Profitable Telesales Tips & Strategies that will ramp up the impact of your sales by an order of magnitude

In this article you will find:

The difference between telemarketing and telesales

Telemarketing is the type of direct marketing campaign that is aimed towards sales and customer experience goals. These goals include creating awareness, collecting data, lead generation, appointment setting, market research, etc. Sales telemarketing works not only in B2C or B2B environments. Best telemarketing strategies are successful in charitable organizations and political campaigns. 

On the other hand, telesales is a part of a telemarketing campaign, which usually, but not necessarily, acts in close interaction with the telemarketing team. Telesales process is communication with prospects or customers via telephone.

Telesales also accomplish multiple challenges of informing prospects and customers, qualifying prospecting customers, selling products, etc. Choosing the right telesales tactics is one of the priorities of your strategy and marketing campaign.

Why and how to do telesales?

Telesales implements inbound and outbound calling campaigns. Inbound telemarketing is aimed at receiving calls from prospective clients or clients, which want to make an order or request additional information about a product or service, achieve support, and manage their affairs with the company.

The telesales team, particularly a telesales agent, depends on relevant data and timely information about prospects and customers. Interestingly, dozens of businesses lost millions of dollars because of the lack of cold calling strategy or inbound telesales campaign. 

If advertising reaches clients, they consider a request for more information about your product or service. When requests and orders were coming, these companies couldn’t answer all timely inquiries because of a lack of a good call center department. As a result, they lost reputation, sales, clients, and money. This situation continues to happen these days. Companies don't use good telesales techniques and fail.

On the other hand, outbound telemarketing is the effort of a call center to reach a customer. When you have a great product or service, you need to sell it to customers as fast as possible. You need to convert the prospects into customers, by persuading via telephone and telesales techniques. 

The importance of telesales is simple. The telephone is the fastest source of communication in a B2B or B2C environment. This is also the cheapest way to communicate for closing a sale or making an order. These two advantages make telesales irresistibly profitable, both for clients and companies. The great telesales team can entice the prospects and turn them into customers within a few calls. 

To make your telesales campaigns profitable, you need to ensure that your goals are real and achievable. For example, you want to achieve positive ROI through sales in a month. Then you want to increase it by 100% in the next following months. 

To achieve this goal you need a great call center with dialing software, a CRM system, and good experience in sales. 

A telesales call center is a team of professional salespeople that initiate inbound or outbound campaigns. They attract a regular and potential customer to make an order. Successful call centers use selling techniques, which stress the benefits of a particular product and present it in the best fashion. 

These call centers also use dialing software, which allows them to focus on the goal of a call and do it at a minimum time as possible. Without advanced dialing software, you significantly reduce your conversion rate. Below you will find top telesales tips that you might don't know.

Telesales strategies that really work

There are dozens of strategies that you can use in your telesales campaign. It's easy to set your telesales strategy plan properly; as a result, raise your profits and increase conversion rate. There are 8 telesales tips that are worth knowing:

1. Constant analyzing of data. You need to keep your information about customers up to date. Any type of data becomes obsolete from time to time. You need to constantly reshape your data by adding new accounts, new contacts, product information, etc. This will keep your company and sales force in shape and dramatically increase your profit. As relevant data, you can also use changing of the market, the solvency of customers, brand recognition, etc.   
   
   There is no better way to track the results of the sales team than to use specific metrics. You can build a chart from a specific metric and observe results from the chosen period. Different kinds of metrics show how agents succeed in sales and customer support.
   
   But metrics are not the only way to track the agent’s activity, another way is to track results. When a telesales agent closes a sale or provides qualitative customer support, it's a sign of success.
   
   
2. Choosing a proper dialing mode. Calling centers without dialing software is obsolete. Advanced call centers use telemarketing software that helps them to contact more people and close sales. To accomplish the outbound campaign, you need the proper type of dialing mode.
   
   When customers are likely to answer calls you need to use Power (Progressive dialer software). This dialing mode gives all the necessary time to an agent. In this mode, the next call will come after an agent finishes the previous call. There will be no interruption of the conversation with a customer.
   
   An agent achieves the necessary time for the call and can devote maximum time to each customer or difficult lead. A difficult lead is a customer, who is very demanding and requires more time for persuasion. But in return, these clients create a higher ROI for a company.
   
   On the other hand, if you need to reach prospects fast, for example in a B2C environment, you need to consider using a predictive dialer mode that calculates the required dialing speed (number of call attempts dialed simultaneously for the agent team) based on the statistical data. To use a predictive dialer effectively, and predict the number of attempts for calls, you need at least 6 agents available at a time.
   
