Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Getting Telemarketing to Help You Up

You need to beat the competition and be on top.

That’s the reason B2B telemarketing has become a very important aspect of business. You’ll need it for lead generation and in keeping a business afloat during these difficult times. You need really good telemarketing skills when it comes to good quality B2B leads. You will need the services of professional telemarketers when it comes to prospecting important business leads.

A lot about telemarketing has changed over the years. Different times require different tactics to get leads. They don’t just call private individuals in their home phone numbers anymore. That’s because that would cause a host of problems to professional telemarketers. You could pretty much predict what would happen if telemarketers during dinner. You’re going to stand up from the dinner table just to answer the phone call. And of course, you’d be absolutely irritated to find out that a complete stranger is talking to you, convincing you to buy something from the.

Now, those abrasive areas are what telemarketers usually avoid. They now focus more on developing a very profitable area of telemarketing: B2B leads generation. It’s the one bright spot in lead generation. It’s a simple truth that businesses need other businesses to continue working. It’s only expected for them to employ B2B telemarketing.

Indeed, this is an advantage that doesn’t pass by most of the time. Grab the opportunity the moment it presents itself to you. You can’t let the chance slip by and miss improving your sales performance.

You Can’t Go Wrong with Telemarketing

It’s the time for you to be at the head of the race. You can’t deny the importance of B2B telemarketing when it comes to lead generation and in keeping a business afloat during these difficult times. You need really good skills when it comes to producing fine quality B2B leads. It is these times that you will need the services of professional telemarketers.

Telemarketing has pretty much evolved over the years. The changing times require a change in tactics. Before, telemarketers generate their leads by calling private individuals from their private homes. This set-up makes it understandable why there are a lot of people who aren’t happy with these professionals. Imagine standing up abruptly from the dinner table just to answer a phone call. You could pretty much predict what will happen if you’re then greeted by some stranger selling you mortuary insurance or some other item you might deem as trash.

It’s common now for telemarketers to avoid these abrasive areas. They just put more focus on the aspect of telemarketing that is quite profitable: generating B2B leads. It’s the one area that is showing a bright spot for the industry. Businesses need other businesses to survive, that’s the truth. It’s only natural for them to turn to telemarketing for their B2B telemarketing needs.

Really, this is an opportunity that you shouldn’t waste. There are so many things that you can gain just by using this business strategy. Try it and I assure you, you will not feel bad about this.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Reasons Why You Should Build Your Company's Name Through Lead Generation

Why is it so important to promote your company's brand name? You may ask yourself this question, but the main answer would be because companies that are better known in the eyes of the public has always been reported to have sales excellence. One good way to advertise your company's names is through lead generation. Here are some of the reasons why you should always market your company's name through lead generation.

• Increase in Confidence
When your company's name gets better at being well-known to the public, you and your employees will gain a big boost in confidence. The more confidence your company has, the driving force for you and your employees to achieve business goals will be attainable at a much faster pace.
• Expansion of Target Markets
Since your company is now well-known, people will start talking about your company. This is an indirect approach to getting as many referrals as possible. Also, these referrals are now your qualified leads and you didn't even have to lay a finger to get them for it was your qualified leads and customers who got these leads for you.
• Increase in Sales
As your company gets more and more well-known through your lead generation campaign, you can get many qualified leads for your lead database. And the more leads you have the more chances of converting these leads into quality customers for your company; and the more customers means more business transactions. More business transactions ultimately means more profit for your company.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Cold-Calling Tips: Prepare Before Calling To Ensure Success

When a person is armed with good attitude, an arsenal skills and wit, it would be very difficult for failure to allow such man on bended knows. With cold-calling, the same applies. If telemarketers are unprepared, there is a fat chance that a phone conversation would end in tears of disappointment.

An objection fired in a cold call has become usual that it would be rare for a cold-caller not to hear a single rejection. To effectively manage oppositions, preparation is the best remedy. When is an individual deemed prepared? Here are several ways:

• Dig up information through research and do this before a phone call is made. With this, you will have relevant topics to discuss with your sales leads. Moreover, it will catch the prospects' attention. After all, what they want to talk is on things that can improve them professionally and/or personally.
• Make your prospects anticipate your call. This can be done by sending a marketing collateral through direct mail, email, fax voicemail. Just be assured that the message had been received before initiating a phone call.
• Prepare a testimonial statement. This contains how your company had been a good aid to previous clients. Then connect this idea with how your firm can do the same with the prospects.
• Create a FAQ's list and try answering them. This will boost your self-esteem and reduce anxiety.
• Don't stop practicing. Keep in mind that cold-calling is a profession. It can only be polished through experiences and constant practice.
• Improve your skills. This can be made possible by following the preceding statements.

Cold-calling Is Not Cold After All

Many will say that cold-calling is a dull, boring and a less interesting job. If it really it is, then perhaps, it will be fair to say that cold-callers are dull, boring, and less interesting people. After all, who does a cold-calling job? Additionally, this is supported by human nature itself that our actions tell us who we really are.

It does not need to be Einstein-like to know how to get fun while being effective in cold-calling. Some telemarketers thought that cold-calling is a daily struggle when in fact it is a challenge. It is a goal that when achieved through practice and skills, brings a lot of fun. Who says doing business is not fun? I digress.

Here are the following reasons why cold-calling is too far from the common misconception of “dull, boring and less interesting”.

1. Your work provides solutions to the company, the client of the company and the sales leads. There could be no greater hell than to be of little help. You work is to seek those who have existing problems and to provide immediate solutions to them. The joy it brings is a hundredfold to yourself. You become happier when you know that someone you had helped is happy, even to strangers.
2. Cold-calling is one way to meet new people. Though it might not be the right place, it cannot be denied that a phone call is another avenue for you to meet new people. When your mission is to be friends with these prospects by providing them with the solutions of their problems, you will be stimulated to be more productive.
3. Cold-calling is an education in itself. You learn both good communication and interpersonal skills.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Getting Telemarketing Done While You Sleep

Getting telemarketing done while you sleep does not mean it has to be done literally. This means that your company or your business organization can outsource to professional telemarketers in order to market your products most especially to those parts of the world that are not yet asleep. This is the beauty of outsourcing your services to a telemarketing company as they will search for possible clients for you even to parts of the world that you may have not yet even heard about.

