telemarketing

Since telemarketing became popular in the United States in the 1970s, there are now more than 5 million telemarketing employees in the United States. If you live in America, you can feel that telemarketing is pervasive. This year, the US Congress passed a bill to restrict telemarketers from making sales calls to registered families. Despite this, it has not affected the development of the telemarketing industry that has attracted much attention in China in the past two years. Entering the largest recruitment website in China, you will find that telemarketing has become a hot job. The highest monthly income of an excellent telemarketer in an enterprise I once coached has exceeded that of ordinary college students in inland cities for one year. This is not uncommon. Telemarketing has a natural advantage of high efficiency. For example, the average annual sales of telephone salesmen in Dell Computer Company exceeds 5 million yuan.

The following is based on the record of a telemarketing skills training course I conducted, introducing some key telemarketing skills.

Training begins

Telemarketing skills training needs a lot of simulated telemarketing between students and teachers or between students. According to my many training experiences, students will be unnatural at first. After all, without a phone, you can see each other, which is very different from the real scene. So at the beginning of the training, I told you that there will be a large number of practical cases in the training of telemarketing skills, and we will improve our telemarketing skills by listening to the recording. At the same time, some role-playing is also carried out to consolidate the skills learned through on-site simulation. Next, I will arrange a small game with an active training atmosphere to greatly improve the participation of the students, which is the key to the success of the next training. At the same time, in order to understand the degree and focus of each student's telemarketing skills, I then made a small survey. I ask students who only do telemarketing to raise their hands for statistics, and also ask students who hardly do telemarketing to raise their hands for statistics.

Why is this? It is very important to distinguish the main role of telemarketing in student sales. Generally speaking, telemarketing is divided into two categories in the whole sales activity: one is to make an appointment by making a strange phone call, then visit and negotiate at home, and finally clinch a deal face to face. The other is to sell directly through a strange phone, and realize the tracking before the transaction by phone. In this training, one-third of the students are in the first and second situations, and one-third of the students are in the mixed situation. So I will arrange the course in a balanced way and divide it into four parts:

1, telemarketing mentality adjustment

2. Make a quick appointment for a strange phone call

3. Telemarketing skills

4, telemarketing self-management.

Telemarketing mentality adjustment

The turnover rate of telemarketers in enterprises is usually high, mainly because they are more and more afraid of making phone calls. When I asked my classmates who were often rejected by customers in telemarketing to raise their hands, everyone raised their hands without hesitation. When I went on to ask who here likes to make strange phone calls, everyone immediately put their hands down. I call it "kicking the iron plate" here, which is inevitable and common for telemarketers. It is very common that telemarketers always want to do something else to delay the next call after making an uncomfortable call (that is, being rudely rejected). If you can't keep a good attitude to make a phone call, the efficiency of telephone sales is extremely low. Once in class, a salesman of a logistics company told me that he made 20 strange phone calls every week, which surprised me.

There are many rejections and some are even rude in telemarketing, so telemarketers have a strong sense of frustration and are unwilling to continue to call. There is no doubt that this is a normal psychological reaction. Psychologists often use electric shocks to correct mental patients. When the behavior that needs to be corrected is triggered, it will be shocked, which is naturally uncomfortable, thus forming a conditioned reflex. When the behavior happens again, the feeling of electric shock appears and the behavior is consciously terminated. When we are rejected by customers, we encounter electric shock, and we will associate it with our telemarketing behavior. After repeating this feeling many times, we naturally feel afraid to call.

After analyzing the psychological root of students' fear of calling, we did a simulation training to understand the psychological reaction of customers when they answered the phone. I invited one student to play the role of customer and four students to play the role of telemarketers. Set the following scenario: the customer has just returned from the meeting and is ready to pour some water. A student called to sell products. Suppose three minutes, five minutes and two minutes later, three other people call to promote their products or services. Finally, I asked the student who acted as a customer: Is Australia proud of her mother? Jun Bei Gan Yuan Qiang? I'm sorry that a few kernels of glutinous rice are in the wilderness, but I don't know what to do. What's the difference between them? > "Is glucoside smart? Hey? Mechanical carelessness? Play? Or? гггггггггггггггггггггггггг. What's the point? ⑾⑾⒀⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊⒊935 br & gt； The first step to adjust the telephone mentality is to understand the customer's refusal. If it is the telemarketer himself, I'm afraid he will be very impatient. I emphasize that telemarketers compete for customers' limited attention and time, so it is very important to think about how to arouse customers' interest 10 seconds before making a phone call. Of course, these technologies are another story, so I didn't start right away. Then I asked the students to use the second psychological adjustment measure when they were rejected in future telephone sales, which I called "good for evil". If the other party refuses or even has a bad attitude, please smile and say to the other party before hanging up: "Thank you, have a nice job, goodbye. "I emphasize that this sentence is actually written for myself and has a strong psychological hint. When we hang up the phone helplessly, our mood will be greatly reduced. Say this sentence, we will have a bearing attitude, and our mood will not be easily affected. Many students laughed in the middle of hearing it, and they already understood what I meant.

