Home | Business | Sales-teleselling
Traditional telephone selling, telemarketing, telephone soliciting, lead generation, prospecting, appointment setting, or whatever else you want to label it has been called a “spray-and-pray” communication methodology.The idea is to spray out a number of features and benefits and hope some of them will “stick.” Sooner or later the listener will hear something he or she likes and can relate to.As you can imagine, this approach has been criticized as inefficient, ineffective, and annoying, among other things. Who wants to listen passively while someone else dominates the proceedings?I have been so disappointed in traditional telephone selling that I have crafted an entirely different style that I call, "The New Telemarketing™. It creates easygoing conversations with prospects while getting them to comfortably disclose their wants and needs. It even gets them to close themselves, which is a neat trick.Still, we can overdo the amount of participation we require on the part of buyers and create more problems than we solve. Specifically, we should avoid asking too many questions up-front, particularly during cold calls.People don’t know you well enough to comfortably share their deepest motivations. After all, you could be a competitor that is simply trying to benchmark their call handling, for all they know.A better way of approaching a conversation is to deliver a brief narrative about who you are, why you’re calling, and what you want from the listener.For example, I’ve been doing a cold calling campaign where I get the right person on the line and say hello, mention my name and title, offer a super-brief explanation of why I’m doing calling them, and then I tell them what I have in mind for us to do together.As long as this three-to-five sentence spiel is relaxed, informative, and customized to them; in other words, I’ve reached someone that has the power to green-light what I want, I get a generally respectful reception.They’ll take over, asking a question or two, or requesting an email, and we’re on our way to collaborating in the style that "The New Telemarketing™ suggests.But note, to earn the right to have a good, open give-and-take exchange, I have to first VOLUNTEER information, make it attractive, and only then can I expect to spawn participation and a buy-in to the conversation.I don’t want a 2-way chat too soon, because if I force it, I’ll probably create misunderstanding and the sort of RUSH TO JUDGMENT that results in knee-jerk rejections and objections.Needless to say, this overture needs to be written exceedingly well and it needs to be utterly succinct.In my current cold calling campaign, for example, I greet them and then say “I’m Dr. Gary Goodman” and my organizational affiliation.Purposely, I DON’T tell them I’m a consultant to the Fortune 1000, a best-selling author, an international speaker, or a frequent guest and co-host on radio. I just give them enough to make me CREDIBLE and to justify listening to my story so I can comfortably get to what I am asking from them.You can’t take too much time refining the initial “announcement.” Its purpose it to say, “Now hear this!” and to get folks to want to do just that.Save the chummy, intimate Q & A for later!
Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com
Dr. Gary S. Goodman is the best-selling author of 12 books and more than a thousand articles. His seminars and training programs are sponsored internationally and he is a top-rated faculty member at more than 40 universities, including UCLA Extension, where he has taught since 1999. Dynamic, experienced, and lots of fun, Gary brings more than two decades of solid management and consulting experience to the table, along with the best academic preparation and credentials in the speaking and training industry. Holder of five degrees, including a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School For Communication at USC, an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management, and a law degree from Loyola, his clients include several Fortune 1000 companies along with successful family owned and operated firms across America. Much more than a “talking head,” Gary is a top mind that you?ll enjoy working with and putting to use. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
Please Rate this Article
5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
