Improve Sales Calls

Telemarketing campaigns can be extremely successful--did you know that by 1999, 150 billion dollars' worth of goods and services had been sold over the phone in the United States alone? Worldwide, the total jumps to 750 billion dollars. If your telemarketing company isn't reaching sales quotas, or you'd like to ramp-up business even more, here are a few tips to improve sales calls.

The first tip is pretty obvious: call as many people as possible! This might seem like a no-brainer, but many telemarketers spend less than half of their workdays talking to prospects. That's because no lead list is infallible. There will be a certain percentage of phone numbers that are disconnected, or are taken up by fax machines or Internet dial-up. And even if a phone number is valid, one could reach a busy signal or answering machine. If your sales staff is dialing numbers manually and making five attempts for every potential customer reached, you are paying them to be phone operators--not salespeople.

My second tip is--make sure your agents are clearly communicating your message. Even though they're selling over the phone, don't turn your operation into a game of "Telephone." Verbally dispersing your desired talking points to your staff and letting them improvise can be disastrous. Creating a script for each campaign gives your callers a solid grounding to work from. Plus, you can keep track of the script's success rate and tweak it until you've achieved your goals.

Clear Communication Leads to Improved Sales Calls

Predictive dialer software can help with the above issues. First of all, it automatically calls every number, and only transfers actual people to the telemarketers. This can free up your staff to focus on their job--talking to prospects. Plus, with most software of this type, you can easily create scripts for your agents to follow, and update each one with a few keystrokes. However you decide to proceed, following a few simple guidelines can help improve sales calls--and your business.