The third way to adjust your mentality is to focus on things, not people. I told a true story of an insurance company. The telemarketers of an overseas insurance company have low morale and high turnover rate. After thinking about it for a long time, the sales manager introduced a new system, which stipulated that every time a failed phone call was made, a form was filled out and 250 calls were made, a bonus of $65,438+0,000 yuan was given. Not long after, morale improved a lot, sales performance began to rise, and the overall bonus issued by the company was not adjusted because of the increase. Why is this happening? Telemarketing is actually a digital game, and there is a certain proportion of success. If you make an average of 50 phone calls, one transaction is successful, then when you fail 49 times, you are quite close to success. The failure rate of telemarketing is high, which makes telemarketers pay too much attention to failure and have no sense of accomplishment. Once salespeople find that many failures are the necessary prelude to success, they are very calm in the face of failed calls. So I ask my classmates to count their phone numbers every day, and after a long period of accumulation, we can get a more reliable proportion. Knowing this ratio is of great help to improve your sales mentality.

Fast unfamiliar telephone interview

After introducing some methods of self-adjustment, I also taught pronunciation training through simulated training. Soon, the training entered the second part-quick telephone interview with strangers.

For most sales activities, telephone interview is the first step to success. If you can't successfully enter the customer's door, the sale is over. However, it is not easy to get busy or disturbed customers to agree to take the time to meet. Once in a training class, a student selling high-end computer servers told me that he had to make 1300 calls a week to meet a customer, which was also his job task. This is the lowest ratio I have ever heard.

In fact, the telephone interview is very simple, just follow six steps.

The first step is to say hello. As mentioned above, the first 10 second of the phone is very important, so as to win the attention of customers. Then a warm and polite greeting is the best strategy to attract attention. I emphasized three key points: name, enthusiasm and self-confidence. I asked two classmates to say such a greeting, just like the first sentence to a very important customer: "Good morning, Manager Wang! I'm Li San from Universal Pictures. " A simple sentence, if expressed forcefully, can make people feel different. As a result, other students didn't give them high praise, which shows that few people really pay attention to the first sentence at the beginning. Please remember your behavior. Did you meet the requirements of name, enthusiasm and confidence?

Step two, introduce yourself. The concept of USP is used here. USP is a unique sales proposition, that is, what is the most attractive difference between you and your competitors, which should be summarized in a short sentence. This is the most effective way to arouse interest from the beginning and establish initial trust. I told the students that our company's own USP is "the only company in Shanghai that offers a full range of experiential retail management training courses in Taiwan Province Province." Finally, I asked my classmates to write down their USP and analyze it together (the training course of telemarketing skills is generally less than 20 people, so there can be quite a lot of interaction).

The third step, business introduction needs to make use of the herding principle to strengthen customers' interest and trust. The principle of conformity is conformity psychology. The movement of the group is determined by most movements, and the individual is unconscious. Similarly, everyone is afraid of making mistakes when making purchase decisions, so they are willing to follow the crowd. Therefore, I ask students to list some well-known typical customers according to their industries when introducing their business, so as to strengthen their interest and trust. For example, I said, "Our company has provided retail management training for dozens of clothing enterprises such as Shanshan Group, Romon Group and Goldlion, and its performance has been greatly improved." Such a business introduction is undoubtedly very convincing. Assuming that there are no well-known enterprises in students' companies, the same effect can be achieved by digital or analog methods.

Step four, come straight to the point and ask to meet. I remind students that the purpose of telephone interview is to make an appointment, don't pester too much, and go straight to the goal as soon as possible.

