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
