The Critical Skills on Telemarketing

The Critical Skills on Telemarketing

In each of the elements in the telephone call framework (opening, client, positioning, objections, close, and follow-up), the following six critical selling skills are used over and over. They are the tools for selling.

 Presence
 Relating
 Questioning
 Listening
 Positioning
 Checking

The skill level determines selling strength and flexibility. These skills are used over and over throughout the sales process( as the telemarketer, finds needs, matches up a product or idea with the client's needs, resolves objections, and closes, these skills are used continuously. These skills are interdependent, they will help a telemarketer become a valued consultant to clients, know more about the clients, and sell more to them.

7. Presence

Presence is the level of comfort and confidence that a telemarketer projects. Through presence an individual can engage the audience's attention. Voice presence can have an impact on telephone sales success. Voice presence is created by tone, pace, diction, inflection, level of enthusiasm, confidence, wit, and the ability to think on one's feet.

Although sales enthusiasm may come naturally in face-to-face calls, it requires special effort in telephone sales calls. Most salespeople would not appear bored when meeting with a client face to face, but in telephone selling sustaining interest and enthusiasm in one's voice can be challenging. The more one modulates his voice, usually the more interesting he sounds. He can emphasize words with his voice.

Keeping an interested and positive voice when selling over the telephone is even more of a challenge in highly routinized and comparatively unchallenging telephone selling situations. Some selling borders on order taking, when salespeople have to take information only to make a referral to a different division. Salespeople in these rote roles can drift into sounding bored. To avoid this, remember that the objective at all times is to create a positive image of the organization to the client as well as to sell or close profitable business.

Whether a telemarketer is taking information or a message for a colleague, he should remember the following:

In conjunction with the other critical skills, presence adds to sales strength and flexibility and helps create a flow between the client's needs and the telemarketer's products.

8. Relating

If you cannot relate to your clients, you won't sell to them. This is as much a rule of human nature as it is a rule of selling. Relating is even more of a challenge over the phone, since the phone can depersonalize the situation. Yet it is possible to establish rapport and build relationships over the telephone.

Successful salespeople do have strong relationships with their clients, but they also know where to draw the line between what is friendship and what is business. A good relationship forms the basis for good business. What is a business relationship but a series of transactions? In most businesses, important transactions don't occur without a relationship. Whether it is primarily a one-time sale or there is the potential for ongoing business, rapport helps form the foundation so that a transaction or many transactions can take place. Rapport goes beyond small talk. Rapport is consideration and thoughtfulness; it is trust and value added.

9. Questioning

Being able to establish rapport and knowing how to question are the heart of consultative selling. Salespeople who increase their questions increase their sales. Because of the generic product environment of the nineties and the fact that product alone cannot be counted on to be the differentiator, questioning is more important than ever. This is because questions enable a person to position (tell a story from the client's point of view). But it is easy to fall into the trap of "telling," especially over the telephone. Of course there are times to tell, but how a person tells will be determined by what is asked and what is heard. Questions will help keep a person on at least a parallel track and eventually get on the same track as the client. Questions will also help qualify clients.

A look at the range of questions that will need to be asked and then the questioning skills which should be employed to ask them follows:

A. Decision-Making Questions

 Who are the key contacts on the account( decision makers and influencers?
"How does your decision-making process work?"
"Who will be involved?"
"How long do you need to reach a decision?"

B. Relationship Questions

 "How are we doing?" (How the client sees the relationship with you, performance, and his or her relationship with competitors.)

 "Am I doing the right thing?" "What do you want me to do?" (Action steps) (How you as an individual salesperson are meeting the client's needs.)

 "How satisfied have you been with our service except for this? How do you feel we handled...?"

 "Is our billing detailed and timely enough for you?" (Logistics of the account.)
 "When is a good time to call?" "When shall I call back?"

 "May I ask who you do business with?" "Who is the best? What do you like about them? Who else do you work with?"

 "Who else have you spoken to? Have you gotten proposals? What do you think...?"

C. Operation Questions

 "How do you do it?" (How does the client's production or organization work?)

 "How many or how often...? What is their...?"

 "What budget have you set?" (Does this customer qualify?)

D. Problem Questions

 "What is going on? What would your ideal situation be?" "What gaps do you see? (Don't ask this question too early( the right to have it answered must be earned.)

E. Strategy Questions

 "What is your strategy/thinking in...?"

 "May I ask why you want to go from X to Y?" (For example, manual to computer( find out why the customer wants to change.)

 "How will... affect autonomy of..." (Changing roles in client organization.)
 "Longer range, how are you...?" (Checking the 5-year plan.)

F. Interpersonal Questions

 "Where do you live?" "Where do you go on vacation?" (What are the client's interests, family, situations?)

G. Need Questions

 "Where are you looking to achieve?" "How is that working?"

 "To what extent have you bought...?" (Likes/dislikes( what does the client buy/not buy?)

Questions are the tools used to help clients. They get beneath the surface of demands, and they expose needs. If a caller doesn't let clients talk, he may never get to know what their concerns are, and will probably miss getting their business. Questions are the best way to get them to talk; then he must listen well and leverage what is learned.

