Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19), Blue Telecoms has launched a free VPN service for clients to allow staff required to work from home to access Blue Telecoms systems (such as Dialler and PBX).
Each client will be assigned a private VPN server, and staff will require an access code once they have installed the VPN.
To get started, please email support@bluetelecoms.com
“Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked. Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which everything could be linked to everything.”
– Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web has become a huge force in the sales and marketing world. It’s also grown massively over the past decade, with social media and search advertising both becoming powerful ways to attract new business. Even so, there’s still one sales tool that the internet cannot eclipse: the telephone. For the moment in time, the telephone will be the best tool to drive direct leads into your business.
If you don’t believe the hype, here are some reasons why the telephone is the best sales tool we have.
Businesses and the telephone
The telephone as a marketing tool only really started to take shape during the 1970’s. Even then, the sheer cost to run a telesales operation put it out of the hands of most companies. For many smaller firms, telesales meant hitting the phones manually, dialling numbers from a printed sheet.
Since then, the technology has moved on massively. Now, even smaller companies can use a cloud based dialler, uploading their data and dialling it automatically – just like larger companies did decades ago.
Building business relationships
In the world of B2B sales, relationships are everything. This is because, even in the largest companies, it’s often up to individuals to make decisions on purchasing products and services, and individuals are much more likely to buy from people and businesses that they know. In fact, according to Marketing Donut, only 2% of sales are made at initial meetings, with the other 98% made once two companies have built a relationship.
For building a business relationship, the telephone remains king. It’s a lot easier to discern humour, pathos, sincerity and other emotions over the phone than it is by email. What’s more, callers can expand the topic of conversation, allowing them to answer client queries and enabling them to really get to know a customer, their needs and their requirements.
There’s almost nothing like speaking to clients over the phone. The only other method that eclipses it is face to face sales – telemarketing often being a method to achieve those face to face meetings.
Building trust
When we speak to someone over the phone, we automatically analyse everything they say, the subtleties of their tone of voice, as well as the words they actually use, to decide exactly what the person we’re speaking to means and to decide whether or not they’re trustworthy. The more we speak to someone, the more trustworthy we’re likely to believe they are. Companies that trust a supplier are much more likely to do business with them, both initially and in the long term.
Showing commitment
It doesn’t take long to write a generic sales email and fire it off to a number of potential clients. According to Smart Insights, on average only 13%-25% of emails are opened, with an average click through rate of just 1.3%-5.4%.
Making a phone call however takes time. Not only does this show you value a company’s potential business enough to take a few minutes out your day, it also shows a commitment to your on going business relationship and demonstrates your company values the personal touch.
If you’re interested in running your own telemarketing campaign using out cloud hosted dialler, get in touch today.
Telesales appears simple enough, but it’s not easy. There are many barriers to using telemarketing for getting your business out there, ranging from voicemails to gatekeepers.
To help get you on the right path, here are some tips from the Blue Telecoms team on how to build an effective telesales campaign.
Targeting
When it comes to telemarketing creating viable targets is important; after all, you cannot hit a target that’s not been thought about and defined. You also need to consider the target audience that is most likely to be interested in your service.
Data
Once you understand where you’re targetting, the next step is to obtain the accurate data you need. There are two ways to achieve this:
Which path you choose depends on the industry and product you’re targeting. Whatever path you choose, freshness and accuracy of the data is the most important thing.
Work out what pains your customer
The easiest way to sell to a prospect, is to work out exactly how your product can solve a problem for them. Once you position yourself in those terms, the actual process of telesales becomes much easier. Most clients don’t care if your product has a particular feature; however, they’ll care if that feature can solve a problem.
Gatekeeper strategy
In the world of B2B, you’ll come across gatekeepers frequently. Even in residential work, you’ll come across a partner who states “my other half deals with that” as a gatekeeper style objection.
To counter this, you’ll need to work out a script and/or techniques to work around gatekeepers. Some telemarketers prefer to do some groundwork before calling, finding out the name or department they really need to be passed to. In residential work, callcentres might elect to dial at certain times of the day to catch bread-wining partners before they leave for work.
Create your decision maker intro
Once one the line with your chosen decision maker, there’s a short amount of time to catch their curiosity. Don’t waste it, be upbeat and concise. By focusing on alleviating pain, you’ll hopefully cut through to a particular issue your decision maker is dealing with.
