[pvcprinting]

Following on from a previous thread I would be interested to learn how people deal with 'sales calls'.

this interests me as from a personal perspective I have a certain way of dealing with cold calling and people trying to sell me something

If I need something I will usually do some research on it and then make a purchase....hence cold callers get very little change from me

As a case in point.... I recently had a call offering me a free editorial....blah blah....now not to look a gift horse in the mouth my instructions were "send me the details on an email and if interested I will call you back by COP Friday".

Email arrives and I read it and sleep on it.....

Friday morning and within the space of 2 hours 2 phone calls asking me if i was interested in their offer and that i 'had to act quickly to avoid missing the boat'

Needless to say...reverted back to character and sent them away with their ears ringing

this then begs the question.....as a business how exactly do you get your foot in the door?

Discuss

[Andy Trish]

I have my staff protect me from cold callers, I get so many every day - and recruitment agencies. Some get through but as soon as I decide I don't want whatever they are selling I tell them I'm not interested and hang up (politely).

we don't cold call customers, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that, if we need to let a client know our service is what they need we do it on their site face to face.

[Peter W]

They are easy to spot. They are the ones that ask about your current state of wellbeing before they have even properly established who they are speaking to.

What gets me is when you ask them if it is a sales call, and they deny it, before carrying on with their script.

I always politely hang up on them within a minute or 2, but I know someone who spent an hour on the phone with a company who was trying to sell him advertising. In the end he had to sign up just to get rid of them. I told him that he was far too nice, and needed to go on an assertiveness course.

Some of them can be quite ungracious. One memorable call:
Caller: "Can I speak to the person who orders the stationery please?"
Me: "Is this a sales call?"
Caller: "Yes, it is"
Me: "I don't think we're interested, thank you"
Caller (huffily): "Well, we all have to make a living, you know!" and then hangs up.

[admagic]

Originally Posted by pvcprinting

Following on from a previous thread I would be interested to learn how people deal with 'sales calls'.

this interests me as from a personal perspective I have a certain way of dealing with cold calling and people trying to sell me something

If I need something I will usually do some research on it and then make a purchase....hence cold callers get very little change from me

As a case in point.... I recently had a call offering me a free editorial....blah blah....now not to look a gift horse in the mouth my instructions were "send me the details on an email and if interested I will call you back by COP Friday".

Email arrives and I read it and sleep on it.....

Friday morning and within the space of 2 hours 2 phone calls asking me if i was interested in their offer and that i 'had to act quickly to avoid missing the boat'

Needless to say...reverted back to character and sent them away with their ears ringing

this then begs the question.....as a business how exactly do you get your foot in the door?

Discuss

the best model is by far....

>use advertising promotion or PR, to offer something free to get prospects

>keep feeding information to those prospects to turn prospects into friends

>only then promote something small and great value to turn friends into customers.

>then as they trust you make more serious offers.

>then turn your best customers into partners by giving them good incentives to sell for you

>and listen to them about what you should do next

It is called permision marketing , and it is the least abrasive way.

The foundation of list building direct response marketing

and IMHO ALL businesses should do this.

BTW

to cope with the agressive kind

go on to UKBF, and see what VOIPFONE offer..

if you use their internet phone,

When a telesales rings you say...can I put you on hold for a minuet
press a button which says

Sorry All of our staff are busy assisting other telemarketers calling, so if they arent too annoyed at the end of those calls,
then maybe we will pick up to you

Or something like that

[Maxine]

I presume I am not the only telemarketer on the forum but I will chip in and say we are not all like that and I do think telemarketing has it's place and is very successful if done properly.

To give an example I would always state it is a sales call straight off, ask if now is a convenient time, and of course be polite and professional at all times. An example of a short campaign that I did two weeks ago for 20 hours at a cost of £400 delivered 29 qualified leads plus 15 pipeline all for products ranging between £300-£40,000. The client has had sales ordered within 14 days of the campaign for £16,000 so they have had a return of 40 times their investment and that is only within 2 weeks and they still have leads to follow up!! Their pipeline alone stands at a potential £200k so hopefully some of these real numbers show why people do telemarketing and whether or not you like it yourself should not put you off considering whether it should be part of your sales activities. I personally dislike leaflets and newspaper ads yet for our plumbing and plastering business they work well

Yes I get a lot of "Not interested, thank you" and some a lot ruder than that but on the whole it can be very worthwhile. My recommendation is that careful thought is given to the timing of the telemarketing call in line with other sales activities.



ps - I also use Voipfones message for the annoying sales calls for people who are rude and agressive with me with sales calls

[Fuzzy]

Fuzzy with you on this one Pete

[SteveGibson]

Following on from a previous thread I would be interested to learn how people deal with 'sales calls'.

When I was first starting out, I'd use them as a sales opportunity.

If the caller sounded local, seemed to be the owner of the business (or key decision maker) and didn't seem like they enjoyed the process, I'd ask him/her how their telemarketing was going.

If they took the bait, I'd then get them talking about their marketing.

Why not? They wanted more clients and were probably looking for a way to get out of doing the telemarketing. That sounded like a prospect to me.

I picked up a couple of clients that way. Nothing big, but work nevertheless.

this then begs the question.....as a business how exactly do you get your foot in the door?

I used to do some telemarketing and the offer was that I'd visit them and take them through a "marketing audit".

Although I hated telemarketing, the offer was good enough to get a decent response rate and the conversion rate from audit to sale was pretty good.

Steve

[Warhead]

Originally Posted by pvcprinting

Following on from a previous thread I would be interested to learn how people deal with 'sales calls'.

Politely, but firmly.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, we do all have to make a living (though it's probably best not to mention that on a sales call!), and I have had to make cold calls throughout my working life to get new business - sometimes adverts, exhibitions and other promotions just aren't enough.

I've had my fair share of rude replies (and this is specialist B2B in niche industries I know well), and so even when I do get a call for "the fleet manager", "the financial director" or "the person that looks after international freight" I can take ten seconds of my day to be polite about my lack of interest.

Peter W is spot on though - they always ask how you are before launching to "soften you up"!

[boxby]

The "can I speak to the person responsible for....." telephone calls get a one word answer;
"No".

I don't tend to take calls from anyone that doesn't at least know my name. That information is easily available, if the can't be bothered to find that out then they are a lazy sales person, probably representing a lazy company that I wouldn't want to deal with.

[admagic]

You could always use colin at voipfones tele answering...

Just say to who calls...."sorry just a moment, need to put you on hold"

then the automatic message says

"Sorry, all of our staff are busy assisting other telemarketers, if you would like to wait around half an hour, maybe we will be able to get back to you....unless another telemarketer rings in the mean time, then it could be longer"