Use of the telephone - Marketing⁺

Use of the telephone – Marketing⁺ a collection of papers from PlannedSites for SME's

"Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing!" - P.T. Barnum

We’ve spent some time coming up with the title of this paper. We judged that if we called in “Telesales” you may not have opened it.

But this is an important part of your processes. You are likely to at least quadruple the results of your direct mail campaign if you follow it up on the phone.

This is NOT telesales as in double-glazing:

• You only ring after you’ve established contact with, say, a letter
• You aren’t looking for a sale – merely to give away the freebies on your website or by post. You’re looking yet again to start a relationship and you’re doing by giving something.

Method

You may have a telesales operation in place.  If you don't either your options are to out-source or employ a person or a team in-house.

Outsourcing would be a brave decision. It’s expensive, the quality is iffy and they don’t like to be paid on performance.

So do it in-house. But, because of all the hang-ups, only give the job to someone (including you) who is comfortable doing it. Recruit among your staff. You could hire an expert from a local temping agency or, if your campaign justifies it, employ your own part-time expert. The best person, though, would be someone currently within your practice, someone who can establish a rapport and start collecting information about the prospect. (This is one of the reasons using the phone is so important – short of going to see the prospect it is about the only feasible way of having a dialogue.) The final reason for using someone permanently in-house is they will be familiar with the practice and the way it operates.  Once they are comfortable with the procedures, they can begin to recruit a team if necessary.

The phone can be used for existing clients as well as prospects. You may be offering a new service or checking wills are up-to-date. If you have something you can offer existing clients ringing them about it is a good way of practising your phone skills.

Making the call

1. You’re not selling, you’re gathering information
2. You need a plan but NOT a script; only a professional actor will make a script sound anything but.
3. Ask for permission to have the conversation: “Are you able to talk at the moment?” If the prospect takes the opportunity to try to get rid of you ask for a suitable time to call back – and, needless to say, stick to it.
4. Keep asking questions. Have some ready.
5. Close by asking if you can send the gift and newsletter – you need his email address. Set yourself up to send the first email during conversation.

Telephone Preference Service (TPS – http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/ )

Your mailing list should have been checked against the TPS database. If someone has registered it’s illegal to ring them with a sales call. You might argue this isn’t a sales call in the strict meaning but we wouldn’t risk it. If your list is growing old have it rechecked.