Don't . . . Throw Away The Script!

The telephone is a powerful tool; good appointment setting campaigns can be done to get your sales team in front of the right decision maker at the right time, but how do telemarketing companies do it?

The latest buzz words in B2B telemarketing are all about ‘Throwing away the script’. Call it what you want script/call flow or call structure to name but a few, but quality leads and appointments are still booked by real people who are fully trained and understand what they are talking about by following a strategically prepared guide allowing them to anticipate all possible outcomes of the call. “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail”

‘Use a strategic call structure, to book face to face or telephone appointments with a prospective customer who is in the market place for your product or service offering.’

It is business critical to use call structures. They are essential so you are empowered to maximise the opportunities whilst on the telephone giving you the best chance of success.  It provides you with a clearly defined path to follow – whether that is moving on or even better ensuring that you are getting through to that correct decision maker.

Used correctly, a call structure should be an invaluable tool for any agent, sales person or business owner making business calls and acts as a guide for all of them as well as being a confidence builder.  If you feel confident then you sound confident.  And when you sound confident you are more likely to succeed. The key to telemarketing success and sounding unscripted is the confidence that the call structure has been put together in such a way that it matches your individual style whilst providing the essential key messages and follows a proven psychological approach to obtaining that all important YES.

More often than not, if you are told you sound scripted it is because the call has not been put together with you in mind, resulting in low confidence levels.  As a result you will try to change the call to adapt to your style and then you will find yourself missing out essential linking phrases and the opportunity to stack the appropriate benefits in favour of what you are offering.

5 Essential Telemarketing Tips, You Need to Be Practising

Be Prepared To Adapt - think about the agents that will be calling and use the appropriate vocabulary for them.  If an agent struggles to say certain phrases adapt the phrases to suit.

Ensure Fluidity – it is essential that there is a proper flow in place, if the call sounds disjointed the agent will not follow it and opportunities will be missed.

Open/Probing Questions – this provides a conversation rather than a prospect feeling they are being talked at.  It also provides the agent opportunity to have thinking time whilst the prospect is talking to prepare themselves to get ready to stack appropriate benefits.

‘A common misbelief is that when reading off a script, staff sound like robots – wrong. It means staff have a flow, sound professional and constantly match needs with benefits.’

Listen To The Agents – if agents or your sales people are telling you that something is not working – Listen!  They are the people having the conversations and there is nothing more sole destroying than being forced to continue with something that is not working and therefore discourages calling.

Role Play – Role Play, Role Play, Role Play.  This is essential practice in building confidence and it will provide you with early opportunities to ensure that the flow really does flow and helps to hone their telemarketing skills.  Often call flows sound great when you are reading them in your head but you will often find them very different when spoken out loud. If it doesn't sound right when you are practising it then the agent has no chance when calling on the telephone.

Find out how we use call structures to create customers for our clients info@kmb.org.uk

Maximise Your Opportunity to Finding New Clients Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the third most visited website in the UK and with more than 320 Million Unique Visits in June 2013 on the UK version of the website alone, it has steadily grown to be the largest network of business professionals on the internet… and it shows no signs of stopping!

When researching your company and your products and services on the internet, people will most likely find you on LinkedIn. This is your opportunity now to capture those leads and turn them into customers.

But, are you equipped with the right tools to do this effectively?

• You may have a profile on LinkedIn already, but are you happy with what prospective clients are looking at?
•  Is it the best possible representation of what you do for your customers and what your company offers the market place?
• Are you really making the most of this largely free prospecting tool online?

KMB have conducted a number of LinkedIn workshops with their existing clients and feedback from the delegates was that the workshops gave them time and space to maximise that opportunity and learn to turn those visitors into customers. Check out their testimonials here

“A very informative workshop that revealed functionality within the LinkedIn site that I was not aware of and it identified keyword strategies for optimising my profile – perfect! It helped me understand the kind of influence I could have across the network and how important my second and third degree networks are in gaining access to key decision makers. The workshop has encouraged me to adopt a frequent LinkedIn habit to drive engagement and unearth quality contacts and referrals through the extended network” NS

We showed them the secrets used by the very few that are active on LinkedIn and who make it their business development tool of choice.

