Is your outbound telesales strategy a failure? Find out how to turn things around quickly and start bringing in business.
Ask around, and you’ll find plenty of sales professionals who believe outbound telesales is a waste of time. They’ll tell you all the reasons it doesn’t work and how much better some other approach is. But the best salespeople recognize that outbound telesales is a potent tool, especially when you use it in conjunction with other sales tactics.
Most sales situations aren’t a straight line. Prospects wax and wane in their interest for your offer. Some jump right in, then disappear. Others tiptoe around the edges until one day, they are ready to make a big purchase. You have to delicately nurture some prospects while others want as little contact as possible.
With so many different scenarios, it’s easy to see why there’s more than one right way to make a sale. In fact, the more approaches you have, the more ways you have to work with customers. And while outbound telesales is just one of many options, it happens to work much better than a lot of people want to believe–if you do it right.
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Don’t make these outbound telesales mistakes
Did you know that 82% of buyers will meet with you if you just reach out to them? 69% of buyers will accept calls from new salespeople, and for existing customers, a phone call is the most effective way to expand your business with them.
However, none of that will come to pass if you’re making some of the unforgivable mistakes with your outbound telesales. So before looking at tips for success, let’s go over (in no particular order) some of the things you should not do.
- Don’t forget to follow compliance regulations. Failing to follow FCC and FTC regulations will get you into big trouble.
- Don’t neglect your follow-up. Successful sales requires multiple touches. If you give up after just a few calls, you’ll never find success.
- Don’t wing it. This is otherwise known by the catchy phrase, “Failing to prepare is preparing for failure.”
- Don’t ignore your current customers. Bringing in new business might make you the cool kid on the block, but existing customers tend to be more lucrative accounts, and they require far less work on your part.
- Don’t wait to make calls until you get around to it. If you don’t schedule dedicated time for outbound telesales, you won’t focus, and you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities.
What “not” to do is one thing. Figuring out what you need to do to be successful is the other important piece of a winning sales strategy. So what should you be doing?
Take these steps, and your outbound telesales will be the star of your sales strategy
Success in sales is about attitude. It’s about discipline. It’s about confidence, follow-through, and perseverance. More than anything, though, it’s about strategy, preparation, and organization. So, where to begin?
1. Use a script. No, it won’t make you sound like a dull sales robot. Scripts are more common than you realize. Think of it this way: When you plug a destination into your GPS, you get a “script” of directions. But if you know where you’re going (aka, you know your product), you can vary your route to take a more scenic path or one that runs you by the coffee shop you love. The script is a guide for those who need it or stepping off point for those who want that sense of support.
2. Practice your pitch. You need to know your sales pitch so well that you can recite it backward, in the dark, and with wolves howling at your door. Sounds a bit far-fetched, perhaps, but the reality is that the better you know your sales pitch, the more you can adapt it to meet the needs of your individual customer.
3. Adjust your pitch. Different people have different needs. Alter your sales pitch to speak more specifically to the person you’re interacting with. An HR director may need to get buy-in from her supervisor to contract with you for insurance, whereas a small business owner might want to know how your policies benefit employees.
4. List the objections. In the business of outbound telesales, you will get objections and rejections. Before you start on a sales campaign, write down every objection you can think of for the product or service you’re offering. Then write down replies to those. That doesn’t mean you will end every call with a signed deal, of course. But it does mean you’re prepared.
5. Don’t mention the objections. Yes, getting in front of a customer’s objections can be useful, but you don’t want to start a call with all the reasons they might not like your offer. That sets up a negative mindset that you will need to overcome.
6. Or maybe do mention objections. In some cases, you may want to get in front of issues that you know will come up. For example, if your price tag is significantly higher than your competition’s, by bringing that up first, you have the opportunity to frame it positively. “We do charge more than our competitors, but we feel that our service warrants the higher price. Our customers agree, too, as they’ve given us more than 50 five-star reviews on Yelp.“
7. Listen. Plain and simple here. How will you know what your prospective customer needs if you aren’t listening to them? How will you solve their problem if you don’t listen enough to find out what problem they need to be solved?
Take these few simple steps, and you’ll find that the success rate of your outbound telesales will improve dramatically. And when you use software like Call Logic, you can record and listen back to your calls so it’s easy to figure out where you need to adjust your approach and how to capitalize on your success.
Reach out to more clients and keep track of them with Call Logic’s cloud-based auto-dialing software. Schedule a live demo to find out how we can help you build relationships that lead to closed sales.