Set your objectives
Figure out exactly what a good sales call means. Do you want to book a demo? Do you need to book an appointment? Do you need to take card payments? Whatever the goal is, define it early on so that your agents are constantly pushing towards it.
Make sure you’re compliant
Compliance is boring but essential. There are two sets of rules that apply to telemarketing in Europe. These are GDPR and PECR. Make sure you comply. This includes deciding the lawful basis for your call. For marketing, this could be ‘consent’ if you have a relationship e.g. where they have signed up on your website, or ‘legitimate interest’ where you need to carry out an assessment before you call.
However you handle this, if you don’t have consent or a contract, you will need to screen the data every 28 days against the CTPS/TPS opt-out registers. Remember, these apply to consumers AND businesses.
Don’t forget that you also need to screens any calls against suppressions or TPS i.e those individuals that have asked you to stop contacting them.
Follow up and don’t give up
Too many telemarketers fail to follow up or give up too soon. Too many fail to make enough calls to stack the odds in their favour. We don’t mean carrying on in the face of obvious rejection. Check out our techniques for handling objections. But, you need to recognise that telemarketing is a discipline. It is a process. Part of that is consistent calling over a period of time, all the while ensuring that you build rapport and ‘touch’ the customer using other methods if you can e.g. LinkedIn, email, mail etc.
Telemarketing is a straightforward marketing method that is simple to put into place. However, you can easily set yourself up for failure if you don’t follow these steps to success.
To ensure your agents achieve a high level of productivity each day, it’s important that they give a good quality call centre headset. Headsets are one of those items that are used, abused and expected to give 100% service at all times – so it makes sense not to go cheap on them.
In reality, there are 3 things to look for when purchasing:
All these headsets work perfectly with the Blue Telecoms dialler.
Price: £20 Approx
At Blue Telecoms, we use Microsoft Life-Chat headsets frequently. They’re reliable, offer great sound quality and prove to be extremely comfortable for everyday use. Being a Microsoft product, they’re also easy to install on Windows 7/8.1/10 and also work on later versions of Mac OSX too.
Features
Price: £30 Approx
Most agents will be familiar with the Sennheiser brand, as most large callcentres use either Plantronics or Sennheiser sets. There are two versions of this set, the 7 USB and 8 USB – the only major difference is that the 7 comes with a single ear piece, while the 8 comes with dual muffs. This makes them quite helpful for callcentres who want to offer a choice between single and dual sets.
Features
Price: £33 Approx
No callcentre headset buying guide would be complete without a Plantronics in the line up. For Blue Telecoms, the Blackwire C320 is our preferred option, as it’s pretty robust and easy to use. This headset is the most expensive one we recommend, yet there are some reasons why it’s a great purchase. Sound and microphone quality are superb, making this headset a good option for centres who sell high value goods or financial products.
Features
Best value for money: Microsoft Life-Chat
If you just want a cheap, robust headset that’ll keep chugging along, the Microsoft Life-Chat is a great choice. Sound and microphone quality are perfectly fine for callcentre work, plus they’re comfortable too.
Best for giving agents options: Sennheiser PC 7 + 8
If you want to give your agents a choice between single and dual piece sets, Sennheiser is the cheapest way to go about it. The 7 USB is a single ear headset, whilst the PC 8 is it’s dual piece counterpart. As with all sennheiser sets, quality in on point and should give trouble free use for years to come. Sound and microphone quality are slightly lower than the Plantronics, but not by much.
Best overall: Plantronics Blackwire C320
The most expensive, yet a great choice if you sell high value products or simply want to give your agents the best tools you can.
Many call centre owners believe that just owning a dialler will solve any performance issues that the sales floor faces. Sure, it’s true that the ability to make more calls does guarantee you’ll make contact – yet dialling blindly will only cause you further issues down the road, possibly ending up with a fine from the regulator!
Any dialler, needs to be configured and shown how to perform properly. Every call centre is different, dialling different datasets and selling a different product. If you can/do employ a dedicated dialler manager this works even better, as their own skillset will help you get up to speed far quicker. Thankfully, most dialler systems including our own Blue Telecoms dialler are easy to setup – with training provided for anyone who’ll be managing campaigns on a daily basis.
One of the most important issues when dialling, is never to overdo it. There are a number of risks to dialling numbers too fast and/or too aggressively:
All of these issues are ones to steer clear of. They can all be mitigated against by slowing down the rate of dialling.
