Telephone Sales

Telephone sales associates must often deal with rather grueling and emotional phone calls. In general, people tend to disregard telephone sales initiatives as callous and indeed egregious marketing attempts. Even customers who respond well to sales pitches often become demanding when it comes time to sign on the dotted line. So what can telemarketers do to buffer themselves against this emotional backlash and to make their sales quotas?

First of all, it's crucial that you detach yourself from the sales engagement. Think of your job as a kind of voice acting. If you disassociate “you” from your role as a salesperson, you won't be as impacted emotionally when a caller responds aggressively or meanly. Moreover, once you re-contextualize yourself as a voice actor, you’ll instantly become more flexible and quick witted because you’ll have nothing to lose.

A Win-Win Philosophy for Telephone Sales

Second of all, don't go into the sales pitch with an “I’m going to lose” attitude. Similarly, don't go into it with an “I’m going to win” attitude. Instead, attempt to connect in a personal way with your customer. Just make the connection--don't worry about the sale. If the connection is there, the customer will eventually open up and listen to your prepared sales spiel.

Finally, if you are a telephone sales manager, it might behoove you to allow your representatives to go off script every now and again. When you empower your associates to improvise and use their personal intuition to turn over leads, you'll likely see improved results. Find what's dynamic and interesting about your associates’ personalities, and help them to cultivate those assets.