The Importance of Knowing How to Work a List

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The Importance of Knowing How to Work a List

Working a list for appointment setting purposes is not the most glamourous task but that doesn’t mean it isn’t vital to your bottom line. Working a list can be particularly daunting when it seems you have been making call after call with no results.

Of course, results ultimately do come. This is why people continue to work lists even when they can see no light at the end of the tunnel.

The fact is, after you have made what seems like endless calls, appointments start to fill in. So why does it take so long? It has to do with taking the necessary steps to create a funnel effect that gathers the best prospects together in one place. These steps include:

  1. Zoning in on decision makers
  2. Determining whether or not that decision maker should be pursued
  3. Warming up that lead

One of the biggest pitfalls to avoid when it comes to working a list is skipping steps to make the process shorter. This is never the right thing to do. Rather, the best appointment setters will always do the hard work necessary to make sure that they identify the decision makers who are ultimately most likely to convert into a sale.

Working a list is often best left to a professional telemarketing firm. This is because professional, experienced appointment setters always make sure they take the appropriate amount of time when cultivating a lead. They also will not give up too soon.

The right telemarketing firm also will make sure that they document every piece of information so that they have the facts about why a prospect is or is not worth pursuing. They also won’t give up in the face of adversity. If the phone number for a lead always goes to voicemail, or no one answers at all, they don’t just throw out the lead. Instead, a little detective work is in order. These professionals also know how to interact with leads once they are able to get them on the line. They are able to engage the person in the most appropriate way, taking into account different personalities.

Lists must also be constantly sorted into cold, warm and hot categories. The most experienced telemarketers understand the fluidity of such labels. A cold lead can quickly turn warm and vice versa.

Like anything else in life—and in business—persistence pays off. By the same token, giving up too early can do irrevocable damage.

Sales and Lead Generation are Just Two of the Ways Telemarketing Can Benefit Businesses

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Sales and Lead Generation are Just Two of the Ways Telemarketing Can Benefit Businesses

Telemarketing is an excellent way to grow your business while making it more efficient and profitable. After all, while digital marketing seems to get most of the attention these days, nothing can replace the importance of talking with customers and prospects and establishing a relationships built on personal interaction.

If you are looking to integrate more telemarketing into your business development strategy so that it goes beyond selling and lead generation, we have some suggestions for how to do just that:

  • Appointment setting is one of the best ways that companies can generate new business. There is no better way to sit down, in person, with a client to close a sale. Appointments are the way to make sure that these sit-downs happen.
  • Connecting with previous customers who have not purchased from you lately increases the chances of reactivating these customers. What’s best, information on these customers is already in your database so you don’t have to start cold.
  • Following up with leads is critical to making sales. Once a customer or prospect has had the opportunity to learn about your product or services through a direct mail piece, for example, a follow up call can help seal the deal.
  • Market research does more than just gather customer feedbacks and reviews. It allows you to gather the type of data that can be used for a number of important tasks, including how to best target prospects for your next marketing campaign. Further, marketing research conducted over the phone saves a great deal of money because you are able to gather information from people all over the country from a central location.
  • Seminar booking assures that seats at the seminars you hold are filled. Telemarketing offers an excellent way to make sure that your seminars are booked with the type of people that will respond to what you have to say. This task is particularly important because when your seminars are not well-attended, it doesn’t look good for your business or brand.

Telemarketing offers endless possibilities for businesses looking to grow. While selling and lead generation are two outstanding and proven ways telemarketing can work for your business, there are countless other ways to use this resource, as well.

Outsourcing the Key to Successful Cold Calling

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Outsourcing the Key to Successful Cold Calling

Ask any salesperson, and chances are he or she will tell you that the task they most dread is cold calling. This is unfortunate given the importance cold calling plays in filling the sales funnel.

Many salespeople will put cold calls on the bottom of their to-do list for no other reason than they want to avoid making such calls. In order for companies to reap the many benefits of cold calling, it may be time to consider outsourcing this task to a telemarketing firm.

While keeping your sales team happy is certainly one reason to outsource your cold calling, understandably there needs to be more compelling ones to make the change. Here are some of the biggest advantages:

Cost: Salespeople pay for themselves when they are closing sales. When they are cold calling and appointment setting, they are not. It is as simple as that.

Productivity: When you outsource your cold calling, you will have representatives making calls as many hours a day as you require. This ensures that your pipeline will not slow down when you don’t have staff available to make calls.

Reliability: Does your cold calling schedule depend on the availability of staff, vacations or even illness? When you outsource there are no schedules to work around.

Speed: If you need to begin a cold calling campaign for a particular product or service, outsourcing allows you to roll out this campaign quickly. That includes everything from creating a list to perfecting the script.

Data: For every call made, data is recorded and can be analyzed. This allows you to refine things like your script in real time.

Accountability: If a member of your sales staff sets up an appointment with a non-qualified lead, that is time and money wasted. When you outsource your cold calling and a non-qualified lead is identified, steps will be taken to make sure this does not happen again. Sales people are certainly not going to tell you when they are responsible for identifying non-qualified leads. They will, however, report these problems when cold calling is being outsourced.

Quality Control: Want to know how your sales people are interacting with cold prospects? That can be difficult. When you outsource, however, all calls are monitored for quality and you can even go back and listen to calls to make sure you like what you hear.

Allowing your salespeople to do what they are paid to do, and what they want to do, is a good reason to outsource your cold calling. Add in the reasons listed above and it is difficult to justify NOT outsourcing these duties.

Script Writing 101

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Script Writing 101

When it comes to creating the perfect prospecting sales script, experts will tell you that the first 10 seconds of that script better be compelling or you can consider your pitch a failure.

When creating a telephone script for appointment setting purposes, for example, the script needs to be short and to the point. What many people fail to realize, however, is that you write differently than you talk. In other words, even if your script sounds good on paper, it might not sound great on the phone.

It is vital that you read your script out loud before calling a prospect – you might even consider taping it – so that you can review what it sounds like live. Look out for things like unnatural pauses and make sure you sound genuine. The last impression you want to give is that you are reading from a script!

While you never want to sound like you are reading from a script, never make a prospecting call without a script! Without a carefully crafted message, you can be sure things won’t go the way you had hoped!

When it comes to writing your script, here are some pointers to make it convincing, conversational, and most importantly – effective:

  1. Introduce yourself and include your title. It is important that the person you are calling knows that you are an expert in your field and that it is worth their time to listen to what you have to say.
  2. Communicate confidently, and quickly, the benefit you offer their business. Tell the prospect what you are offering – a workshop, presentation, etc. – and how it will change their business for the better.
  3. Let them know that you are not calling to sell them anything. This will allow them to lower their guard and listen to what you have to say instead of being distracted by thinking of a way to shut you down.
  4. Create a sense of urgency. Do you only have a certain amount of appointments left? Is the workshop almost full? Let your prospects know this.

Writing and delivering the perfect script is not easy. That is why many businesses choose to outsource their call center services such as appointment setting, event registration, and lead generation. After all, to be successful when it comes to telephone prospecting a perfect script is nothing without the perfect delivery, and vice versa!