What is the real role of a Telemarketer?
A Telemarketer’s role is more than just generating leads. Yes, part of their role is to introduce products and services, handle objections, build rapport and generate interest. Effective telemarketers however, go above and beyond this basic level of telemarketing.
The real role of a Telemarketer is to develop sales opportunities that you can convert into long term customers. Furthermore, they can report back to you on; your target market, what your ICP are buying, how frequently, what their long-term objectives are. Ultimately making a significant impact on both your sales pipeline, and your overarching sales and marketing strategy.
Without an effective telemarketing strategy, how else can you obtain this key information? Without obtaining this key information, how can you nurture your prospects? Can you adapt your marketing strategy to fit your ICP? Well, the answer is you probably can’t. Yes, you can glean this information from your salespeople, but without extensive data showing common trends, this simply is not achievable.
What does Effective Telemarketing look like?
To understand what makes telemarketing effective, you first need to understand the universal sales process and why people buy. But also, how to draw someone into a conversation. Whilst we may all be familiar with sales calls, often, we think of poor telemarketing.
What do I mean by poor telemarketing… where the Telemarketer only values what they have to say. Laser focused on delivering their pitch and generating an appointment.
The problem is, in the modern world, this just is not possible… unless the prospect was at a point in their personal sales journey where they were ready to engage already. By this point however, going in with a full-scale pitch probably won’t be necessary anyway!
This, however, is not telemarketing, its order taking! Booking sales appointments with the ‘yeses’. Rather than highly skilled sales professionals looking to engage in a conversation and convert prospects into new customers.
The Universal Sales Process: AIDA
AIDA; Attention, Interest, Desire & Action. The universal sales… and buying process. Without walking your prospects through these areas as part of your discussion, they will not buy, or engage with you.
When prospecting to someone that has already developed an awareness of you, or a similar solution, their interest has evolved and they have a desire to explore similar options, obtaining the action (a sales appointment) is easy. If you’re only looking for the yeses though, you don’t need a premium telemarketing agency to generate new, high-quality sales opportunities. You need someone who can pick up the phone, make 20+ calls an hour and hope for the best!
If, however, you’re wanting to engage with a professional telemarketing agency to:
- Generate Sales Qualified Leads & Sales Appointments.
- Gather deep insights into market intelligence.
- Develop a unique database of qualified Decision Makers and members of the Decision-Making Unit.
- Provide key information on your ICP that will allow you to develop, alter and improve upon your sales and marketing strategy.
Then you need to engage with a telemarketing company that understands how to achieve just that!
What should a professional, B2B Telemarketing call look like?
A. Attention. First impressions count. You have just 10 seconds to make a positive first impression. So, you better make them count if you’re going to grab a new prospects’ attention! Failure to do so, and you’re going to be on the backfoot from the off.
(For reference, the above is just shy of 10 seconds, depending on how quickly you’re reading, you really do not have much time, and limited words to use.)
So, how can you obtain attention is just 10 seconds?
By asking the right questions and giving enough of a soundbite to grab the prospects’ attention.
I. Interest. Think about how newspapers sell, they sell the sizzle, not the sausage!
HEADLINE: The clients that are using our solution are seeing a significant uplift in both the number of opportunities, and the quality of opportunities in their pipeline.
The headline grabs your interest followed by “turn to page 4 to read the full article”. Now, the likelihood is that you’re not going to stand in the store reading the article on page 4. Instead, you will purchase the newspaper having obtained the desire to do so.
Assuming you’re through to the right Decision Maker, developing a short sound bite to pique their interest should be your primary focus.
D. Desire. We’ve grabbed the prospects attention, their interest has been piqued, how do we obtain the desire to know more?
We need to draw the prospect in with some well-structured questions to get them talking their inner truth. Before that though, we need to draw the prospect further into the conversation.
“Can I ask you a few questions just to see whether you’d be a good fit for us?”
Woah. Hang on… see if we’re a good fit for you? Why wouldn’t we be? – Who doesn’t love a bit of FOMO in sales!
This can then be followed with some well-structured questions to allow the Telemarketer to open the conversation, delving deep into the prospect’s situation.
Another key thing to focus on here, is getting the prospect using their limbic system.
The limbic system is the part of the brain responsible for creativity, emotions, and motivations. As it happens, this is also the part of the brain responsible for decision making.
