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On the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web the phone is still your best sales tool

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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 internet has become a powerful force in the world of sales and marketing. Social media networks, online ads, banners and email campaigns have been utilised by millions of people around the world, with many businesses seeing great results from their online efforts. Incredibly powerful, virtually ubiquitous and versatile, the internet has transformed sales for good. However, there is still one sales tool that’s stronger than the internet: the telephone. Tried and tested, the telephone will always be the best tool for an equal balance of personal and professional. A great way to connect with clients, customers and collaborators, the telephone can help companies to boost their brand awareness, build business relationships and grow sales.

If you’re still not convinced of the power of the telephone, here are a few reasons why this established sales tool is still the best there is.

Businesses and the telephone

Though many companies spotted the potential of the telephone when it was developed in the 1870s, it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that businesses really started to take advantage of this powerful communication tool. Telemarketing really came into its own in the 1970s, when companies began to use the telephone to contact potential customers and to network with other businesses.

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.

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.

Personal, professional and direct, the telephone is a confident and powerful sales tool. To find out more about developing an effective B2B sales strategy, give our team a call today on 01353 724 880.

Are you having a laugh?

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Like any human interaction, telemarketing should engage, enrich and be interesting for both parties. Drawing a potential customer into an intelligent two-way interaction takes a bit of nifty open question technique, coupled with the emotional intelligence to read between the lines of what your respondent is saying and using this to decide where your discussion should go next. Is there room for humour? Unfortunately we think not. As the psychologist Freud suggests, people often use humour to deflect and endure difficult situations. So while it’s perhaps understandable that humour may help us deal with the awkward feelings that telemarketing can bring, we have some advice about why you should leave your jokes at the water-cooler.

 

Humour is highly subjective

If you can’t see the response or read the body language of the person you’re communicating with, using humour in an attempt to warm up your dialogue is a potentially risky strategy, as the things that make us laugh are subjective. Most people use humour with friends or colleagues they know well because they have a shared interest or insight that makes them laugh. Using humour with a stranger is therefore likely to flop, especially given that the telephone compromises communication by reducing the five human senses to just two .

 

Getting people in the right mood

Colleagues who find themselves constantly injecting humour into their conversations can be (let’s face it) a little irritating, especially if you’re in the middle of a busy working day and dealing with issues that are not funny or trivial. Laughter might be good for the soul but like that nice glass of wine, there’s a time and a place. Cold calling is probably not the time to practice your best puns, and whilst it’s polite to share a little laugh with someone who said something funny to us, we wouldn’t respond in kind.

 

Keeping it professional

We are all the face of our business, so we have a responsibility to reflect the specialness of our brands in the way we conduct ourselves. Few B2B brands would benefit from the funny-man persona. In fact, the most successful business brands present themselves as polished, professional and sharp. So if funny is not one of your brand’s differentiating factors, keep your dialogue professional – after all, we will never fail to win the hearts and minds of customers by not being funny enough.

 

If you would like to speak to experts about making professional B2B telemarketing calls on your behalf contact Blue Donkey on 01353 724 880.

 

 

How to cultivate warm relationships from cold calls

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Handshake

Turning cold calls into warm, productive business relationships is one of the biggest challenges telemarketers face. It requires skill, diplomacy, and experience and can be a challenge even for expert telemarketers. However, as the benefits of cultivating a strong business relationship are so pronounced, it’s well worth putting the effort into developing your techniques and training your staff.

Play the long game

If you really want to cultivate a warm relationship from a cold call, you may need to begin by changing the objective of your initial contact. Most of the time, telemarketers are tasked with getting an appointment, securing a sale, or achieving another tangible goal from each call. Though this may help hit their targets in the short term, it’s less likely that enduring business relationships will develop from these targeted sales calls. Instead, try to make the relationship the focus of the call. Think about how you can engage the person you’re speaking to, build a connection, and develop a level of trust. If you can do this, you’ll be well on your way to creating a meaningful business relationship.

Start a conversation

Instead of simply talking at the contact, or giving a presentation over the phone, try to turn your pitch into a two-way conversation. Making an effort to engage the person you’re speaking to will show you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say and that, to you and your business, they’re more than just another number on the call sheet.

Ask an open question

An open question is a great way to start a conversation; instead of asking something that can be answered with a simple yes/no, ask a question that requires a bit of thought on the part of the contact. Ideally, this question should also give you an insight into the needs of the business and provide you with the information you need to ask an engaging follow up question.

Offer a solution

In general, people buy from people they like and companies that can help them. If you can talk to the contact, find out their needs and requirements, and demonstrate how the product, or service you’re offering could make their life easier – it will show you care about their company and that you’re really listening.

Using an intelligent call list

A call list that’s been carefully put together using up to date data and an intelligent approach is much more likely to yield contacts that can be transformed into warm business relationships. Ideally, all of the contacts on the list will have an interest in the products or services you’re offering.

If you think your telemarketing team could benefit from extra training when it comes to cultivating warm business relationships, we can help. Get in touch with Blue Donkey to find out more.

3 easy steps to get over your fear of cold calling

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Call centre

It’s a well known fact that no one likes cold calling. However experienced you are with making telemarketing calls, and however confident you are in your products or services, picking up the phone and dialling someone who’s not expecting your call, and whose body language you’ll be unable to read, can be daunting.

However, with cold calling continuing to top the leaderboard of marketing methods that consistently succeed in building relationships and securing leads, it’s a tactic that no business can afford to ignore. What’s more, as cold calling allows you to speak to infinitely more companies than face to face meetings, it’s an absolute must for any ambitious professional.

