You all know the feeling, when you are just sitting down with your family for diner the doorbell or the phone rings and someone wants your money, either for charity or to sell you the perfect product or service.
The time they call is chosen on purpose off course as many people are home at that time but what most people do not understand is that they start with a lack of interest of myself or even worse often my first goal is to end the conversation or close the door as soon as possible.
As I’m working in marketing I do ofter give them a moment and see if they are able to interest me in their product or service but most of the time I regret that as it is so obvious they are only after my money. And they often try hard to sell by answering my questions with the answer I want to hear which is not always the truth or in some cases they can’t even answer as they do not really know what they are selling.
Recently I did buy something and subscribe to a charity however which is the reason I’m writing this as I was pleased to see there are still people who care about their job as telemarketer.
The first example was a telemarketer who wanted to sell me a subscription for a magazine for my kids which I normally do not do. However the telemarketer started by referencing to a friend of mine who gave her my number and my friend was excited about the offer. This made me listen and caught my interest, we started talking and Hurry! she got my money.
The second example was a charity. The doorbell rang and I opened the door, the girl started to interact with my kids and seemed genuinely interested in what they were telling her. She also knew quite a bit about the charity and presented herself as a real supporter of it. Hurry! again, I signed up for a year donating a few euro’s each month. She was honest enough to tell me I had to cancel the contract myself if I wanted it to stop after a year (and I have seen different before many times resulting in me being stuck for another period).
So here is the bottom line of my post which applies to people going after consumers but will work in a business environment as well. When you want to sell me something make sure you take these 5 points into consideration (in random order):
- Care about me, get my interest. When you contact me you know I probably are not interested which is not a good starting point which makes it even more important to grab my attention in the first few seconds. Try to sound like I’m the first person you speak to that day. I’m not a phone number, I’m a human being.
- Know your product or service. If you want to sell something make sure you know the product you sell and what the benefits to me are. When you collect door to door for charity then you should know what the organization stands for etc.
- Be honest. If you do not know the answer to a question then do not give me an answer I know you are not sure off. Check with a colleague, call me back, tell me you do not know. That’s much more professional and can even give me a good felling.
- Be realistic. You can not help me save thousands of Euro’s per year or save all kids in a specific country. Be realistic when talking about the benefits or content of a product of service.
- Follow up on time. If you promise to send me something or do something else for me make sure you do this on time, sending me something a few weeks after you called mean I do not remember what it is about and you have lost a sale.
Let me sneak another point in for telemarketers which may sound obvious. Make sure your audio quality is good. It still happens that people call me and it sounds like they are calling from a train station or football stadium. Background noise or poor sound quality in general is a good reason for me not to listen to you.
Remember, you may call me again or your colleague might call me again, you do not want me to hang up the phone or close the door before you were even able to present yourself.
Feel free to comment on this post – I’m interested in your point of view on this.
Bart, I couldn’t agree more with you.
Telemarketing is not about call scripts, it is all about conducting a conversation. A conversation in which you are honest enough for the other party to see what your intention is. Most probably you will be trying to sell something to the other party. Don’t ask them how they are doing, they know you are not interested, so don’t pretend.
You can show interest in the answers during the conversation, but only to those items that are important to you and your call…
Keep those posts coming.