10 Strategies for a Successful Telemarketing

For any B2B or B2C marketplace, successful telemarketing remains one of the best ways to source customers because successful telemarketing is just as impactful as referrals. The seller and buyer both benefit from successful telemarketing; the buyer gets information about the product that will satisfy his needs while the seller receives monetary value for the product and information given.

It’s a very important aspect of marketing, especially since more people need products but less time to source for it themselves. To fill this gap, telemarketing comes to save the day, which means that anyone telemarketing must be well equipped with successful telemarketing strategies to get clients and also retain them, ten of which have been listed here.

For successful telemarketing, it is advisable to know these strategies at your fingertips so that your calls can be more effective, leading to better results. With these tips, should you desire to start a sale campaign alone or as an employee of a company, you will know how to say what you need to say. So, here they are.

Strategies for Successful Telemarketing

  1. Know your objective(s)

The first thing to note is your objective: what you aim to realize from your telemarketing. Sometimes, telemarketing may be for feedback purposes or to take a survey, hence you must know what the purpose of your call is about. You do not want to start out a sale process while you are supposed to be raising a simple awareness.

  1. What is your goal?

There is a common saying that “he who fails to plan, plans to fail.” Before embarking on a telemarketing journey, you should know your target market and reasons why they were chosen. Carry out a SWOT test to list out the strengths and weaknesses of the chosen market.

Do a market segmentation to know your competitors alongside their Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Compare your USP to theirs and improve on what will give you the edge needed to get prospects for the product or service offered. How do you intend to evaluate your result? Is there a working mechanism in place? These are some of the questions to be asked.

  1. Get resourceful data

As soon as you are clear about your aim and you have set clear goals, you should check that your data is new and clean. Using old data helps revive prospective leads but new data gives better opportunity to reach more people. When using old data, especially those you hope will have a change of mind from the previous call made, there is a high possibility that the response remains the same, as they should have reached out to you if they indeed changed their mind.

With a targeted clean list, you would have saved yourself time from speculating on who may or may not require your telemarketing. From research, when you have a carefully sourced out data, positive responses can be increased up to 800%.

However, if this is difficult, some reliable agencies work to get the required data for successful telemarketing purposes. Where this is the preferred route you choose, then ensure they know that the data sold to you should be exclusive to you or your company and no one else and it must be customized to your specific requirement.

Don’t be content with phone numbers only, but rather, get other contact details such as emails so that the newsletter campaign team can work with that data, making it a win-win situation and you get adequate value for money.

Lastly, on this point, you want to be specific with respect to the person you desire to speak with. For example, speaking to the receptionist of a company will end your telemarketing at the desk, so you should get the data of the head of the department of the company or the main individual you intend to reach.

  1. Focus on a strong foundational content

When you place a call, you can get your prospect glued to what you say in the first 30 seconds of the call. How do you achieve this? Build up a content that is soft, yet firm and rich. Focus on the benefits of your product and service and what the person is going to gain from what you are offering.

Ensure that you are not going around in circles but hitting the nail on the head. Thereafter, you can request an opportunity to share further information about the summary you just gave out in detail, such as an email.

  1. Diversify your sales pitch

Different customer segments require different sales pitch method.  For example, if you are campaigning to a teenager about the use of braces for the teeth, the sales pitch required is different from a campaign to the working class or elderly about the same braces.

For a teenager, you will need to cover points which will not make them shy of wearing braces as the teen years comes with feelings of embarrassment and other youthful exuberance, while for the other segment, you will rather cover the shortest period within which the braces will correct their teeth.

In a nutshell, find what best resonates with the audience you are pitching to at different levels. Focus on value rather than features.

  1. Enhance your calls with online and offline advertisement

If your brand is out there, your job becomes easier. When there is enough promotion regarding your brand via various channels such as print, social and digital media, calling up a prospect to pitch the same product that is well known reduces the level you have to go in convincing the client.

  1. For Successful Telemarketing, You must be realistic and must handle rejections wisely

Nothing good comes easy. Getting a ‘No’ will come more than the yeses so you must be mentally prepared to accept rejection. Don’t let it get to you in a way that it affects your enthusiasm to reach out to the rest of your list. Nothing is ever as bad as it first appears.

While handling rejections, you should be cautious and kind in your words. Never speak to a prospect angrily because not all initial ‘Nos’ remain so. Some prospects change their mind and will give a call back while some stay the same. So keep an open mind and stay positive irrespective of the number of rejections received.

Furthermore, rehearsing your telemarketing script is great but more often than not, prospects will not give the same response nor ask exactly the same question(s). So, where a telemarketer has memorised what to say and he is being asked a question he didn’t rehearse for, such telemarketer gets stuck.

One other point to note is that, for every competitor in the market, a successful telemarketer must know his weakness so as to highlight the strength of the product or services he is proposing.

  1. Use discussable lines

A successful telemarketer will create discussable lines around the proposed product or service. Even if the prospect intends to discuss what may be termed as a negative side to what you are offering, allow the discussion to go on, you may have just dispelled doubts by your responses during the discussion. Approach each prospect objectively, in a friendly manner, focus on the features of your product for service rather than water down competitors.

  1. Always follow-up

Making a successful telemarketing call isn’t easy, but following up a prospect can be more frustrating than expected. But, the best way to keep a customer is to follow-up on a call. Not everyone gives a nod at the first second or even a third call or email but with much perseverance.

What’s more, even when a successful telemarketing deal is closed, don’t leave the client, send occasional greetings and call up to ensure that they do not have any complaint. With this, you will land yourself several referrals.

  1. Keep a track record

Lastly, tracking a call is one of the most important strategies of successful telemarketing. The success or otherwise for a specified period should be recorded. How many clients were gotten from the number of calls made? How effective was the data used? Employ a performance measuring metric to guide your results and where necessary improve on the area lacking encouraging outcome.

Summary

Successful telemarketing strategies are definitely more than ten, but these ten will get you where you expected on your journey. Always be prepared to get the worst as well as the best responses each time.

There is no direct way to successful telemarketing, but your telemarketing will be a success with these tips in hand.

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