Using words, like imagine, will help to bring your prospect’s thinking within the limbic system. Ultimately allowing you to get your prospect thinking about what it would be like to with you and decide. In this instance, by getting them to agree to a sales appointment.
A. Action. Having walked your prospect through the universal sales (and buying) process, it’s time to ask for the appointment.
By following this process and developing your conversation style in a way that allows you to walk your prospects through A.I.D.A, you will significantly increase the number of sales qualified opportunities generated.
Do Telemarketing Agencies really understand objection handling?
As highlighted earlier in this article, do Telemarketing Agencies truly understand how to overcome objections? More to the point, do they understand how to overcome objections turning a no into a yes?
A skilled Telemarketer when posed with an objection will need to first identify whether the objection is true or false. What’s the difference?
A True Objection – When the prospect is providing a valid and legitimate reason as to why they are not interested in progressing the conversation.
Let’s take an easy example, put yourself in the shoes of a Telemarketer working on behalf of a Commercial Cleaning company. You’re calling in to professional services, and the prospect advises you that they are based in serviced offices. The cleaning is all handled by the management company, and the business has no input with regards to which provider is being used. In this instance, the prospect is providing a true objection where they have no requirement for the services being provided.
A False Objection – Now, these can be a little harder to identify, so we will (for the sake of an explanation) use the most common false objection provided. “Send me an email.” Why is the prospect asking you to send them an email? Is it to get you off the phone? Because they haven’t necessarily understood what is in it for them. Due to wanting to validate who you are, and how you can help… the options are limitless.
A highly skilled Telemarketer will take this objection, and question in a way that allows them to identify whether the objection is true, or false. It’s a false economy to be prospecting to people who are just not ready to buy. By all means, send an email if they’re not interested right now or need further information as this can position you as a credible provider, buy don’t spend your time in calling prospects back numerous times to try and “follow up” on your email.
Getting your Telemarketing Prospects to speak their Inner Truth
Skilled Telemarketing is more than just pitching at people. It’s about opening a conversation with a prosect who, more than likely, was not sitting there waiting for you to call. It’s about creating psychological safety to allow them to divulge key information that is going to help your cause. It’s about understanding how the prospect communicates and mirroring this back at them. At the top of your agenda though, should be drawing them into a conversation, only then will a prospect speak their inner truth.
Let’s make this relative. Think about the best date you’ve ever been on. It doesn’t matter what activity you had done on the date, but think about the communication. The likelihood is that the other party asked you a range of questions, that allowed you to open up, and speak about yourself. As humans, we love nothing more than talking about ourselves in communication. Being able to share experiences, tell stories and when the other person in the conversation asks about us – we get the feeling that they’re really taking an interest in us. If you think carefully about it, the likelihood is that dates that didn’t work out so well, or you didn’t feel the spart, are the ones where they didn’t ask questions about you.
Selling, prospecting and telemarketing are absolutely no different. By asking questions and listening intently, you will automatically draw your prospect into the conversation. In doing so, they will have the same emotional connection, and this is how you build rapport. Long gone are the days of small talk and pleasantries, it’s all about connecting on an emotional level. Asking the right questions to open the conversation, obtain key information and utilise the benefits you can provide to fulfil what the prospect is looking to achieve.
If you’re looking to outsource lead generation and telemarketing, what should be looking to obtain from a potential Telemarketing Agency?
If you’re looking to outsource telemarketing and lead generation, there should be a few key questions you’re asking potential suppliers:
- How do they implement AIDA into their telemarketing process?
- What techniques do they deploy to identify whether an objection is true, or false? And, how do they then overcome them?
- How will the Telemarketing Agency develop the right questions for your proposition to get prospects speaking their inner truth?
- What training do they conduct with their Telemarketers to develop high-quality conversations, and in turn, high-quality sales leads, and appointments?
- What market intel do they envisage obtaining during the telemarketing activity?
Naturally, you will have your own questions to ask too, but if you’re looking to generate a significant ROI on your marketing spend, these may help you to choose the right telemarketing agency for you.
If you would be interested in discussing how The Lead Gen Specialists implement the above into our telemarketing services, please call 03332 400 054. Alternatively, book a meeting with one of our specialists today.