When your company has ceased operations for the day and your own team of are taking their beauty sleep, whenever you outsource to another company they would be assigned the task of selling your products and services to countries that may still be at daytime. For example, it may already be 10:30 in the evening from where you live but to these telephone representatives who are following the standard time of the country that they are calling, it may still be 10:30 in the morning there.

This is increase sales opportunities for your company or business as these telephone marketing representatives work day and night to ensure that your company gets the right number of sales. Furthermore, outsourcing to another company would make sure that you will stay ahead of the competition. Imagine this, you have a competitor that has already cemented its feet on the business world whereas your company would just be starting. Once you have already outsourced your services, expect that you will soon be competing head-to-head with that other company.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

B2B Lead Generation: Helping Small Business Grow

Business entities, the size notwithstanding, have established successful marketing strategies that resulted into a more effective lead generation. For the neophytes and small-scale firms, business-to-business (B2B) lead generation through telemarketing is utmost the best method to market products and services.

Success in lead generation is not without difficulty, even double for small firms. The best that these companies have are small and tight budgets with a modest quantity and quality of resources, both materials and humans. Competing with the business leaders seems to be a tough call.

However, the smartest way to keep the sales pipeline flowing is an effective sales and marketing technique. Of all the options to choose from, B2B lead generation stands to be the greatest help small firms have.

Beefing up an efficient and effective B2B lead generation requires constant practice of three essential requisites. These include a.) identifying what leads are qualified b.) targeting exact audience and c.) lead nurturing.

Knowing what direction a company is heading for will be a guide in reaching its goals. This turned out to be one concept several firms missed or ignored. In generating leads, it is crucial to know what type of prospects the company is looking for.

Targeting these prospects through different mediums such as cold-calling or tele-prospecting, comes after. Attributes of reach and response efficiency should be present in the medium/s to be used in targeting sales leads. The faster, the better.

Lead nurturing, on the other hand, is the main determinant whether these prospects will be sales-ready. A firm which ignores prospects loses them right away. To a company that tirelessly keep its qualified leads taken care of will going to smell success.

Big things come from small one. A small-scale company can be a business giant. B2B lead generation will be a great instrument to make this a possibility.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Tips to Ensure Your Telesales Plan Would Run Successfully

With the recent rise in technology, companies and businesses alike are trying their best to adapt and keep up with the current trends in selling their products and services. Most of these companies do not know that one of the most effective ways to sell their goods is still through telesales. This is because with telesales, the sales representative and their sales lead will have a direct conversation with each other and it would be easier for the representative to sell through the telephone because they can relay messages at a much clearer and quicker pace.

But before starting off with the telesales campaign, you should first and foremost develop a specific plan. Always forecast the results of your campaign and always take into account all known variables that would affect your overall results. To start, identify how selling through the telephone can affect your company and cite the pros and cons of your campaign.

After you have developed your marketing plans and goals, it's now time to test it out. You can test out your campaign by outsourcing towards a different company that can handle phone selling for you. If the result from the other company has been proved very promising for the growth of your company, you now have the decision to either continue to outsource your services or withdraw your services from that company and start selling through the phone within the walls of your company.

These tips would give you a good kick start in your telephone sales campaign. Once you get the hang of selling through the telephone, no doubt that your company's rate of income will shoot straight up.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Advantages of a Telemarketing Company with Multilingual Support

With the current rise in telemarketing trends, a company needs to keep up with the competition in order to stay in the loop. Not only does the company need to keep up with the latest business trends but the telemarketers within the company need to keep up as well. One way to keep up with the trends is to provide multilingual support to international customers.

Think about it, if a company would only provide support and services to those who would know their local dialect then possibility of business growth would be halted. With multilingual support, a company would be able to contact possible customers from all over the world. For example, a call center agent from America would call clients from China because that American agent knows the Chinese language. If a company would engage in telemarketing services that would provide multilingual support then the possibilities for business growth would be endless.

Usually, companies and business firms alike would engage in business transactions from other countries in order to get goods and services at much lower costs. With multilingual support, the language barrier between countries would be thinned out and can even be breached. With businesses today continuously trying to find better and cost efficient ways in order to solve their problems, they should start training their employees with multilingual support especially the ones that keep up with company relations. This is most especially true to telemarketing companies that want to locate more qualified leads and potential clients.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Boost Your Software Sales Leads with Telemarketing

One thing that I always find very inconvenient with software products and services is this: it loses its value pretty fast. That’s why if you are in the software industry, it pays to know what tools can be used to promote your products well. Among the myriad of high-tech strategies that can be used, one method stands out: telemarketing.

Yes, you heard me right. This old-fashioned marketing strategy is fast becoming the strongest tool available in the software industry. It can get the most number of customers with the least cost. Plus, its operations can be easily measured in terms of performance. Professional telemarketers can promote products better than a TV commercial, answer customer questions and concerns, get feedback from users of the software products fast, and perform a multitude of other tasks that is not possible with other methods.

Software leads are pretty hard to obtain, that’s why software telemarketing is constantly employed to generate them. This is because sales and closed deals are dependent on obtaining good quality leads. And telemarketing services providers take pride in saying that they can get that particular job done in the shortest possible time.

That’s good news for software companies, since they need to get their wares off the shelf fast. The sooner they can be sold, the better the chances of earning good revenue. I’m sure you want to have that, too. If that’s the case, then perhaps it’s time for you to experience the telemarketing advantage. It’s an opportunity you shouldn’t miss.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Happy Smiles Lead to Happy Customers

One reason why telemarketers from call centers worldwide do not reach their sales quota is because they don't sound interesting over the phone. Most people would want to talk to someone who can sound interesting and appealing. This is to let customers know that the telemarketer knows what they are selling and know that it is the right product or service that their customers need.

From the start of the call, professional telemarketers should sound interested at the same time keeping a level of professionalism over the phone. If the tone and speech of the telesales agent would be appealing, then that agent is off to a running start to a sale, but when they sound hesitant the customer would most probably give a reason to not buy their product and hang up the phone.