Step five, talk about the benefits to customers after asking for a meeting. No one wants to do business at a loss. If customers take the time to interview someone they have never met and give you a chance to sell to him, who do they think will benefit? Therefore, we must emphasize what benefits the interview will bring to customers in order to impress them. My advice to the trainees is to tell them that they will introduce some cooperation experiences with him. Everyone is interested in what their peers are doing, and they want to know how others are doing it. So this is the best strategy to impress each other. We will not put pressure on customers and sell things to them, but only introduce some experiences, which can effectively reduce customers' resistance.

Step six, suggest the time and look professional. Remember not to ask questions that are easily rejected, such as: Are you free? The client's subconscious reaction must be that he is not available.

I rehearsed as I spoke, and asked the students to design a whole set of dialogues according to their own characteristics. Next, after talking about the skills of handling objections and bypassing the front desk, I will give you five minutes to improve the your telephone interview paper, and then choose two students to play roles. After some climactic performances and selections, everyone unanimously selected the best student, and I gave him a big dictionary as a reward.

After a short game, everyone was in high spirits and afternoon training began.

In the morning, the telemarketing skills training taught the skills of mentality adjustment, pronunciation training and quick telephone interview, while in the afternoon, the course focused on telemarketing skills and telemarketing self-management.

Telemarketing cycle

Telemarketing and visiting customers have many similarities and differences. Each sales format has its own sales cycle, so it is very important to know its own sales cycle. By managing your own sales cycle, you can effectively improve sales efficiency and speed up the transaction, thus predicting the success rate of each sale. After introducing every link of the general sales cycle, I then showed the telephone sales cycle:

Look for potential customers

The first action of telemarketing is to find potential customers, including two aspects: one is to find out the possible customer groups, that is, to determine the list to call; The second is to find out who has the right to decide to buy on the phone.

As the saying goes, a good beginning is half the battle. Before making a strange phone call, finding a good phone list is the most important basic work in telemarketing management. If you can screen the phone list in advance before telemarketing, it will determine whether your phone transaction rate is 1% or 50% (a classmate told me that her best telemarketing can reach 50%), you know, the difference is at least 50 times. In the training module of telemarketing self-management, I introduced several methods of learning to screen or directly obtain high-quality telephone bills.

After making a strange phone call, the first step to success is to find the right person. As the saying goes: find the right person and do the right thing. If you can't even find someone who has the right to make a decision, the best sales skills on the phone are useless. Therefore, the first key step for telemarketers to make a strange call is to make sure that the person you are talking to is the key person you are looking for. According to my previous investigation on consulting cases of corporate telemarketing teams, at least 70% of unfamiliar calls can't find key people. If this ratio can be raised to 50%, the telephone transaction rate will be greatly improved. How to judge that this person is your key person? Key people generally have three characteristics, which can be expressed in English as MAN: m means rich, and key people must have a budget to buy your products; A means right, and the key person must have the purchasing decision-making power or have an important influence on the decision-making; N means there is demand, which will be introduced in detail in my later training. In the course, I have a simulation training on how to find key people. From simulation training, everyone can learn how to identify and contact key people.

Demand income

What's the next step after finding the key person? In the course, I asked the students a question: "When telemarketing started, how many people began to introduce products?" As a result, most students raised their hands. I then asked, "So most people can't say it right away?" Now all the students have raised their hands. I asked the students to start to reflect. Is there a direct connection between the two? I immediately threw out the third question: "Why do customers buy?" Everyone knows this answer, and the students have also answered it-"demand". Yes, customers only buy when there is demand, but this mistake often happens on the phone: first put forward the characteristics or benefits of products or services, and then find the demand. So it is not surprising that people are often rejected by customers at the beginning. I ask you to copy a sales principle: 70% of sales activities are listening, 20% are asking, 10% are talking, and the content of talking is absolutely just what customers want to know. Although we all know that the reason why customers buy is demand, there are still very few salespeople who use this information to improve their sales behavior. In the following training, I analyzed the reasons of customer demand with the students, so that the students can make more targeted sales according to the different psychological sources of customer demand.