There are a multitude of dialler systems and companies available, all with their own positives and negatives. At the basic level, you should look for the following:
With new laws such as GDPR, the sourcing of good data is becoming harder. You must have the permission to call your prospects, which is where opt-in data is key. If you’re struggling to understand how to comply with the laws in your country, it’s always better to get in touch with a competence dialler manager – as they’ll have experience of maintaining good compliance.
When dialling, you should always ensure you have the permission of the prospect and also ensure there are methods for them to opt out. In practice, this means having a menu system where clients can press 9 to take their details off your system.
Always acquire new data from reputable sources. At Blue Telecoms, we know many sources of quality data that abide by GDPR and data protection laws. Please do get in touch if you would like us to refer you. If your dialler of choice doesn’t have TPS checking as standard, please do ensure your data is screened against the TPS lists.
Once you’ve considered all the points above and discussed your plans with a competent dialler manager, you should be ready to dial. During your campaign, don’t forget to monitor your data to ensure it’s accurate and also doesn’t run out during your campaign.
If you’re ready to start your journey in telemarketing, give Blue Telecoms a call today.
Getting “in the zone” is something all telesales agents need to do. Telemarketing is one of those jobs where you need to be 100% productive to hit targets and convert as many leads as you can.
For managers, it’s worth looking at the tips below – formulating a daily checklist for your agents when they start work. We find that agent conversion rates increase by 30-40% when they all follow a morning routine.
When you turn up to work, are you ready to start dialling or recovering from the night before? Or you’re possibly preoccupied by things going on in your life and not really “present”. Whatever the reason, you need to spend 15 minutes getting your mind “in the zone” – clients and prospects will easily pick up if you sound like your thoughts are elsewhere.
Thing about how you sit during the working day. Slumping into your seat is an easy way to slow down your productivity during the day. The simple act of sitting up will make you feel more alert and ready to perform.
There’s a reason why many telemarketing companies enforce a “smart business” dress code. The simple act of dressing well help your mindset become more professional and target orientated. It’s doesn’t matter exactly how you dress up, what does matter is the feeling of empowerment you get from it. Comfort and smartness are the two most important factors.
Being prepared for the day is a key part of being successful. Is your desk full of food, shopping and your screen full of social media? We suggest turning up for work earlier than normal, allowing you to get everything in order – clear desk and ready to start canvassing with a bang!
This is a top tip that managers can implement quickly. By discussing what’s to be completed each day and giving strategies to your agent, they’ll have something to work towards each day. One of the positive parts of this, is that you can enforce a “everyone attends the daily meeting” rule – ensuring that all your agents turn up on time.
Once you have your daily meetings set, you can work on positive messaging and empowerment exercises to get your agents up and ready!
In sales, a phone call is mightier than an email. If you’re not already responding to all correspondence with a call then now is the time to start. Many dialler systems, including Blue Telecoms offer the ability to respond to emails with a call straight away. Whatever you do, try to avoid constant ping pong emails – they’re a huge time suck and rarely progress to a sale.
There are two types of sales agent. Those that remember their call backs and those that forget them! Thankfully, most dialler systems can set and remind call backs in real time; however, your agents should still write down exactly what that client requires and how they can be converted to a sale. The ultimate goal, is to get your prospect to dial you back, proving that your prospect is pushed deeply into your sales funnel.
None of these tips are difficult to implement for agents who want to succeed. They might even prove to be a method of getting rid of the dead weight your sales floor carries. Some agents will ignore the advice above; they’re unlikely to last more than a month or two within a telesales role.
For managers, you’ll notice a direct increase in sales by following these tips. So print them out, start your daily sales briefings and get your agents revved up for work!
It’s true that there are two types of people that turn off clients during the sales process:
Imagine being a business owner. You’ve spent years building your company and are something of a sage when it comes to the multiple factors that affect your industry. Now imagine how your initial curiosity about a product or service would be destroyed by listening to a person who believes they can fix everything and have all the answers. You may even catch them on a particular point where you know they’ve not told the truth. This isn’t limited to B2B sales either. Sometimes, as a telesales person you may call a residential client who has an interest in the subject and/or actually works within the industry itself.
Thankfully, there’s a particular type of sales person who does well in all parts of the sales process.
Most people prefer a polite, friendly and sensible advisor. If you can achieve this, more prospects will be open for a meeting/chat and even begin to take your advice seriously. Whatever you do, steer clear of trying to have the answer to every question – this is impossible! Instead, be the person who can find answers and solutions when required. Many prospects love a person can listen to what they need, coming up with a plan to achieve it.
