What Makes A Good Telemarketer?
Selecting the right B2B telemarketing person for a campaign is vital, get this wrong and you can waste 100’s of potential leads and damage the reputation of your business.
Make sure that the telemarketing person has plenty of sales experience, but also the right experience. All too often, we hear about call centres using low paid, in-experienced school leavers, if the day rate sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is! Quality telemarketing people are worth their weight in gold. They are able to draw from years of experience to ensure the campaign gets the results. Their sales skills AND experience are equally important.
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First-hand knowledge from having used a solution or service compliments the sales experience. This experience gives them a first-hand understanding of the pains faced by the prospects enabling then to position an offering to which the prospect can relate. A successful B2B tele-sales and telemarketing person really understands the service or product they are selling and the market they are selling into.
I’m going to kill the urban myth now that suggests ‘because someone talks a lot, they must be a great sales person’. It’s rubbish! A successful tele-sales person listens and, more importantly, hears; and yes, there is a difference. Is easy to get lost in that ‘parrot fashion script’ telling the prospects what you think they want to hear. A successful tele-sales person will use the right questions to engage the prospect and engage the prospect in two-way communication. They will listen, and hear the important information to focus on that will enable them to lead the conversation. Talk too much you will lose interest and probably the sale.
Good communications skills both written and spoken are a must. Information gleaned from a call must be relayed clearly without missing details. Emails and letters being sent to prospects should be well written – don’t lose business because the message was conveyed badly in an email.
Experience, the ability to empathise, good sales skills and the ability to listen – Get this right, and you have the perfect combination for a successful telemarketing person.
If you have read this far and it has dawned on you that the task of selecting a successful B2B marketing person isn’t going to be quite as easy as you thought, then let us help.
Andy Dickens
Andy Dickens is a veteran of IT Sales, used to leading by example. He is the CEO of Virtual Sales Limited (VSL) who offer telesales, telemarketing, lead generation and appointment setting services to B2b businesses. He previously was Sales Director EMEA for Red Hat and before that ran sales at Visio before it was acquired by Microsoft.