Demand is divided into two categories: explicit demand and implicit demand. I asked the students, "Have you ever had a particularly pleasant sales experience in your sales experience?" Everyone smiled and nodded. It can be seen that salespeople sometimes find gold ingots, customers have clear needs, and you just meet them, and your products or services just meet the needs of customers, and the transaction is quickly reached. Just like meeting a hungry child, taking out a pair of chopsticks and shaking them, the child becomes excited. The easiest way to create sales opportunities is to find hungry children and then shake chopsticks in front of them. However, this ratio is too low. Perhaps among the 1 0,000 customers you found by phone, only 1 had a clear demand and immediately agreed to buy it. The important difference between a good telemarketer and a poor telemarketer is that they have different abilities to turn the potential needs of customers into clear needs.

How to effectively transform the potential needs of customers into clear needs? The key is to ask questions on the phone in time. In the following training, I introduced the questioning skills in telemarketing in detail. Excellent questioning skills will enable telemarketers to win the initial trust of customers, and thus have the opportunity to further understand the needs of customers on the phone, thus promoting the sales progress.

consult

Telemarketing has taken a big step forward after discussing his needs with customers and telling them the benefits they will get. The telemarketers will meet with customers' objections next. Customer objections in telemarketing are more difficult to deal with than face-to-face sales. You can't see the customer's expression, and it's hard to tell the real intention of the customer. There are two kinds of customer objections: one is objection, such as "your price is too expensive", which is the most common objection. The other is procrastination objection, such as "I want to report to the manager and wait for his reply", which is also the most common procrastination objection. After telling the students in detail the effective ways to deal with all kinds of objections, I showed a stills of Schwarzenegger's Terminator to show that procrastination is really the terminator of the telemarketing trip. A sales manager of a financial training company once told us that about 80% of the failures of her telemarketing team came from this difficult objection.

Few telemarketers have the habit of letting procrastinators communicate directly with their bosses. They are afraid of offending the customer on the other end of the phone. Then this is a key step in dealing with procrastination objections. First of all, on the phone, we understood that the other party had to wait for the decision of the superior, such as "Manager Zhang, a large company like you needs to report to the superior." After being understood, you should immediately ask for direct communication with your superiors. Procrastination is mostly because your telemarketer intends to suspend the sales process. They may not want to be disturbed again, but they are too embarrassed to refuse you directly. So when you ask for direct communication, it can be used as a basis for you to judge the degree of purchase intention of the other party. Of course, in most cases, it is still difficult for you to talk to your boss directly, but if you can, your chances will be greatly increased. If not, students need to develop the object on the phone into their own salespeople and sell themselves in front of their superiors. So at this time, the telemarketer needs to sum up the customer's satisfaction with the customer on the phone, such as "Manager Zhang, we have discussed ... I can hear that you are satisfied with these points, right?" In this way, the customer will have a good impression on the products or services you provide, and you will have the opportunity to turn him into your sales agent and sell it to his superiors. The key to delaying the handling of objections is to immediately identify whether the other party is really interested in buying, otherwise you will waste a lot of invalid time. Better make the next call quickly.

At the end of the objection handling, please remember to get some kind of commitment from the customer. Commitment here refers to the specific agreement reached with customers to push sales to the next step. For example, "Manager Zhang, I'll call you again this Friday morning to see how you are getting on?" . Instead of making a mistake: "Manager Zhang, let's contact again. Goodbye. " The most common conclusion of telemarketing has not promoted the progress of telemarketing. Remember, the process of telemarketing may involve several phone calls, which can promote the sales progress every time. Without the customer's commitment, it can't be regarded as the sales progress, which will be very dangerous, because the customer on the other end of the phone will be fickle.

trade

On the phone, salespeople stimulate customers' interest step by step, put forward the value of products or services, and solve most of customers' problems. Now it is at a critical stage. Telesalesmen should seize the opportunity and make a transaction request as soon as possible. In telemarketing, opportunities are fleeting, so telemarketers should adopt a very flexible way of requesting transactions, that is, don't give customers too much pressure or miss opportunities. There are two basic skills here: one is hypothetical trading. The phone does not require the customer to sign the bill, but assumes that the transaction has been completed and directly requests the specific action after the transaction. For example, "Manager Zhang, are you in the office this afternoon? I will arrange delivery with you. " But suppose the transaction can only be used when the phone temperature is good. In the course, we also use case studies to understand when this technology can be used. Another method is to design a reasonable incentive mechanism to speed up the transaction. In the course, I ask students to give examples of what promotions they can often see when shopping in department stores. These commonly used promotional techniques can actually be applied to telemarketing as an incentive to urge customers to make trading decisions. In the course, I will work with students to turn the listed sales skills into incentives for telemarketing.