Unfortunately, both personality types above can suffer from the “battering ram” approach to sales. They rarely listen to the client, preferring to ram the official script/pitch down the throat of any prospect who’ll listen. For the nervous wrecks, the script is a crutch to avoid having to delve deeper into the conversion, whilst cheeky chappy types simply view the client as £££’s and someone to batter over the head with words until they say yes!
This might work with some clients, particularly low value ones; however, it’s never a great recipe for long term sales. The main point to take home, is that once you’re dealing with a more mature customer, or someone with more experience – neither of these strategies will get you the sale.
If you’re worried that you’re straying into nervous wreck or cheeky chappy territory, here are some ways to pull back and become the confident professional you need to be:
By focusing on these tips, you’ll find leads moving further along the sales funnel, eventually leading to great sales meetings where you’re seen as a solver of problems – rather than a sales person.
Your increase in sales will follow shortly after!
Telemarketing sounds like a simple idea. Make a few calls, speak to people and promote your business – you’re bound to get results right?
Of course, it’s never quite that easy. Telesales is as much science as is is business, trying to match your service with the data and people you contact. If you’re just starting out on your telemarketing journey, here are 4 top tips that you can begin to implement today.
Too many telemarketers just believe that “dialling numbers” will get results. Sure, that’s true to an extent; however, if you take the time to try and contact the right people – your conversion rate will improve massively. At the lowest level, this means filtering your data for old numbers, disconnected lines and obviously incorrect details. Once you clean up your basic data, you can move towards purchasing and finding data that perfectly targets your demographic. For B2B campaigns, finding the correct decision maker is vital to getting the responses you need; without this information you’re firing blindly.
Top Tip: Get your data right before you start dialling, spending time each week continually cleaning and optimising the contact details you have.
Every person you speak to is going to have their own view on what makes the perfect solution for them. For some, it’s entirely going to be about price, whilst others will look at ease of use and how it’s going to make their life easier. Your best telesales staff will understand quickly what drives the decision maker on a particular lead, tailoring their pitch to help clear the path to a converted sale. Your job, as the person who runs the campaign is to help give them the tools to change pitch if required
Top Tip: Spend some time thinking about the different people who purchase your product/service. Once you have these persona types, you can create different pitches and themes to help convert these disparate groups.
This sounds easy right? Make enough calls and the sales will follow won’t they? Yet you’d be surprised at how often telemarketing campaigns slow down after their initial burst. There are a number of reasons for this:
In an ideal world, you have enough quality data to dial – segmented into the many customer persona types you’re aware of. You also manage your staff, ensuring they’re actively canvassing and taking calls throughout the day. You should also have one person working within the campaign who understands how to operate your dialler system of choice, ensuring that you’re getting the best ROI on every data batch you purchase.
At Blue Telecoms, we offer quality training for any managerial or support staff you employ – helping them to deliver on the ROI you expect.
Top Tip: Aim for a level of calls per day that’s comfortable, then deliver the leads and management that can hold at that level for the long term. Once you do this, your campaign should deliver consistent results overall.
This is a bugbear of B2B marketing, where telemarketers contact very educated prospects without any prior learning. This is a huge problem, as in B2B marketing, your decision maker is likely a professional in their chosen area. This is also an issue when you’re dialling to promote higher value services, as those you dial will likely have done some prior research and/or be knowledgable about the subject.
The way to combat this, is via good quality training and also fostering an environment where your agents want to learn about the product they offer. This education can take many forms, from simple product knowledge to an overview of the industry and your competitors.
Top Tip: Good rapport, knowledge and questioning skills make all the difference. These are all things that can be trained and reviewed periodically.
There are loads more tips to help you build and maintain a good telemarketing campaign. The tips above are a great start; however, one of the great things about telesales is that there are so many new skills you can add to over time. The best telesales agents, are always looking to build on their skillset. Your job as a campaign manager, is to give them the tools to do this.
If you’re looking for more tips, visit our telemarketing and dialler blog.
Any seasoned sales person will carry out a number of steps after they make a call. These techniques are proven to increase sales, so they’ve built them into their daily sales flow.
Here are five actions that you should take after each call to help improve your sales:
After a call, you need to consider how successful that call was – plus the information gathered. If you weren’t successful, this information might be used as a way to improve your technique. It’s also worth figuring out if you lead might be a possible conversion at a later date, for example; a lead that’s in contract right now but may be free in 6 months time.
