Telesales

[kate1]

As a seasoned telesales pro

Some of the ideas that you get called about, completely astound me.

We are a profession, I think alot of people forget that.

We are representing your business, were not just "telesales"

Think our profession is very understated

 

[Kernowman]

The trouble is most business owners think telesales is a way of getting in business "on the cheap". If they can outsource it, then they get "cheap" and have no responsibility for it's success or otherwise.

Coupled with that, few if none at all have applied ANY marketing thoughts whatsoever to where, when, how and what tack the sales process should take, so you are then expected to pluck prospects out of thin air and the best marketing material they can supply you to do the job with is a phone book and a dart to throw at it.

 

[kate1]

ive been doing this for 20 years. Im bloody bored of comm only sales people

 

[GemmaS]

Couldn't agree more Kate.

It's never the senior Marketing Management at successful SMEs and bluechips who give me a hard time with their enquiries and expectations.

It's the businesses with no website (or if they do have one, it's shockingly bad), an aol/hotmail email address, with a low value product or service who expect us, as an agency with proven success, to take on the risk of marketing their business on a commission only basis without any proof of concept.

They then tell me that they already know of companies who can do exactly the same as we do at a fraction of the cost.

So I suggest that, in that case, they may as well give them a call.

 

[kate1]

Yep nice one Gemma

Im sick to death of people asking for comm only sales people on products that are worth Zilch

 

[ttmarl]

Im a great believer that if a product is that easy to sell, why on earth would a company want to give away so much commission! They would cap your wage and keep the profit themselves!

 

[Unicora]

Im a great believer that if a product is that easy to sell, why on earth would a company want to give away so much commission! They would cap your wage and keep the profit themselves!

Very true but if you are not a good saleman/woman its money down the drain. No matter how good the product a bad salesman is going to get nowhere.

Not saying comm. is the way forward but a mix is the best option I would guess

 

[sinclairsea]

If you don't believe in the product you sell, you'll never sell it

 

If the marketing -in terms of proper targeting has been done well, then the sales process should be a lot easier.

A bad message to the right people is better than a good message to the wrong people.

It always comes back to being customer centric and being aware of the recipient's needs wants and aspirations and then matching your products features to those and turning them into benefits.

Pus forgive me those rude tele-sales people that are always calling trying to sell me a new mobile telephone contract I would not call professional. They think being aggressive when they get a polite no is called sales.

In my view tele sales should only be used as a way to get a face to face appointment.

 

[ttmarl]

Hi Michael
You are right about agressive telesales - my operators only sell by customer needs, benefits and solutions. I refuse to deal with any company telesales operator who is pushy with me. My team know, if I hear them being pushy they get 'pulled'. Anyone can scratch the pad once - its the ongoing maintence of business that is key!
Door opening generated by telesales naturally works as we do provide this service to 3 bluechip companies in the UK. I would however beg to differ that telesales can only be used for this service - I think it depends on the Industry!
We have proven results that telesales generates 6 times the amount of sales/ enquires/ appointments than an advert within our Industry.
My business has been running only 2 years and we have 6 well known brands who have ongoing work with us due to results. 2 of which are global!
T

 

I prefer sales letters as the first stage.

Advertising nearly always has a low response rate.

 

[CSBob]

Im a great believer that if a product is that easy to sell, why on earth would a company want to give away so much commission! They would cap your wage and keep the profit themselves!

A viewpoint from the other side of the fence, FWIW.

In our case, for instance, we know our product will sell in our particular indsutry but we're basically techies and geeks, not sales or marketing people. It makes perfect sense to us to pay a very good commission for professionals to do this, leaving us free to do what we do best - which is to develop more products for our industry.

Your suggestion seems to be that we should develop all sales & marketing in-house (because we believe in our product, whereas third parties might not) and just cut you guys out completely?

 

[ttmarl]

I worked for a pan european company - they decided to shed the sales team and pass it to an agency which operated with pay + commission. They had to pull out of the UK market within 2 years as the job they did was extremely poor.
We support existing field sales teams we don't replace them. I would never suggest to any company that they outsource all sales as they are not in control. Look at The Grocer online and see the type of pay for 'Quality' salesmen. You may say you are techies and geeks, but I bought my software from the chap whole built it - he knew it better than anyone else! Don't underestimate the influence you can have on your product!.......................I mean that as a compliment!

 

In response to CSB no it does not -you should employ a decent product manager.

I was a PM in the technology centre and was the link between sales the customer and the "techies".

As a PM eye always had one eye on what we could sell -ie what developments actually solve d a real world customer need or problem and the other eye on the profit margin.

The sales people were only interested in their commission.