Take for example these two opening scripts:

“Hello John! This is Katie calling from----We met last month during that press conference, how are things going? You said that you were interested in purchasing one of our products because of---- In actuality, we are now offering----”

or this one,

“Hello John, this is Katie from---- We are offering a new product called---- and we would like to know if you are interested in purchasing it or some of our products... ?”

In these examples, we can see that the first opening script would be the most effective than the second one since the first one lets the customer know that the agent is interested in the conversation rather than immediately trying to close the sale. When phone relationships are built from telemarketer to agent, chances are the phone call will end in a sale thus letting the business gain more profit.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Telemarketing and Telesales - Which is Which?

Telemarketing and telesales are two words that are commonly used today. Although there are similarities between the two, what they represent can be different. A lot of people use both words in different scenarios but not all people really know what these two words mean.

Most business firms today use the term telemarketing whenever a phone call is issued to prospect clients. This includes the advertising of their products and services as well as letting their customer purchase them over the phone.

When properly used, telemarketing and telesales mean two different things. When we say telemarketing, it is a service that is used to generate customer feedback, generates interests and opportunities by the use of advertising, provides qualified leads, and generates and finalizes appointments by the use of the telephone. Whereas telesales only means that it is a service that tries to persuade and sell products and services by the use of the telephone.

To make a brief description, telemarketing creates sales leads, prospects for businesses, and creates an advertising campaign. After telemarketing is done, telesales can be used to make those opportunities into profit and sales for a business firm.

Aside from telemarketing and telesales to be different by meaning, how they are to be used are also different. Telemarketing agents are people who are good at attracting probable customers but may lack in closing a sale. Telesales agents are those who are readily skilled and talented on how to close a sale. With these descriptions, the reason why people get confused on what word to use is because telemarketing and telesales always work closely together.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Appointment Setting - A Means to Achieve Business Growth

Appointment setting is one of the many factors that contribute to the success of businesses. This is an important and crucial process specially when looking to establish a connection with clients. This however is not an easy task, so you need to take some careful thought to achieve success.

Outsourcing this kind of service is becoming popular these days, this is more beneficial because it is cost-effective compared to hiring in house appointment setters. The agents who will call are also well trained so you don't have to spend so much of your time training your own people.

What you only have to do here is to provide the outsourced company all the qualifications and contacts to start up your campaign.

When you want to hire another company to set up an appointment for you, there should be an assurance that agents have the knowledge and understanding of the products being offered. They should also be able to communicate all the information well to the customers.

The success of an appointment setting campaign does not only lie on being able to set a meeting with all your potential clients. It also requires constant learning through practice, there are always new ways and means to achieve better results. It is not the only factor that contributes to business growth but setting appointments is a crucial process.

It is definitely a must in any business marketing arsenal. If you have a good process in setting up appointments you'll better launch your business to the road of success.


Thursday, October 14, 2010

Thirsty For Leads? Make Way For Teleprospecting Magic

Salespeople everywhere constantly find themselves caught in difficult situations. Being declined in person or over the phone is nothing new to them. This is the reason why many businesses have been hiring teleprospecting companies to help their sales teams carry a huge burden. Several companies that want to remain competitive have taken the leap because of teleprospecting's effectiveness in qualifying leads. But will it work for your business?

Business-to-business teleprospecting is a great means to generate and qualify leads. It helps businesses avoid the lengthy and tedious process of finding prospects using other methods. Instead of utilizing a large database of potential clients that may or may not yield results, teleprospecting identifies those who are genuinely interested and increases the rate of conversion.

There are many good and talented teleprospectors who are very well trained to perform lead generation tasks. They have ample experiences speaking with top-level decision makers and are extremely knowledgeable in identifying pain points that will help make a prospect consider purchasing certain products or services. It is a cost efficient decision to let a teleprospecting company select legitimate prospects rather than have inside salespeople waste their attention on inappropriate leads.

Just how much help can you get from teleprospecting?

• Teleprospecting agencies only hire well-qualified marketing staff to provide high-quality leads.
• It allows your sales professionals focus on prospects who are most likely to buy.
• It pinpoints customers from your CRM and other marketing initiatives that may have been overlooked.
• Your chosen teleprospecting company stays in touch with your inside sales team to provide continuous update on leads that require close attention.
• It speeds up your business development helping you maintain your competitive edge.

If your business is struggling to grow, it is probably high-time for you to make the ultimate decision and let teleprospecting do lead generation wonders for your company.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

How To Achieve Outbound Telemarketing Success

Outbound telemarketing process is the professional use of the telephone to generate sales and advertise a company's product or service. Virtually all types of businesses today either have their own telephone marketing teams or outsource outbound cold-calling services to third party telemarketing firms.

Outbound cold-calling is a job that requires professional teleselling skills, patience and persistence. Below are some of the ways to achieve outbound telemarketing success:

1. Always maintain a prospective attitude. Be positive and optimistic each calling day. The job requires you to befriend the telephone, so spend as much time with it as you can to increase your opportunities for finding new business. Be confident (but not overly) in all your calls.
2. Before you are able to speak with the decision maker, you must first get past the receptionist or the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers, as most salespeople say, are necessary evils in the world of business. They may pose challenges to your cold-calling job, but they are not the enemies. Being polite and friendly when talking to them usually works, and if you ask them for help in directing you to the right person, they usually do.
3. Make sure to speak and close sales with and only with decision makers no matter what size the business is. Conduct your product discussions and negotiations with only them and not anyone else in order to avoid wasting time. For SMEs, it is common that the person who decides is the owner.
4. Be careful what you tell your prospects or customers. Do not mislead them or confuse them with pricing and offers. If you promise to give them discounts or freebies, make sure you are true to your word. Misleading statements or misrepresentation is a no-no in the telemarketing industry because it negatively impacts the way customers or prospects perceive the company you are calling for.
5. Telemarketing or cold-calling is your job, and you should always be prospecting. In each call, your main purpose is to make the customers or prospects see the value in your offer. The more people you speak with, the better your chances are at making a sale or scheduling an appointment. Perform timely follow-up calls so as not to waste business opportunities.