By talking with customers, you can begin to learn the common pain points they all suffer. Hopefully, you may spot a particular issue that your product can solve easily – making your marketing that much easier! Even if you don’t, just understanding what your customers go through on a daily basis will make you a better sales person.
Sometimes, clients can make bad decisions during the sales process – either purchasing the wrong thing, too much of a thing or not enough. As a professional sales person, you need to have a plan to try and reel these clients back in – before they make a mistake. By creating a roadmap for your customers to follow, they’ll obtain the correct solution and become long term clients.
Most agents have trouble remembering what was said on a call, even more so if they’re dealing with multiple clients each day. That’s why it’s important to gather and save every piece of data on each call. A good telemarketer, will take notes during each call that help them understand if they’ve a hot lead, or something that needs time.
If you’re not making use of a customer relationship management too, or the comments section of your dialler system, you really need to start. Even paper notes can become lost and/or not make much sense if your organisation isn’t great. A good telemarketer ensures they make good notes that will help them in future.
Even if a sale doesn’t proceed straight away, that’s not always the end of the story. Sometimes, clients just aren’t ready right now to take the next step – but may be at a later date. By following up frequently on old leads, you can double check where those prospects are in their development. It’s a known industry rule, especially in B2B sales that it takes 5 interactions with a prospect before they make the jump to being a client.
By following up leads in a friendly way, you can build rapport over time – gently warming your client.
Most telemarketing campaigns focus on sales/leads as the key metric. This makes perfect sense, as without sales your campaign is going nowhere fast; however, there are multiple other measurements that can help you understand how healthy your campaign is. By focusing on these, you can improve your conversion rate over time.
Here are 7 measurements we use at Blue Telecoms to tell is exactly how a campaign is performing:
Try to maintain track of all the costs involved in each sale – even general overheads such as heating and agent time. Ideally, you should try to take this measurement every month to allow time to collect all the data required.
Once you have this data, you can make tweaks to your business model and where investment goes to get your overall ROI on track.
Your customer relationship management system is a great source of data to help you understand how successful your campaign is. One of the best metrics it can give you, is the conversion rate once a “hot lead” has been obtained. This can point you in the direction of your scripting, presentation and technique later on during the sales process. If you can make tweaks to this, it will have a direct effect on your ROI above.
Monitoring the number of calls made and how many result in a human contact/lead is a great way to diagnose your data health. Many telemarketing centres focus purely on the sheer volume of calls, rather than how many actually result in a positive outcome. Once you have your data, tweaks can include outbound number rotation and even test new data suppliers to discover one that provides the results you need.
This is especially useful in B2B marketing, where it’s likely a small handful of people inside the business who can decide to use your service or not. By collecting data on who your agents are in touch with can provide a reliable method of discovering how many of your driven leads are genuinely useful.
As for possible tweaks, they’re all going to be made to the initial part of your agents call and/or any research carried out. Any improvements here will hopefully boost the number of valuable contacts, leading to a better conversion rate and ROI down the road.
By keeping a track of the appointments created, you can see how far you’re pushing leads into your customer journey. Set a target for this each month and try to match it even after any cancellations. Once you have a base value, you can work to improve this month on month – until you reach a plateau where you’re converting appointments inline with your ROI.
Most dialler systems, including ours at Blue Telecoms offer the ability to record ho long each call is. This is helpful, as it can be tied into the average length of a call that leads directly to an appointment or conversion. From here, you can keep a close check on the time spent by each agent before obtaining a conversion – directly relating to your ROI.
You might not have considered voicemails as helpful for sales metrics before, yet they’re extremely helpful when calculating your ROI. One of the benefits of the Blue Telecoms system, is that we offer intelligent answer machine detection. Here, if the dialler discovers an answer machine, it will attempt the same number the next day either 1 hour before or 1 hour after the original call time. The idea with this being that if your client leaves their home or office at the same time each time, making a tweak to the call time might help you catch that person when they’re back.
The KPI metrics listed above will all help you diagnose how your campaigns are running. By not simply focusing on sales, you can make minor improvements to every step of the sales process – ultimately resulting in higher conversions and ROI. These metrics can also warn you of issues early on, such as scripting and presentation problems.
If you’re interested in our advanced answer machine detection, or simply want to chat about how we can help you boost your telemarketing ROI, Get in Touch with our team today!