They learned to understand the value of a regular LinkedIn routine, even just one hour per week to amplify the exposure to their own profiles and their company profiles to encourage inbound enquiries.

They developed confidence in the system and learned how to navigate around the search functionality, giving them the opportunity to access a vast pool of potential new contacts that can not only turn into their customers but also become advocates for them and their company.

I want to Maximise My Opportunity to Finding New Clients and Generate New Business using LinkedIn, but what will I get out of the workshops?

The LinkedIn Achievers Mind Set

We look at why LinkedIn is a key lead generation tool, and how to get the most out of LinkedIn, even one hour per week. You will find out the key considerations to creating a LinkedIn profile that really works. We will reveal the secrets that are used by LinkedIn achievers to encourage inbound leads.

LinkedIn Profile Optimisation

We look at creating an optimised profile for LinkedIn success. By making the most of your personal LinkedIn profile as well as looking at the settings to ensure privacy and yet allow you to benefit fully from the lead generation and marketing potential of the site. We look at keyword secrets used by the pro’s that will get you found on the internet search engines. This session is hands on and changes made will show immediate results.

Accelerate your Network on LinkedIn

We look at developing your network of contacts, how to best connect with people in your own style. You will learn targeting and approaching prospects using Advanced Search and other tools. You will find out how a recommended weekly LinkedIn routine is the key to LinkedIn success.

Book Your Place Now

We have new workshop dates planned throughout August and September in Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol so you can fast forward your LinkedIn strategies and accelerate your business development in the final quarter of 2013.

Places are limited so book Early Bird tickets Here with 16% off the delegate price before 1^st August 2013

3 Top Tips to avoid CRM Frustration

CRM Adoption…. Two words that epitomize frustration for many businesses...

At KMB, I manage our own CRM and we adopt many of our clients CRM systems for the marketing campaigns we produce, from modifying and updating data directly in their system to creating opportunities that can be tracked through the sales process.

I’m sure most people would agree - CRM is brilliant – you can track and forecast sales as well as easily analysing in detail your lead sources with the endless reporting available, as well as lots of other invaluable functionality – the list goes on and on!

When CRM isn’t brilliant, this is normally due to the lack of adoption of your system from your team. Typical scenarios I come across are when opportunities are created but they're not updated quickly - or not at all! In many cases sales are lost or on hold but no reasons are given, and nurturing future follow up tasks are not being created to name just a few examples.

Do any of these examples sound familiar? I am asked many times; How can we change this?

Here are my top 3 adoption tips –

 1. User-friendly interface and applications - Choose a system that is easy to use and doesn’t have lots of pages and steps to create / modify things, your employees will want a more productive way to work and will be hesitant to use a system that they believe will slow them down.

  2.  Training - Your CRM provider may give your employees training on how to input a task and create an opportunity, but do your employees know when they should be creating a task in their sales process? Do they know what they should do in the CRM when they win or lose an opportunity? Do they have a guide at hand to tell them what they need to do? Create dummy process guides for every department to make it as easy as possible for your employees to do their job – the clearer you are in how you want your employees to use the system, the more likely your employees are to use it.

3.  Monitoring and leading by example - It’s day 11,423 in the big brother house……..No-one likes to be big brother, but unless you are consistently monitoring your employees input in the CRM, as well as reminding your team what the process is and why you have that process to begin with, you will find that some employees won’t bother using the CRM - simply because they can get away with not using it. Why would your employees change the way they have always done things when they are not being reprimanded, particularly if you are not following the processes yourself?

I have come across many clients where they have invested huge amounts of money in an all singing and dancing CRM system that they cannot use properly as their employees do not use it, so before your head goes through the table from banging it or throwing out CRM completely, remember there are lots of other businesses in the same situation and by putting yourself in your employees shoes, and making things as easy as possible for them, you will soon see they will follow your lead.

Contact us to find out how we can help you with your CRM call us 01527 518373 or email info@kmb.org.uk