10. Listening

Being a good listener is one of the critical skills in selling, whether the selling is face to face or over the telephone, but listening is even more important in telephone selling.

Some tips for developing telephone listening skills are:

 Do not interrupt. Be conscious of this. Let yourself be interrupted; stop talking and listen.

 Make an effort to focus on what the client is saying. You are "on duty," so stay tuned in. Don't mentally abandon your post. Take notes as you listen and underline words your clients underscore with their voices so you can incorporate them in what you say.

 Listen for pivotal words, wide words, key ideas, words that are inflected, and concerns and jot them down. These can be neon words that light up the client's voice or wide or ambiguous words you will need to clear up.

 Listen for tone and pace and match both to become congruent with the clients, not to mimic them. For example, if the client is speaking softly and slowly, you are bound to be out of sync if you are loud and fast. Slow it up and soften it a bit to create a congruency. Pick up the client's approach and language. For instance, when the client is upbeat and highly articulate, be upbeat, articulate; when the client is serious and straightforward, be serious, straightforward. Always be professional. Avoid being down.

 Be careful in how and when you use jargon. Jargon is good shorthand only if everybody understands it. Often in a face-to-face call you can read confusion or a question from the client's expression, but over the telephone this is not possible. So limit your use of jargon unless you are absolutely certain the client is familiar with it. When you do use a term that your client may or may not know, briefly define it, almost parenthetically. And as you cover each key point, remember to check if the client has any questions.

11. Positioning Product

Positioning is truly the super skill. By knowing the client's perceptions, preferences, and needs a telemarketer will be able to craft his product or idea accordingly. Positioning enables one to personalize, tailor, and get into a flow with the client.

To help position a product as it is sold over the telephone a telemarketer can follow these suggestions:

 Play devil's advocate before you pick up the telephone and ask yourself "What is in it for the client?"

 Come up with three compelling reasons why this client might be interested in your product. But remember to use the reasons one at a time and to check (question) before and after each one.

 Do your homework on your clients and their organizations( begin to identify their business and nonbusiness needs.

 Know your features and benefits so you know what you are talking about.

 Ask "open" need and strategy questions so that you will understand the client.

 Listen.

 Tailor your statements and questions to the client you are approaching. An engineer may want to know details on how things work, but a purchasing manager may want to focus more on price and warranties.

 Personalize your messages as well. Ask questions to get specific information on each client's approach and style.

 Use your total offer. (core and value-added features and benefits)

 Know your objective. For example, if you are an institutional salesperson, ask yourself if this is a call to do a trade now or a call to build the relationship for a trade in the future?

 Plan your action step( know what your follow-up plan is and initiate it.

 Use your features and benefits one at a time (at most two at a time) and check for feedback.

 Use benefits early or your client is likely to say, "Listen, I've got to go."

 When you don't have an answer, say, "Let me look into that. What specifically...? When...?"

 Be selective. You have limited time over the telephone, so select key features and benefits and present them with an eye toward what the client wants to do.

 Link features with their benefits by using words such as which means and so that to bond features with benefits. ("feature" which means "benefit")

 Listen to what your clients say and incorporate their ideas into your responses.

 Take notes as you listen so that you can incorporate your client's words now and again later. But don't repeat inflammatory words such as "absurdly low trade-in figure" which may further reinforce a misperception.

 Listen to the client's voice. Read between the lines and adjust.
 Speak your client's language.

 Avoid jargon unless you are talking to another "Pro." Jargon is a great shorthand only if everyone understands it.

 Match the client's level of sophistication( avoid talking down to clients or talking over their heads.

 Be accurate in the information you provide, but don't wait until you have perfect information. Let your clients know when your information may be imperfect, but also let them know you care about giving timely information.

 Choose your own words selectively. Avoid phrases such as "You wouldn't be interested in..." or "I'm just calling about..." Instead, use persuasive, confident words.

 Avoid the term product. It is better to say, "We have a way to increase interest..." rather than, "We have a product called X."

 Check( ask for feedback, keep the dialogue going, get a measure of how you are doing throughout the call, especially since you don't have the benefit of reading the clients' facial expressions to gauge their reactions. Keep checking. Keep asking, "How does that sound?" Get feedback.

 Keep a positive attitude( remain helpful.

12. Checking

Checking lets a person get feedback from a client on what is being discussed. Checking means asking questions to gauge the client's reactions and is an essential skill in telephone selling, since one cannot see the client's reactions. Checking helps avoid waiting until the end of the call, if even then, to find out where the client is.

Checking means asking the client questions throughout the call to get direct feedback on what was just said. Checking allows one to find out something far more important than what he thinks. It helps find out what the client thinks.

Checking is not designed to get the client to say yes. It is designed to get at what the client thinks( Yes or No. Checking is an essential skill for salespeople who want to know, really know, their clients' needs and how well they stack up to meet them. It's designed to get good or bad feedback so that the salesperson can position and close.

All six critical skills( presence, rapport, questioning, listening, positioning, and checking( work together. They are interrelated, they form a skill set. A weakness in any one of these six critical skills will lower overall performance. The six critical skills are sales muscles; they provide sales strength and flexibility for salespeople.