Friday, March 26, 2010

Guerilla Guide to Telemarketing, Lead Generation and Telesales

The game of telemarketing and lead generation is all about prospecting: Not your usual prospecting but targeted prospecting, to be exact. This is possible with a prospect clients’ list. You need to be clear about your motives, though: Who are your target customers and why them? Targeted prospecting saves your time and effort by letting you speak with the right people.


Tune in to customers

Not all prospect customers resent cold calling. They just have too much to say. They speak more than telemarketers because deep down they might be interested. In this case you need to know where to go in. When a prospect customer blabs away, let him. But avoid a “yes” or “no” line of questioning. Instead, go for “why” and “how” lead questions as these prompt your customers to explain so you get more clues. Use courteous expressions instead of going point blank. When you allow your customer to vent this makes him feel good. Listen closely to your customer talk. Somewhere in his words you’ll find an opening for a sales pitch. It’s really a matter of timing.

Qualify leads

Fine-tune your leads and aim them well. This saves you time, effort and leads. When your leads are properly qualified, you hit close to home. So have a method for qualifying leads and adopt it to your prospect customers’ changing needs.


Speak your prospect customers’ language

Get a hold of your customers’ profile-- company position, social status, attitude, habits, etc, so you know how to “deal” with them. Pattern your sales pitch after their business “persona”. Speak on their terms, not yours.


Believe in your product

It’s easy to sell something that you believe and use yourself. This comes out naturally that your customers can literally feel it. You don’t need to do any compelling sales pitch because you’re talking about a product you have faith in.


Join social networking sites

You cover a lot of ground when you go out and meet people, even virtually. They may not buy from you right away but their friends, spouses and cousins might. Don’t limit your contacts to your Twitter and Facebook friends.


Some times the most unexpected person makes the best customer.

More than this, it’s a lot easier to get referrals from people on your social networking sites. You can leapfrog your sales and telemarketing campaign by creating a word of mouth blitz. This then gets passed around by friends, suppliers, partners and clients.


Work with time not against it

A telemarketer should have full use of his time. The best time is now. Ring up qualified and unqualified prospects and treat your time talking to them as “billable” time.

Finally, keep this in mind: People expect value for their money in the form of return investment. Sometimes customers buy something not because they need it, but because others don’t have it.