   A predictive dialer also initiates a new call, at the time when an agent is about to end a conversation. In this case, a telesales agent will have very little idle time during the working shift. It's effective for a cold calling campaign because it keeps the contact rate high and increases the agent’s productivity. Both progressive and predictive dialers detect answering machines and connect agents with real people.
   
   Telemarketing software is a great method to reach your prospects and customers as fast as you can. In direct marketing, there are no single best telesales techniques, which guarantee profits in all campaigns.
   
   But the passion for each detail of the market, which you are competing for, is important. Also, consider not to press too hard the talking time of the telesales team because they can lose effectiveness and productivity. Adjust clear goals, inform agents, and implement the proper type of dialing software.
   
   
3. Implementing telesales training sessions. The main goal of the call center training session is to increase sales skills and productivity. The staff becomes savvier in sales techniques and persuasion of people. People are more likely to order and be satisfied by trained agents. It’s crucial to study, train, and master push and pull techniques. By doing so, agents will be able to change their strategy of conversation at the right moment.
   
   
4. Following a sales script. Using a script is always a subject of controversy. Yet, most specialists agree that a well-written telemarketing script gives a possibility to efficiently handle various call interactions as well as to transform average sales representatives into professionals. The idea of a script is not to read it but to use it as a guide helping you deliver your message clearly and confidently. When used correctly, telesales script yields the following benefits:
   
   • it helps you to create and constantly refine your sales methodology;
   • it allows you to spend less time thinking about what to say in a certain call situation and more time listening to the potential customer;
   • it provides a baseline for the sales team’s performance.
5. Time for sales agents to accomplish their wrap notes. During the wrap-up time, an agent will place crucial data on the client card and the call script. And while agents do that, it’s harmful to interrupt an agent with the next call.
   
   However, if it occurs, a telesales agent will start to make mistakes or place wrong information. The telesales agent has to have time to accomplish his routine. Always check the settings of the wrap-up time, so they can function properly.       
   
   
6. Empowering the sales team to make their own decisions. Sales teams are on the front line and use customer feedback as the main sales point. They speak directly to the customer and understand how they need to make a sales pitch. Blocking the incentive of telesales agents is a harmful activity. You need to constantly update your telemarketing scripts. Be advised about the successful approaches of your agents. Prepare your effective sales strategy accordingly to the market demand.
   
   If creativity or clear sales pitch help to sell products, there is no necessity for blocking. You need to correct the telesales agent if he or she fails constantly. The solution - allow them to work freely for some time and track the results.
   
   
7.  Increasing employee engagement. Interaction inside the team is crucial for the success of the campaign. The telesales agent that actively interacts with the head of their department and each other are the most successful. They can help each other and rapport about the situation.
   
   
8.  Putting up the information about the client in front of the telesales agent. When an agent sees the information about a customer and interaction history it creates a future success for conversation from the start. An agent can start in the right way and save his and customer's time. Putting relevant information in front of agents is a huge part of successful telesales strategies.
   
   
9. Offer a reward to the telesales agent team for accomplishing goals. If you have a pressed time for reaching sales goals, you can entice agents with a reward. It stimulates productivity and energizes sales staff. These are the best telesales tips that are proven and constantly generate sales.

To learn how to create an effective telemarketing script, check out our guide "Ultimate Guide to Cold Calling Scripts".

Effective telemarketing techniques & sales tips

A successful campaign is paralleled with using effective telemarketing techniques. There is always an advantage to use telemarketing best practices in combination with other telesales techniques. Here is how you can organize your campaign and raise profit tenfold.

Despite the big number of approaches for telemarketing, these are some of the proven telemarketing strategies that you should know. The most effective telemarketing techniques work properly with the clear goals of the company. Whether you need to generate leads or sales, you need to set achievable goals to define the right strategy. 

1. Planning. This step is one of the first and vital steps in your marketing strategy. Depending on your annual revenue, number of employees, product, and services, you must manage your real goals. Depending on your real growth in sales, employees, popularity, etc. This is one of the most valuable telemarketing sales tips.
   
   
2. Audience research. You can’t sell or help to solve the problems of customers unless you have deep research. You need to know what type of audience you hit – age, sex, income, beliefs, desires, fears, etc. Questions companies must ask before hitting the audience with a telemarketing campaign: 

• How does this particular product or service solve their problems? 
• Is there a demand in the market for this product?
• Can we create a demand for a product or service?
• How to increase telemarketing sales results?
• Is this product or service perfect?
• How to increase telesales efficiency.

How to improve telesales performance

Based on the experience and feedback of sales agents, we can conclude that improving telesales is easy if a company has the proper tools and staff. It’s great when a company has a lot of money and can invest into telesales performance millions of dollars. 

