekeepers
There are many conflicting opinions out there on the subject of how best to deal with gatekeepers - MORE
Improving Your Telemarketing Skills
Are you a telemarketer who gets frustrated because you are not achieving your goals? Telemarketing is very challenging and involves constant rejection. A word of caution: Do not take rejection personally. Having good telemarketing skills is essential to being a good telemarketer.
Telemarketing Scripts When Selling By Phone Is Bad
Most telemarketers would agree that unscripted and natural sounding phone calls produce better results, yet many still use scripts. Why would this be the case?
The Cold Calling Voice - How To Create A Confident Voice That Sells!
In 1967, communication researcher Albert Mehrabian, found that 93% of our communication is non-verbal (body language and the tone of your voice) and only 7% of our communication is verbal (the actual spoken word). What does this mean when you are cold calling and speaking with sales prospects? - MORE
15 Types of Phone Screeners
Understanding the different types of phone screeners, and why they act like they do, is an essential element to gaining access to the decision maker - MORE
Can't Get an Appointment? 7 Rules You Should Know
Are you frustrated with the process of trying to set appointments with prospective customers? You’ve tried every trick in the book to get appointments, and nothing seems to work? - MORE
How to Double your Sales Appointments in Half the Time
Sales organizations live by growth. And Sales Growth is measured by sales revenue. If you want to know how to increase sales revenue…there are only three ways to do it: - MORE