Telemarketing is not for everyone. If you really have the knack for telephone sales and you possess the skills it requires, then you have a great chance of succeeding. Do not involve yourself in it half-heartedly or just because the pay is good. Like any other job, you can perform better if you like and love what you do.




Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Is It Possible To Out-Perform US Call Centers?

There is an existing debate going on between proponents of offshoring call centers and those against it. The belief that US Call centers can communicate messages effectively, know-how on instinctively promoting products and services and closing a sale outweighs the beneficial effect it brings globally, specially to third-world countries, is becoming prevalent.

Clearly the US Call Center industry has two clear and distinct advantages over its offshore competitors.

1. Clear Communication

Let's face it, no amount of language training can ever replicate those of a native-speaker. Accent and language barriers are the chief reasons why US callers hang-up. They get annoyed at the stark realization that they're trapped in a lengthy sales script delivered in a hard-to-understand accent. What's sad is that for a lot of these callers, a not-so-american accent equates to a not-so-impressive customer service. Even having an American sounding name doesn't help at all, in some situations it even infuriates the caller because the name doesn't match the accent.

Customer satisfaction surveys proves this point because as soon as the caller realizes that they're calling a call center instead of the business they need to be connected to, their opinions turn south. Even more so when they realize that they're speaking with a non-US agent, the opinions toward the agent plummets even more. Callers often point out difficulty in communicating with thick-accented agents, and they feel just moving back and forth with a set of scripted questions, lengthening the time spent asking even simplest of questions.

2. Cultural Affinity

A shared language and business culture is what connects US agents naturally connect with their callers.

These are but some of the hurdles offshore and outsourced BPO's and Telemarketing Call Centers have to face. What is least mentioned is the fact that offshore telemarketing services, lead generation and answering services provide a stable income for third world countries. What they lack in language proficiency they make up in excellent customer service, going the extra mile to prove that having a little if not negligible accent, is just a minor inconvenience compared to the customer service they will experience.


Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Appointment Setting: Key Element for Business Growth

For businesses to gain more customers and increase their market share, they must focus on an important element of business development – appointment setting. It has been the B2B industry's lifeblood when it comes to acquiring more leads and sales. Appointment setting by far is one of the most viable and flexible marketing tools organizations can employ. Companies from around the world have been using the process of setting appointments for growing their pipelines.

Be that as it may, the changing economy and technological evolution force companies to come up with better marketing solutions to draw more customers. This is the reason why professional telemarketing firms have developed innovative appointment setting programs to arouse interest in people and eventually buy certain products and services.

Appointment setting is critical in a cutthroat business environment. Organizations need to expand their client base to secure a stable position in the industry they belong to. Some companies have their own marketing teams that implement appointment setting projects while other agencies engage the services of professional telemarketing firms. These firms are able to develop personalized and customized telemarketing activities based on a company's marketing goals.

The usual process of generating leads through setting appointments begin with calling potential customers or prospects with the intention of arranging a face-to-face meeting for a firm's sales representative. Once the prospect agrees to the meeting, the sales representative now has the opportunity to discuss the service or product in detail as well as establish rapport with the decision-maker.

The appointment setting process allows salespeople to have a fair chance at demonstrating how certain products/services can be beneficial to the prospects. It also provides the prospects more time to know what advantages or disadvantages the products/services have that will help them determine whether to buy or not.

Appointment setting may seem like an easy task, but it requires more than just calling people and arranging meetings. Customers and prospects demand more substance from a meeting as opposed to watching mere product demonstrations and listening to sales pitches. Salespeople must be responsible for developing an impression of how they want the company to be perceived.


Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Outsourcing Lead Generation Services

For a starting company or small business to get a leg up these days the use of lead generation services is often the only way to go so they can actually have a sales team of their own. Unless your current staff has plenty of time to spare, this is a guaranteed way to make your presence known in the market.

Many firms and small businesses unfortunately do not see their companies heading in that direction. They feel that lead generation services is not the right choice for them as of the moment. Some managers are not comforted with the idea of outsourcing such an important area as sales, rejecting the idea of outsourcing lead generation assistance because they believe they can do a better job of controlling their company image and presentation of product or service information.

Deciding to use BPO lead generation services, there should be a striking balance between control, image, and cost.

The range of services provided by lead generation services companies is the most pressing concern for most businesses. Most companies however, focuses on B2B services.

A diverse range of services will be offered by different companies. But a great deal of lead generation services companies will offer the following services:

-- Provide a valid list of leads for you to follow up on
-- Referral management
-- Up selling
-- Cross Selling
-- Building customer relationships
-- Management of all leads through the first sale - converting the lead
-- Solicitation of leads via Direct Mail
-- Telemarketing programs
-- Building a lead profile
-- Contacting and qualifying leads for you
-- Follow-up with people who make inquiries

It's acceptable to just acquire the lead generation services they require straight off and then just add others as the business grows along the way. Proceeding slowly but surely is advised.

Once you've figured out which type of services you need and you've obtained the costing estimates, be sure you are working with a company of untainted reputation. No harm in check out these companies carefully.

Obtaining the services of lead generation contact centers can be the make or break for small capital businesses and professional firms alike. Oftentimes, these firms can spell the difference between having a sales team that works and not having a sales team at all. When a new product or service is introduced to the market, lead generation services can definitely prove to be indispensable.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

TELEMARKETING ETIQUETTE: HONESTY IS STILL THE BEST POLICY

Telephone selling has evolved tremendously along with technology. Outbound call centers and professional services firms are continuously growing as demands for new products and services rise up. Salespeople are constantly improving their telemarketing skills in order to stimulate customer interest and eventually make a sale.

Some telemarketers have developed bad habits to cope with the physical and mental challenges of the job. These behavioral changes include developing overly aggressive and displeasing telemarketing strategies such as lying.

Everybody is capable of lying, but for businesses, INTEGRITY is a virtue that must never be broken. In order for companies to achieve success, every single transaction should be conducted with professionalism and honesty, and this includes phone selling.

So how does one sell with Integrity? In her book Selling to Anyone Over the Phone, Renee P. Walkup (with Sandra L. McKee) gave six ideas:

• Always tell your customers the truth – that way, if you're not smart enough to remember a lie, you don't have to worry about it later! Over the phone, your customers can't see you, so they may be worried about your integrity at first anyway.

