Please learn to brief your Telemarketing Team properly.
If you don’t, the campaign will usually fail.
Most people start an engagement by passing information.
We receive manuals, brochures, .pdfs, and website visits,
then a request to call if we have any questions.
Well that’s good background, but a better approach is to
focus on the business problems you solve, and how
you save clients time, effort, and money.
Let’s step back for a minute and consider why.
The conventional telemarketing method starts by calling names
from a purchased list. The telemarketing person introduces
the company, lists the service offered, and starts asking questions.
This rarely works.
The first contact will probably be the wrong one.
Your call is an interruption and an irrelevance to them,
so they will try to get rid of you - as quickly as possible.
A better way is to open with a few questions, ones that anyone
can understand, but need an expert to answer.
That way, you are more likely to uncover the information
that you want
– are they a desirable customer?
- who is the correct contact?
This takes a little extra research effort, which is well worth it.
Here’s a real example from the world of photocopiers, printers and faxes.
A friend of ours runs a small photocopier business, and had trouble
generating leads.
So we sat down and conducted a proper briefing.
This consisted largely of letting him talk about his experiences
over the last 20 years, none of which can be found in the brochure...
Photocopiers are costly.
The ink is probably one of the most expensive commodities on earth,
usually several hundreds of pounds per litre.
A simple black and white copy costs about 5p a sheet.
Colour is more expensive – at least 30p.
This doesn’t sound much, but most major users such as
a school or mid-sized legal practice will happily print
40,000 sheets every month.
So they spend anywhere between £2,000 and £12,000 every month.
Many prints are wasted, or printed on old and inefficient machines.
Most users are wasting a lot of money.
Organisations fail to appreciate this, because different
departments use and pay for the machine.
We got the impression that people dislike talking about copiers.
Most of us hate wasting time standing over the machine.
It brings back memories of all the paper jams and breakdowns.
So we changed the approach.
We ditched the standard start (hello, we sell copiers,
printers and faxes) and replaced it with a series of questions:
‘ I’m looking for people who
• print 40,000 pages a month
• Realise it’s very expensive and
• Want to cut their costs.
Who would have that information?’
This got a much better response.
People would not know how many sheets they printed, and had to ask.
This led to a second conversation with someone who replaced the paper,
or re-ordered the ink, and knew who authorised the purchases.
It was also much easier to explain why I needed to know this,
and gave me the opportunity to prove it.
The usual response was to ask why we wanted to know.
Answer: ‘People printing just a small amount of black and white
on 40,000 sheets are spending at least £2000 a month.
If the prints are in colour then your spend is nearer £12,000.
Someone in your business will be interested in managing that cost.’
And if we had the usual conversation stopper ‘So what?’
We said:
'Well, let me put it like this.
If you’re printing in colour, then you are spending £144,000 a year.
Most people could cut that spend by 25% - or £36,000.00.
Put that in perspective.
Imagine someone went to the bank, and withdrew £36,000 of the company’s funds.
They then go and buy a brand new Mercedes, and give the keys
to someone walking by your office.
Of course, they’d be fired.
But your company could be wasting that every year.
Who `do I need to talk to?'
Well, you’ll be surprised to hear that worked rather well.
We uncovered a few leads, and produced a list of people
who would be very interested in talking to us in a few months.
If this situation is applicable to you, get in touch
so we can help you.