Telemarketing self-management

In the last unit of the course, I discussed with you the self-management of telemarketers.

Master your own numbers

To tell the truth, telemarketing is a numbers game. Besides basic skills, persistence is the key to success. I will ask students three questions in each class: the first question: "Does anyone know the number of calls and the proportion of transactions?" Few people can answer this question in many courses. I remind my classmates to carefully record their telemarketing data, so as to ensure the achievement of performance goals. The figures are recorded according to your own telemarketing cycle. How many calls are made every day and how many people enter at each stage of the telemarketing cycle should be recorded. Next, according to the monthly, quarterly and annual statistics, you can master your own telephone transaction proportion figures. What's the use of this number? Then I asked the second question: "Who can list five ways to double your income?" Everyone thought for a long time and couldn't say. In fact, after mastering your own figures, the answer is simple: it can be achieved by doubling the figures in any of the four sales stages and requiring each old customer to introduce a new customer. The third question is: "If you make 30 strange phone calls every day and earn 654.38 million a year, will you do it?" Every student agrees to do it, but most people can't insist. Therefore, after mastering your own numbers, you should set yourself a goal of decomposing numbers. The digital goal of decomposition is very important, and telemarketers should strive to achieve it every day. Super high income will no longer be a dream. These problems are all related to the number of calls. The fact is, the more you call, the more you sell, the more you earn, and the better your telemarketing skills will be.

Get ready, get ready, get ready.

What are the three most important tasks of telemarketing self-management? The first is preparation, the second is preparation, and the third is preparation. The sales process of telemarketing is very short, and full preparation can seize the rare opportunity. In the first 10 seconds of telemarketing, we should seize the customer's attention and arouse his interest. It takes 30 seconds to decide the fate behind: whether to end or continue. I have hosted many public telephone courses and internal training courses. I have never seen a complete telemarketing preparation list or a satisfactory telephone conversation. The most common thing is to hear telemarketers complain that they are easily rejected by customers. Without adequate preparation, rejection is of course commonplace. In the course, I divided the students into groups and assumed a scenario: after understanding the customer's needs, I submitted the product specifications, and now I want to know the customer's decision-making process and their views on the product specifications. Each team needs to design a complete telemarketing preparation form. When discussing in groups, please send a student from each group to introduce the telemarketing preparation form completed by the group, and then ask all students to compare. Through this kind of training, students will be able to design a suitable telemarketing preparation form for the products or services they sell after training.

Telephone schedule and customer relationship management

In the course, I showed students the database of customer relationship management and introduced the relationship between telephone schedule and customer relationship management. Many products and services need many continuous sales calls to be finally solved, so telephone schedule and customer relationship management can help you track the sales calls until the transaction is completed. There are three basic tasks here: first, customer classification, which can be carried out with reference to the telemarketing cycle. The significance of customer classification is to remind the customers with the highest priority to handle it by themselves, and leave the most suitable time for calling and the most emotional time to the customers with the highest level. The second is to ensure that the key contents of each effective call are summarized and recorded. Effective telephone call refers to the telephone call process that has been completed or can be incorporated into senior customers through sales call. The record not only records the short telephone content, but also lists the time of follow-up and the next goal. Finally, all the phone records of a customer are associated with the customer and can be quickly queried. Through CRM software or self-built database with these functions, we can manage the telephone schedule and customer relationship, urge ourselves to keep making strange calls and follow up the calls in priority or agreed order, thus greatly improving the telephone sales turnover rate. Even if the number of sales calls is as high as 200 per day, you can manage your sales calls efficiently.

The whole day's telemarketing skills training has so much content that it is difficult to introduce it in detail with only one article. I hope I can discuss each part with readers in depth in the future. All training is not omnipotent, the most important thing is implementation. After the training, I sent a self-diagnosis form of telemarketing skills to all the students. After the students scored themselves, they made an improvement plan. We met for two months, scored again, and urged the students to implement it seriously. I also hope that readers can really stick to the skills and experience introduced in this article, and I wish you success.