• If you don't know the answer immediately, tell your customer that you will check into it and get back to him or her by a certain time. That way, you preserve your credibility instead of guessing.

• Fact-check before quoting a price. If you give a ballpark figure on your product or service, it could possibly come back to haunt you later. You may have either overquoted, which negatively affects your credibility, or underquoted, which makes you look like a liar!

• Make sure you understand what your customer's real need is. If you don't understand the customer's specific problem or goal, you may end up trying to make a square product fit into a round hole.

• Remember that your long-term success is dependent on happy and loyal customers. Don't blow it.

• Think before you speak.


Telephone selling can be challenging, but with the right attitude, salespeople can pull it off without resorting to deception and using misleading statements. Telemarketers are considered the front-liners, so it is always best to start any phone selling campaign with genuine regard for the customer.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Understanding Telesales as an Integral Part of Business

A vast majority of people regard telesales or telemarketing with disdain, and that's understandable. If you are on the receiving end of these persistent and at times overly aggressive calls, you can't help but feel rather harassed or abused by telesellers whose main objective is to convince you to try or buy a certain product or service. Who would want to be engaged in a seemingly unending process of question and answer for something that you may not need in the first place? For most people, especially in a busy corporate world, spending time on the phone with somebody you don't know to discuss products specifics is a complete waste of time.

This is not the case for telemarketing companies who have mastered telephone selling skills and that are amazingly thriving in today's cutthroat business environment. For these marketing professionals, overcoming the challenges of the teleselling process is a major part of the job.

While the idea of telephone selling is unlikeable for most consumers, its importance is overshadowed with negativity from people who had antagonizing experiences from telemarketers in the past.

Telesales play a major role in establishing communication between businesses and consumers. Companies are able to continuously come up with new things which turn out to be commodities and essentials as a result of telephone selling. Businesses are able to meet the demands of customers as the outcome of marketing through telesales. Most marketing strategies utilize telecommunications to do market researches, surveys, and prospecting for the purpose of interacting with consumers. Businesses won't succeed without fully understanding customer behaviors, demands and predicament, and for these companies telesales is the most effective way to help them reach out to consumers.

It may seem like a love-hate relationship with telesales; businesses love it because it has been proven to increase their profits, and most people hate it because it is time consuming and some telephone selling practices are quite detestable. Understanding telesales and its facets is important in order to accept and embrace its existence. As long as people exist and continue to have demands for things, telesales is here to stay.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Telemarketing to Increase Customer Response

Telemarketing can be an effective tool for increasing sales and customer response rates. Customers often find it simple and convenient to do business over the phone.

When incorporating telemarketing into your sales program, take a systemic approach, using it to enhance other sales and marketing programs. Professional telemarketing services in Australia provides opportunities to increase sales and customer contact, improve service levels, conduct quick, cost-effective customer research, and reduce overall marketing costs.

Telemarketing provides a great deal of valuable information, which can enable you to monitor campaigns or identify sales and marketing trends. Continually evaluating this data is important to ensure effectiveness and assist with future campaign planning.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Sales Leads: Companies’ Lifeblood

Sales leads are considered the lifeblood of most companies. A good sales person can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with sales leads that are properly qualified. Unfortunately, finding a company that knows the inside secrets of generating sales leads and properly qualifying sales leads is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Look no more. Callbox generates only the most qualified leads using outbound telemarketing. Sales leads generated through telemarketing are of the highest quality. Telemarketing is an interactive two-way communication. By asking specific relevant questions, you can determine who your best prospects are, and who are not. Qualified sales leads maximize your sales force’s valuable time and increase your return on investment.

Callbox specializes in carefully reaching through your target market, and producing qualified sales leads. With today’s dialing technology, it is more cost effective to outsource your sales lead generation to telemarketing company that specializes on it, rather than doing it in-house.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Demand for Lead Generation

There is a great demand for sales lead generation services nowadays. Businesses and companies are challenged to gather a lot of sales leads in order to compete effectively. This is where the need of lead generation service arises. Lead generation service provides sales leads to the companies so that they can now have their sales team focus on the sales-ready leads. A variety of lead generation tools are used to contact millions of people. Other tools in the lead generation service arsenal filter and gather only quality sales leads that the company would need.

The need for lead generation services is growing rapidly. It is projected that almost all businesses would be acquiring this service. The company that uses lead generation services could easily save a lot of money by having the lead generation team work as an extended sales team. In this way, the company does not need to pay for employee benefits because they only get paid according to the leads they acquire.

Most businesses are aware of the benefits of lead generation services. Due the growing demand for the service, a lot of lead generation companies are expanding rapidly.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Telemarketing for Immediate Customers’ Feedback

Telemarketing is the most interactive marketing medium available. Telemarketing offers you an immediate feedback and poses limelight of purchasing decisions of customers. This response eventually aids you to respond to the market needs. You stay ahead of the competitors and a lot step further to fulfill the needs and expectation of customers.

Telemarketing provides you with immediate feedback and valuable information that can quickly be analyzed. Consistently outperforms all others of marketing media, telemarketing is the most powerful and multi-billion marketing tool. It should be a part of your marketing strategy.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Telemarketing: Closing a Sale Right Away

The notions of telemarketing stand as a form of bringing up certain product or service to clients without directly spending on meal and travel allowances of sales team but approaching people from end to end. Selling involves a process and a part of that process is telemarketing. With the process, the deal may be done right away after telemarketing or requires the demo of the product or appointment after it. There are sometimes clients who are hard to negotiate with and just reason out that they have no time in doing business at the moment. Given this fact, the telemarketing comes in.

Understanding the importance of telemarketing concepts, companies should be able to screen their applicants carefully according to the skills that they have. Motivating telemarketers is also important because selling is undeniably a hard task considering that you’ll be talking to people from different walks of life with different moods. Being a seller is likely a shock absorber, people just don’t mind banging and yelling another person at the top of their voices.

Since telemarketing concepts is a way to make your sale, hence it is very important. Let your business grow with telemarketing!

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Increase Your Telemarketing Sales

For a business to survive, generating sales is very important. To increase number of their sales, companies utilizes telemarketing and telemarketing lead generation as techniques. Above all of these, cutting back customers rejection and increasing sales number through telemarketing is the main goal.

