Telemarketing refers to the process of contacting potential and existing customers through phone, FAX, and the internet to sell or upsell products and services. It is an excellent marketing method that is extensively used for lead generation, information gathering, surveys, fundraising, charity, etc. Recent advancements like video conferencing have made telemarketing an all-the-more effective tool to further sales.. Today, B2B telemarketing services (business to business) and B2C telemarketing services (business to consumer) are helping businesses generate a lot of leads and sales.
Telemarketing to Boost Sales Efforts
A marketer cannot let their outbound sales efforts become rudderless, as it would make their business struggle for sales and profit, despite dialling out to many people strenuously.
Any business needs to supercharge its sales efforts with effective outbound telemarketing services to witness an increase in sales and revenue.
Here are some proven ways to achieve just that.
1. Know Your Product or Service Inside Out
It is known that quantity does not always reflect quality, and this maxim is very true for telemarketing. Your telesales team may be making numerous calls a day in and day out. But just meeting the number of calls to be made does not indicate the actual performance of the telesales team.
To measure the true performance of the telesales team, you need real-time analytics. You can use call management software for this, and such software would provide you with user-friendly dashboards that present the necessary information in an easily readable form.
Advanced data analytics gives you details about how many calls have resulted in real sales and which telesales agents have made those calls. You can also identify non-performing team members by finding whose calls are not producing desired results. Additional training and mentoring is a must for ineffective telecallers.
A typical call-management software provides businesses with details about a set of important KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that warrant attention to ensure sustained success.
2. Reduce Average Handling Time
The time duration of the calls made when divided by the total number of calls made by a telesales agent gives you the average handle time of that particular telesales agent. If an agent spends a lot of time for one call, especially with more hold time and more call-transfer time, it indicates that the agent lacks product knowledge and needs skill updates and training. Also, such agents can optimise the time on their calls too.
3. Focus on Conversion rate
This rate indicates the effectiveness of the calls made by telesales agents. This conversion rate is achieved by dividing the number of sales achieved by the number of calls made. This conversion rate measures an agent’s talent and skill to convince people and close sales effectively.
Another important performance metric that measures an agent’s ability to make sales is first to call close rates. This metric refers to the percentage of calls that got closed in the first call itself out of the total number of calls made by the agent.
4. Improve Occupancy Rate
Typically, telesales agents do not spend all their time just making calls, and they also spend considerable time on tasks such as filling in notes, recording follow-up works, and so on. Occupancy rate is a performance metric that gives a measure of productive hours of a telesales agent. It compares the time spent on making calls and the amount of time during which the agent was unavailable to make any calls. Any unproductive hours of agents, as indicated by occupancy rate, should be dealt with firmly.
5. Do Away with Robocalls
Your buyers can be real or virtual. Irrespective of how you meet them, connecting with them through pre-recorded messages may not be an effective way to reach out to them.
Well-trained telesales agents who directly interact with your buyers play a big role in supercharging your sales efforts. Of course, such real-time conversations may not play the same way all the time, but this very variety makes the process interesting and engaging for your customers. Your agents must know about those they would be talking to, even before making the calls.
Your CRM, together with a full-fledged call management system, helps you organise your leads based on their persona. You can also get to know the stage of the sales funnel where your leads fall in currently. These details will assist your telecalling agents in preparing well and being ready before they call and connect with their leads.
The right software equipped with preview dialling capabilities can help your telesales team be ready with essential details that include marketing insights, value propositions, pain points, previous purchases, etc. They can have an approach that will resonate well with the person that they converse with, often. This approach will help your sales reps to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach, making it highly ineffective.
6. Introduce Ongoing Training
The needs of buyers do change over time, and it warrants changes in how you and your sales team approach your buyers. To keep your team’s ability current and updated, you need to support them through various initiatives, including call-recordings, role-playing, whisper coaching, and reviewing/updating call scripts. These will ensure that you derive all the telemarketing benefits via a capable telesales team.
Adequate training of your telesales agents is an absolute must for sustaining and enhancing the performance of your overall outbound sales efforts. Offering the right tools to your sales team facilitates their self-training. Your team leaders must provide other team members with ongoing mentoring sessions.
A beneficial reward system combined with call quality monitoring will lead to performance enhancement. These systems must be encouraging and appreciative and should not be punitive. Applauding high performers is morale-boosting to them and serves as an inspiration to the poor performers of the team.
7. Bank on the Right Technologies
Latest technologies offer a rich set of tools to support telemarketing services. Present-day cloud-based telesales solutions are accessible through wi-fi-enabled devices, and these have replaced conventional on-premises hardware used by traditional inside sales teams earlier. Cloud-based auto dialler offers your telesales agents the flexibility to work from anywhere and at any time – as and when needed.
You also have the freedom to monitor calls, check important analytics, review progress, etc., from anywhere you like. You can also deal with any deviating key performance indicator then and there, irrespective of whether you are at your office or home or on vacation!
All you need is wi-fi, and there you go. You can conduct your daily business operations from anywhere, anytime!
8. Have the Right Call Scripts
Well-crafted call scripts are essential for closing sales. But without well-execution, even the well-crafted call scripts may fail to result in sales. Your telesales persons must render the call scripts well to close sales successfully. More importantly, the customer should not feel that they are being talked to according to a pre-written script!
Studies say that if the agents sound artificial, it will lead to the loss of that particular customer alone. Such unhappy customers will not make further recommendations of your products and services to others. Such a huge loss indeed.
Precise training, periodic review, timely support, and mentorship will enable your sales team to execute the scripts and close the deals successfully.
9. Focus on Qualified Leads
Qualified leads result in sales increases. The people to whom you are talking must be the ones looking for the kind of products and services you offer. As high costs are incurred in making phone calls, you must talk to qualified prospects to justify the costs and maximise revenue.
Lead qualification is a process in which a huge volume of phone calls are made to a long list of targeted people, and qualifying questions are asked to them. This process identifies the prospects who have the highest possibility to buy your products/services.
By focusing only on qualified leads, the sales efforts of your telesales agent will result in more sales and greater ROI.
10. Build Brand Awareness
You may be offering high-quality products and services. But if people are not aware of your offerings, you are losing out heavily. By letting your target audience know about your fantastic products, you can ensure that your sales efforts will lead to desirable results.
Conferences, webinars, awareness campaigns, sales events, and interesting initiatives will make people aware of your brand. They will make the jobs of your telesales team a lot easier and impactful.
Final thoughts:
Marketers can leverage telemarketing services from telemarketing consulting service providers to benefit in a number of ways. Implementing proven best practices, utilising the right software, tailoring the best well-crafted call scripts, and imparting continuous staff training, will help you amplify the performance of your telesales team and supercharge your sales efforts.
