Outbound Calling Tips
A lot has changed in the past 10 years with the ways businesses connect and engage with prospects through email marketing and especially social media sites.
These days, rather than taking a Mass Marketing approach and spraying a message across large audiences, businesses are developing relationships with prospects and speaking with them as individuals.
However, for many businesses their outbound calling practices are still stuck in the old ways of calling.
Of course, using outdated approaches that don’t work ultimately means you are wasting valuable data and resources which isn’t great for business.
Here are 4 really simple outbound calling tips Team Leaders should coach their team to use today to increase their contacts, talk time and conversion rates:
Tip 1: Drop the Enthusiasm
How many times have you picked up the phone and heard a telemarketer bursting with enthusiasm saying: “Hi, Mr Prospect, this is Marc from [company name] calling. How are you today?”
This type of call introduction has been used for so long that when anyone hears that phony enthusiasm today, they know they’re getting a sales call and automatically turn off, right?
What we really want is to have prospects listen to what we have to say.
What that means today is you need to start a genuine conversation, not a sales pitch.
And, I don’t mean changing your tone to sound really dull… just be yourself and speak in a respectful conversational tone.
Tip 2: Get To The Point
Most operators can’t get past the introduction and transition into the discovery phase of their call.
So, when making calls to prospects, another one of our outbound calling tips is not to use fake enthusiasm by asking them how are you today, or how’s your day been so far, or do you have a minute to talk or anything like that because all that does is signal that you’re a salesperson and they close up.
Instead of those old lines, operators should just get to the point and in a genuine conversational tone say something like: “Hi Joan, this is Marc from [company name]. The reason for my call is that recently you…”
If you’re calling business prospects, here is an example of the approach I use when calling business prospects for my lead generation platform: “Hi… Maybe you can help me out for a moment? I’m just calling to see if you’d be open to new ideas on generating high closing leads for your company.”
Now, they usually say something like: “Whose calling?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, my name is Marc, and I’m the Managing Director of Marketing Tactics, and we specifically help companies generate high closing leads that reduce sales costs and the time it takes to make a sale.
For instance, we’ve been working with a national charity for years and they’ve been closing new donor leads they generate through our platform at over 30%. And, we’ve helped another client in the travel industry generate over 139,000 leads last year that they’d closed 5 times higher than their other lead sources.”
Then I take a relaxed pause, and say: “Are you open to looking at some ideas about how to deal with that?”
The whole approach here is not to make a sales pitch but to start a conversation.
Outbound Calling Tips Number 3: Have Contingencies
When you call prospects most of them are really busy doing whatever they were doing when you called.
Their goal will be to get off the call and get back to what they were doing.
Another one of our outbound calling tips is to be ready with what to say when you hear: “Look, I am really busy right now…”
When you hear come back with a contingency like: “That sounds totally fair, Marc. Would it be okay if I took just 30 seconds to tell you why I called and after that if it doesn’t make sense you can feel free to hang up… Fair enough?”
When you use this approach, people will often be caught off guard and give you a little time to speak with them. If they still don’t have the time, simply ask them for a time to call when they can chat.
Tip 4: It’s All About Them – Not You!
When most operators call prospects they spend a lot of their time talking about all the great features their product or service have, without any idea if any of these actually solve one of their prospect’s problems.
Prospects really don’t care what your product or service does, what they’re really focused on is trying to solve the problems that keep them up at night.
What you need to do is change things around by starting conversations focused on discovering their problems (or the problems other people in their situation are having), so you can zero in on the problem(s) and describe how your products and/or features can actually do to solve those problems.
Like to learn more?
- Read: Words and Phrases to Avoid on a Sales Call
- Watch: Team Leaders Successful Cold Call Strategy for Getting Past Gatekeepers and Actually Speaking with Decision Makers
Need some help?
- Find trainers that can help improve the sales success on the frontline in the free CX Directory >>
- Find a list of all the upcoming training courses and conferences on the Industry Events Calendar >>
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