Here’s my quick guide to help increase telemarketing sales:

Know your customer first - Find out much information about your client as possible. You should not jump immediately with a sales pitch. Start it by initiating open-ended questions to evaluate what kind of products or services they are looking for.

Promote your product - Speak about your products’ benefit. Generating interest with your own product attracts customers’ interest.

Describe your product in a detailed way – Keeping things straight and simple will help customers visualize using the product. Avoid being overly technical.

Have a personalized sales pitch – Use customers’ name in the entire conversation. Avoid setting strict questions. Keep the conversation casual as much as possible.

Start from the top – Offer the most expensive services first. If the customer refuses to it, don’t be discouraged. Work down your way to offer lower cost options. Avoid pushy and threatening statements. Don’t cross the line.

Seal the deal with a commitment. If the customer asks for a call back in a specific date and time, take note of it. Don’t just assume. Customers like it when you listen to their instructions and follow what they want.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Outsourcing a Call Center is Cost-Effective

In today’s competition, a company needs to advance in all of its aspects. It is essential to maintain cost-effective services that can help in the functioning of the entire network with the limited resources. A call center provides a set of business services that add to the value of your organization while reducing costs. Now, call center outsourcing helps small, large and medium sized businesses to function effectively.

Call center outsourcing
becomes a helpful way to generate revenue and customers. It forms to be a great support for the current customers. Many companies outsource all their service center requirements, not only because of lower costs and better management but also because of the specialized professional help that they can get.

A company that seeks out for the essential BPO services gets a break from their spending. Without spending much time on their non-core activities, its time to acquire services that give best returns on your investment. Your company will be able to improve the customer support, reduce costs and maximize total profits by outsourcing the call center services.

Call center services include: A great variety of services that a business can benefit from. These include the professional outbound services, inbound call center, telemarketing, technical support, order taking, consulting services and back office. These services are specially customized to respond to your business needs. You can modify your call center into a special cost center. Your company can use the great deal of customers as an opportunity to increase sales through proper utilization and understanding of available technology, needs and fashion of customers.

Today, call center outsourcing remains the most practical means to ensure good service. It reduces operating costs of the call center. By outsourcing functions as offered by the contact center firms will be able to improve upon the productivity. Service time and the area to focus on the core activities are maximized. It is your job to filter through the huge numbers of outsourcing call center units to get the business contract that can give you best service and results.

Most customer service centers are recognized to earn trust so as to compete with your competitors. Taking specialist help with prove to be beneficial in your business and in earning the trust of your customers. Earn the trust of your customers in carrying quality services like help desk, technical support, outbound telemarketing, back office, etc.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Understanding the Nature of Telemarketing

Being a direct marketing strategy, telemarketing helps network sales associates and potential clients, your business with other businesses and the like. There are ways by which you can establish and retain clients through telemarketing. You will always want to make your customers loyal, so you need to be memorable. Whether your telemarketing is for outbound or inbound calls, lead generation or sales, here are various ways to apply marketing methods to meet your telemarketing needs:

First, be involved with your customers by knowing how they take their calls. If they answer by giving their first or last name, address them as they introduced themselves. Second, acknowledge the name they give. Always address them with their last name to sound professionally. Third, make them remember you in a positive note. Many telemarketing sales are not made from the first call, so make sure that you will give them a return or callback number including the area code. Repeat the number twice if said unclearly. Do not hard sell. Simply give your customers reasons to purchase your product immediately. Understand what your customers need and provide them. If you can not meet what they need, refer to those who can help them. Always give them truthful messages. If they can trust you then they will on coming back.

Try to have these ideas for negotiating and establishing a relationship with your customers. Take them to identify shortcomings in their plans provide and it with the quality of your product and service. Give them the quality service that they may remember you always.

Outsourcing to a call center company can help you with your telemarketing needs. Call center companies provides professionally- trained staff to handle your telemarketing campaign. Thus, you and your company are assured with quality service and customer satisfaction.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Outsourcing Telemarketing Service for Lead Generation

Lead Generation expands company’s market share by reaching the high-level decision makers within its target industry. Most Lead specialists are skilled in identifying prospects’ needs. They also inspire the prospect’s executives to hire telemarketing call centers to produce qualified leads and to set appointments. Outsourcing the lead process increases the company’s sales and revenues while cost is reduced. Outsourced Lead Generation eliminates a challenging management process. Telemarketing call centers add sales orientation policies to get benefits from the market. If market trends shift and changes in the global market, lead generation should be done continuously.

Lead Generation includes process of finding prospective customers, generation of leads list and the launch of a calling campaign. Here are few steps for you to generate leads:

First, set criteria to identify the prospect which a client wants to have a negotiation with. Criteria can be good points for it guides you to go exactly where you should. However, a client’s criteria must not be too specific or too general to give space to the changing market trend.

Second, your marketing representative must know his or her lead source. He must identify lead sources to use them efficiently and effectively. Build leads regularly and update them continuously.

Third, if you hire your own lead callers, you should train your staff on phone etiquette. They should know how to identify prospects, questions and issues about your service. You must also establish a workplace exclusively for the lead generation telemarketers. To have a good sales script that can guide telemarketers is also needed.

Fourth, if you engage with your own lead generation campaign, make sure to have your own automated responder, like Live Chat, wherein customers can leave inquiries when you are not around to answer the phone. It also allows them to leave their contact details to ensure that you can contact them as soon as a representative is available.

Outsourcing your leads can make them more effective and practical as compared to maintaining your own private staff to do the job for you. Outsourced lead generation telemarketing is cost-efficient. The client can simply negotiate for a month-long campaign and has the chance to end the partnership after the contract or to continue.

The companies that outsource this service will be able to save costs of training. Outsourced Lead Generation campaigns maintain their own training team that is expert in script making, phone etiquette and convincing techniques.