At Blue Donkey, we know a thing or two about transforming cold calls into warm business relationships. How do we do it? You’ll just have to keep reading to find out.

Step 1: Be confident in your products and services

If you’re confident about your products and services, this enthusiasm will come across as soon as the other person picks up the phone. Before you begin, write down 10 excellent features about the product or service you’re promoting. These should be things that will excite and enthuse your target audience – the things that set your product or service apart from the competition.

Spend some time thinking about how these 10 features could benefit the company you’re calling. Consider their workplace, their business and their company goals. If you can demonstrate how your product or service can save them time, save them money, make their life easier or improve the quality of their work, you’ll be onto a winner.

Step 2: Use your senses

The more senses you can use when making a business call, the better. Though the telephone takes a number of senses out of play, you can increase your awareness of the situation by using visualisation. Next time you make a cold call, try to visualise the face of the person you’re speaking to before you begin. When they answer, talk to them as if you were speaking face to face. This should help to make the conversation flow more smoothly and will make it less daunting to pick up the phone.

A lot of professional sports people use visualisation techniques to improve their performance in big competitions. As well as helping them to focus on their ultimate goal, visualisation helps to build confidence and create an expectation of success, two things that are incredibly important when making cold calls.

Step 3: Set smart goals

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed. By setting yourself these parameters at the beginning of a call, you can push yourself to achieve tangible goals and maximise your impact. If you can get yourself into the right mindset, use positive visualisation techniques and set yourself clear, achievable goals systematically, regularly and in a disciplined manner, you won’t only find your cold calling is more successful, you may even find it empowers you.

At Blue Donkey we call this process, intelligent telemarketing. We’ve seen our client companies go from good to great by embracing the opportunities presented by systematic, intelligent use of the telephone.

Talk to us today to learn how we can develop and train your in-house telemarketing crew, or outsource your lead generation to Blue Donkey’s seasoned teams of expert communicators, and transform your business.

People don’t just buy from people, they buy from people they like

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A handshake

However innovative a product or impressive a service, customers are unlikely to invest their hard earned cash unless they trust the company they’re buying from. Building a rapport with a client is therefore one of the most essential elements of boosting sales, without it, customers will be much more reluctant to invest, leaving the seller empty handed.

Unlike many other telemarketing companies, Blue Donkey takes likeability seriously. Over the years, we’ve won a number of awards for our customer focused philosophy, distinctive business personality and unique approach. We’re also incredibly proud of our Investors in People and ISO:9001 accreditations reflecting our commitment to our own workforce.

Using a combination of intelligent questions, research and strategy, we are able to build relationships with customers quickly and easily, ensuring they see great results from their campaigns and boost their brand awareness.

Rapport and trust

When you call a business decision maker, you don’t just want them to listen to what you have to say, you want them to like you. If the caller can build a rapport, the person they’re speaking to will be much more likely to trust the information they’re being given and therefore much more likely to engage with the organisation. In general, trust and rapport go hand in hand. Work on them both for long enough and you’ll end up with a solid business relationship that’s beneficial both for your company and the person you’re selling to.

Meaningful discussions

One of the key elements required to build a rapport with a customer is a meaningful discussion. When someone answers the phone, the last thing they want is to be preached to. Instead, it’s important you grab their attention with insightful and informative content, showing the unique value and benefit of your product or service as you go.

However, as well as talking about what you offer, it’s also crucial you listen to the needs and requirements of the person you’re talking to. Not only will this show your potential customer that you’re genuinely interested in their business, it will also transform a standard sales call into a meaningful discussion, helping to build the foundation of a long lasting business relationship.

Treat each caller as an individual

Even if you make tens, or even hundreds, of calls a day, it’s important to remember every person you speak to is an individual. If you want to build rapport with a potential customer, and encourage them to spend money with your company, you need to approach each call on its own terms.

In general, people like people who are like themselves. If you ask the right questions you’ll be able to find some common ground with the person you’re calling. This will help you to build a relationship and make it more likely that they’ll trust the information you give them.

By training our staff to use a range of intelligent techniques, we’re able to build rapport, trust and understanding quickly and easily. From simple ideas like ‘smile as you dial’ to more advanced visualisation techniques and approaches that place the client, their needs and their interests right at the heart of the call, our training helps our staff get the very best results from every call they make.

How the telephone is still your strongest sales tool

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A telephone keypad

Over the past decade, the internet has come to dominate the world of sales and marketing. Social media networks, online ads, banners and email campaigns have been utilised by millions of people around the world, with many businesses seeing great results from their online efforts. Incredibly powerful, virtually ubiquitous and versatile, the internet has transformed sales for good. However, there is still one sales tool that’s stronger than the internet: the telephone. Tried and tested, the telephone will always be the best tool for an equal balance of personal and professional. A great way to connect with clients, customers and collaborators, the telephone can help companies to boost their brand awareness, build business relationships and grow sales.

If you’re still not convinced of the power of the telephone, here are a few reasons why this established sales tool is still the best there is.

Businesses and the telephone

Though many companies spotted the potential of the telephone when it was developed in the 1870s, it wasn’t until the mid 20th century that businesses really started to take advantage of this powerful communication tool. Telemarketing really came into its own in the 1970s, when companies began to use the telephone to contact potential customers and to network with other businesses.

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.

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.

Personal, professional and direct, the telephone is a confident and powerful sales tool. To find out more about developing an effective B2B sales strategy, give our team a call today.