Yet, there are cheaper ways to make your telesales agent work as perfectly as possible. First of all, you need to record the conversations with the customer or prospect to define weak and strong ports of call. It’s not what you say that matters, it's how you say it. The emotional state of agents will affect the conversation. A telesales staff must work on their voice and speech in their free hours. By doing so, they achieve the edge in conversations. 

One of the most relevant tips for telesales agents in speech is as follows. Avoid negative and weak words and insert powerful words instead of them. Negative and weak words, such as: no, can, can’t, could, should, might, may, ought to, seeks to, has the potential to and in my opinion. Potential customers feel the weakness of these words and start to yawn.

Though, there are dozens of powerful words that you must use in sales: amazing, free, astonishing, astounding, at last, gift, easy, discount, bargain, comfortable, discover, guaranteed, improved, miracle, limited, promise, nothing to lose, right away and you. When you use powerful words, you keep confidence in your conversation.

Customers are likely to open their wallets and buy from those who are confident. When you use weak words, the prospect and client feel it and don’t want to buy or even listen. Don't neglect these words, because every potential customer wants to hear them unconsciously.

Deep research of an audience you are selling to gives you the edge. It’s a mistake when staff doesn’t know enough about a product and its audience. You can’t sell something to someone if you don’t study the product. When you study the benefits of a product, not only features, you extract the main advantage of your product among others on the market. That is how you can present it in the right way.

Every product or service has something that competitor's lack. You have to distinguish from it your unique selling proposition. For example, your product has a guaranteed offer and an option of a full refund for 6 months. It can be your unique selling proposition that makes your product stand out from the crowd.

Good listening skills are crucial in a successful telesales business. Speaking is a great skill to have, but listening is equally important. When you speak with a client, you must quickly extract from his words the vital information. Depending on the audience, you need to understand how to use their emotions, beliefs, desires, and needs. By doing so, you build a conversation in the way you want.

Always talk about benefits and not the features. The qualified customer already knows about the features of the product. You don’t need to say something that the customer already knows. Customers don’t know about the benefits of your product. He or she doesn't know what product or service can do for him. You need to prove that your product stands out from the crowd, by highlighting the benefits.

Creating a good opening and closing of a conversation increases the percentage of successful sales. When you call the client or vice versa, you meet some objections at the beginning. It is better to overcome these objections at the beginning of the call. You do it by a sincere and emphatic opening of a conversation. Of course, it doesn’t mean that if you failed your opening, that everything is lost. You don’t need to do things more complicated.

Don’t forget about the closing of the conversation. In the closing, you need to say a few warm words, such as: thank you for your time, we appreciate your time, that you are devoted to us, etc. The customer will be delighted by this technique. Because the world is extremely intensive these days, and a few warm words are just what a client needs. As a result, the client will likely buy from you and hear such words as often as he or she possibly can.

Selling to regular clients is better than selling to new clients. The regular client brings more profit to the company than anybody else. Regular calls are one of the ways to strengthen your affairs with regular customers. Even when a company calls with a thank you note, it creates a great opportunity to sell more to the client.

Tools for successful remote campaigns

The impact of COVID-19, moving sales workforce towards remote work further and further. To overcome these issues, you need to consider about remote workforce more than ever before. And to do it right, you need proper telemarketing software.

Choosing the right telemarketing software and the right call center team is a solution for a successful telesales campaign. These days it is important to use advanced software that brings autonomy and ease to processes. 

For example, it is easy to use virtual call center software. This kind of software allows you to work with remote agent teams to reach customers in any country. The main goal of the software is to ease managing agents, provide relevant data, and hit more sales.

The main benefits of such software are low cost of maintenance, you pay only a fixed price for the subscription. All the agents need to start to work is a headset, computer, and internet connection (preferably wired). The second benefit is that you can reach any kind of customer within their timezone. The software will manage your remote agents, so they can reach customers.

Voiptime is a company that delivers successful IP telephony and contact center software for more than a decade. The company uses advanced software to help companies and private clients to manage their sales teams over the globe. One of the software that your company can benefit from is a Virtual call center, by Voiptime Cloud.

It is just so easy to start a remote inbound or outbound campaign in any place on Earth. All you need to do is:

• to describe your business goals; 
• prepare remote agent’s workplace; 
• get a cloud-based call center solution; 
• launch your call center; 
• monitor your agent’s performance.

These days any telemarketing strategy must be supported by proper software. A great way to succeed in inbound and outbound campaigns is to combine telesales agents and telemarketing software.

Published Oct 19, 2017, updated Jun, 3, 2021.