Moreover, telemarketing companies provide clients with regular progress reports to make sure that the representatives are performing excellently. It is best to outsource lead generation needs to an established telemarketing call center or outbound telemarketing firms for they are equipped with the latest technology and excellent people to do the campaign.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Appointment Setting and Lead Generation as Call Center Services

Scheduling is an imperative feature in one’s life. It makes life easier and organized. Imagine yourself suffering from toothache, then you called up your dentist to ask for help, yet an instance drops down your expectation. No one would take charge in setting you an appointment, because no one handles the appointment setting. What would you do?

Appointment setting is very necessary that needs to be handled by people who are well-organized, task-oriented and are capable of keeping worthy conversations on track. Setting up appointments is what makes the business at work, so it should be given prior concern. Call centers at this point take hold of this kind of duty in high regard that is why most people are seeking for them for assistance. Managers at all times are in need of efficient appointment setters that is why call centers endure until now.

As one of the services of a call center, appointment setting gets you in front of your prospects. It would avoid delay of schedules and would make the transaction’s flow easier and smoother. It also enables a business to make most of its time profitable because it finds leads rather than just making sales out of the preexisting ones. Clients would always want to be in an organized business meeting that is why they engage with call centers that could help them on how to decide with their preferences and on how to make their time more valuable. And because they would likely to be in need of appointment setters more often, call centers could have multiple tasks that could go in full blast and could dominate the target niche in no time.

Aside from appointment setting, call centers also offer service as to lead generation. It carries out high quality and high-ratio sales opportunities to a company; it alleviates the client’s burden on understanding product and market; and it helps in determining target prospects. Call centers generate not just quantity leads but as well as quality leads that surge up sales. After all, sales could advance the growth of company’s figures or numbers that is why making the call center a generation partner is indeed a wise initiative.

Competition is tough in the global market that is why strengthened partnerships should go in virtual speed. Finding a helpmate that is equipped with just a right mix of appointment setting and lead generation campaign should be in focus. Call centers are expounded with these kinds of tasks, and partnering with them could give you quality assurance on transactions within your parameters. If you do not know, leave it to the experts but looking for a reliable partner would mean another story that is why call centers are on existence to keep you on the track within the global market. It could mean directing your efforts with skilled partners or seeking out for partners that could broaden your knowledge about the real world of business.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Telemarketing As An Effective Tool for Lead Generation

Generating business leads is the key to significantly increase business sales. If business leads are successfully converted to appointment or sale then it becomes effective. Increase in sales and revenue is an indication that your business is growing. Business leads can be your business' fountain of success and even its lifeblood.

There are various types of business leads but the most popular among of them are the qualified business leads. Qualified business leads are prospective leads that show interest in purchasing or subscribing your products and or services. Interest in products and or services can be determined through product or service inquiry, request for additional product or service materials or simply by word of mouth.

Having your own business lead generation campaign gives you the business advantage that other companies do not have. But what if you do not have the skills and manpower to generate business leads on your own? Creating your own business lead generation campaign can be a daunting task to you or your staff. Time, experience and skills are the other factors that you need to consider. Does your business got what it takes to create your own business lead generation campaign?

Telemarketing is one way that you can generate business leads. Using a telemarketing company to handle your business lead generation campaign is the best option you have. Telemarketing companies provides the assurance of quality business leads. They have professionally trained staff to do your business lead generation campaign. In choosing the right telemarketing company, look for companies that specialize in lead generation and appointment setting and has the experience in doing business in your industry. Telemarketing can be an effective tool for lead generation if done with the right telemarketing company.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Order Taking and Answering Services for Hotels Bookings

Travelling is one of the things that people love to do. Who doesn't want to go to places and have some vacation and take a break from work? Indeed, the travel and hospitality industry has made a significant increase with their sales and revenues. Hotels is one of the businesses that benefit most in this increasing number of travelers. The comfort, convenience and safety in staying in a hotel on a vacation is one of the reasons why travelers have their hotel accommodations booked and reserved. Hotels and other businesses under the hospitality industry can benefit a lot with order taking and answering services from inbound call centers.

Because of the increasing number or hotel reservations and bookings you may not have enough staff to entertain all your hotel reservations and booking calls considering that they do have other business activities. Thus, it can result into losing a call. In such business, incoming call are critical and needed to be answered and you cannot afford to lose a phone call. An unanswered call is a probable sales loss.

There are inbound call center companies that specialize in providing answering services and order taking services. Outsourcing to inbound call center companies for your answering services and order taking services is a wise decision that you can make for your business. It is a cost- efficient way of leveraging you answering service without having the fear of losing any calls for your hotel reservations and bookings.

Answering services and order taking services provided by inbound call center companies are not only for hotel reservations and bookings. Any company that do have incoming calls that are always being missed out or overflow calls can avail the benefits that inbound call center services provides.

Callbox Connect is one of the many inbound call center that offers professional answering services and order taking services for business to business or even to business to consumers . Outsourcing is a cost- effective solution in saving up your business resources without compromising the quality of customer service that you provide.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

How to Choose an Answering Service That Fits Your Business

A canned voice mail message turns off more than attracts callers. Nothing works better than the sound of a warm human voice. In answering service circles, this draws the line between who has it and who doesn’t.

If you’re looking to utilize an answering service that perfectly matches your company, you need to consider these:

1. Cost. The cost of the service depends on the kind of service you want for your company. The more specialized service your company wants the costlier it gets. Don’t easily give in to “special plans” as they may be too good to be true. Most times, in fact, comparing actual rates between two answering service providers may be too tedious. Just be clear about what you’re billed and not.

If your company requires a custom-made answering services and it’s your only choice, think of the long-term benefits you can gain from it. If it’s clear that the investment you throw in is offset by the efficiency of the service, it’s well worth the venture. And it should certainly be because a specialized answering service provides real human voice taking in and processing orders and calls, so your customers are far from getting irate. The customer service associates should blend in seamlessly with yours, so you can trust that all calls are handled like your own staff would.

Answering service companies usually provide

• order taking
• appointment scheduling
• inbound sales leads
• customized responses and
• information and product requests.


2. Answering service should be company-specific. The above services aren’t easy to do, so you need to make sure that the answering service’s script must be company-specific. Your answering service staff should anticipate every conceivable situation so they come ready with an appropriate response. These should be part of the training and of the call center’s computer system. If you’re company specializes in order taking and order processing fulfillment, you should share your inventory and pricing information with the call center.

3. Be clear about the call center’s service terms and features. Check whether your answering service provider uses up to date technology such as email, SMS, fax, and so on. You wouldn’t want to get left behind, not the least your customers.

There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of a free trial (if there’s any). In fact, a good number of answering and order fulfillment service companies offer free trial. Try it out for yourself and see how far it will boost your own company. See if things work well between your company and the service provider.

4. Get to know about their quality control practices. How your inbound call center conducts business speaks so much about its level of expertise. Ask about how they hire and train their customer service or sales staff. There should be an in-house Quality Assurance Specialist that keeps tracks of the agents’ calls and provides coaching and evaluation whenever necessary.

5. Does your call center understand your company? You shouldn’t enter into an agreement with an answering service provider that doesn’t know how your business goes. It pays that you are assured of your order processing specialist’s track record in the industry. Bet clear about your terms and theirs. Have a hand in the training of choosing of their agents, so your own operation is not compromised.

According to industry experts choosing the right inbound call center to handle your order processing service is like choosing the right partner for marriage. The relationship should be built on give-and-take grounds.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Quality B2B Sales Leads from Apointment Setting

B2B sales leads are potential business contacts that are interested in purchasing a service and or product. B2B sales leads is one of the primary aspect in our sales process. B2B sales leads are generated from various sales and marketing activities. Appointment setting is one of the most common marketing campaigns that could help in your lead generation campaign.

Generating B2B sales leads from appointment setting gives you the assurance of good quality sales leads. No worries for small and medium size business that do not have staffs with sales and marketing skills for there are BPO companies that provides outbound telemarketing for b2b sales lead generation through appointment setting. They do have staffs that are professionally trained to conduct outbound telemarketing to generate b2b sales leads. Not only small to medium size business can take advantage of the benefits of quality B2B sales leads from appointment setting but also large businesses. Bigger companies have larger campaigns requiring them to have more number of staffs to conduct their appointment setting needs to generate B2B sales leads.

Experience the benefits of outsourcing your lead generation and appointment setting needs and reap the success of quality B2B sales leads. Quality B2B sales leads will result into increase in your sales and ROI figures.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

What is Appointment Setting?

Appointment Setting is a common term used in business in the business industry. It refers to the arrangement of business appointments to prospect clients to generate a sales lead or a marketing lead. Appointment setting is a primary sales tool for lead generation. Most companies have been using appointment setting for their lead generation campaigns for it has been proven to be effective. Results include significant increase in sales and ROI. There is a great percentage of getting a good sale closed from a lead generated through appointment setting because leads are being qualified keenly before it is passed to a salesperson.

During an appointment setting call, the appointment setter asks the potential client qualifying questions about their interests on the product and or services. Then these interests are being noted for reference during the appointment. After the needed information are gathered, the appointment setter arranges an appointment for the sales person to the client to discuss about further information. Arranging a business appointment to your prospect client can be a daunting task especially if you only have limited number of staff who has the skills of an appointment setter.

Outsourcing your appointment setting needs for your lead generation campaign is a cost- effective approach in dealing with such situation. There are outbound call centers that specialize in appointment setting and lead generation. Outsourcing to them will guarantee you to have a professionally- trained appointment setter that will adhere to your own guidelines. Outsourcing your appointment setting offers a lot of benefits to your business that you can take advantage with; when you are looking for an appointment setting company for your lead generation campaign you may consider Callbox Inc. They provide excellent quality leads with their appointment setting campaign through telemarketing. Let Callbox Inc. help you in achieving your business goals through their appointment setting services.


Monday, January 11, 2010

The Importance of Order Processing

Order processing is an efficient method of processing customer leads that delivers increase in your sales. Associated with order processing is exceptional customer service. Customer service is one of the factors that primarily affect your company’s sales. Outsourcing your order processing needs to business processing and outsourcing companies delivers convenience and time- efficiency on your part. Customer order processing and enquiries can be a time- consuming activity that may take up some of your money. Effective order processing reduces time consumption and overheads.

Like any other activities in your business, order processing may not be running smoothly and this is being caused by some issues that your company may be encountering. Because of the increasing time and money spent on achieving high quality customer support, primary processes in your company’s Sales and Marketing are being compromised to achieve your fulfillment and customer support. Technological innovations also affect your business processes. It does not mean that you need to adopt always on the latest technological business innovations, but rather maximize the features of your current technology and if you think you need the latest technology in improving the quality of your customer service and support then its time for your company to invest on technologies. Think about the long term benefits that it can provide toy our company. Shortage of customer fulfillment resources such as the number of staff providing the support may cause a serious problem in your order processing and other business processes. Clerical and customer support personnel management can be time consuming and costly.

Consider outsourcing your order processing and customer support to business processing and outsourcing that specializes in order taking, order processing, customer support and customer handling. BPO companies provides professional, skillful and competitive customer support agents that will follow on your given guidelines and product protocols. Experience the benefits of outsourcing your order processing and order taking needs and spent most of your time on other important business process and activities.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Expanding Your Customer Orders through Order Processing


Multiple tasks are taken during a customer order handling. The process of customer order handling start by entering the data needed for the invoicing, distribution and delivery of the product or service. Large companies usually outsource their customer service and customer handling support to call centers.


Call centers have been effectively providing inbound and outbound customer support to companies that are incapable of handling their customer handling and order processing phase of their business. These call center provides professional and competent inbound and outbound services that utilizes the state-of-the-art communication technologies to meet their client’s objectives and expectations.


Order processing service is one of the primary services that call centers provide. There are actually two types of call centers base on the services that it offers, inbound and outbound. Inbound call center provides customer support, customer handling, order taking and order processing services. Outbound call centers on the other hand provide telemarketing and market research services for their clients, they instigate calls to customers.


Both types of call centers are being monitored for qualification thus, providing quality service, leads and sales, and other form of output service. Most companies nowadays look into inbound call centers as viable option in handling their order taking and order processing needs. Outsourcing your order taking and order processing needs enables you to focus on some other important business matters that needed your utmost time and attention.


Inbound call centers are capable of providing your order taking and order processing needs for some of the companies uses applications for efficiency and quicker response time. Thus, Saving you money while increasing your profits.