Advice for a telesales beginner!

lauras91

Hi all,

I am delighted to be starting a new job on Monday. As the titles suggests its basically a telesales role for a medium sized company (not a huge call centre, about 10 people working in the office).

I have never worked in an office environment before, lots of other work experience under my belt however! I am not too nervous about starting, but would love some advice or tips from anyone that has experience in this area...

I'm sure there are plenty of lovely people on this forum with lots of wisdom to share

Thanks in advance!

RomanGod

I'd specify in the OP whether it's outbound (cold - calling) or inbound because they both have different skill requirements

I worked in outbound, big company, uncapped commission. I never had experience on the phones, hated speaking to relatives on the holiday period when they rang, so thought I was going into the deep end.

The initial training period is pivotal because what you learn will stay with you for your whole tenure at company so make sure to buy a notepad and jot information down

I'm telesales you will have KPIs (key performance indicators) such as data capture (asking for customers email), telling them your name (making the call more natural), telling them the call is recorded and reading out the terms and conditions to the product you are selling or whatever it is you're doing there. The idea behind this is when you hit all the KPIs the sale will happen.

The end has to justify the means, anything you say on the phone should be accurate and leading to a point where you finish your sales pitch. Ask open questions like how much they are spending currently or how many members are in the family. Open questions give you more information about the customer to tailor yiur sales approach. Then ask closed questions which provide yes or no. So the end of your sales pitch should be a closed questionz do you want this product?. The worse thing you can do in telesales is say something for the sake of saying it, everything needs to go somewhere because you will lose the customers interest


Honestly you either have sales skills or you don't. I was lucky that I did so i didn't have to worry about missing targets by telesales is a cut throat business no matter how big the company. The only advice I can offer is to stay positive no matter what the customer says, be organised and have an in depth knowledge and passion for the company products to convince the customer taking this call Is worth it

RomanGod

Posted that on my phone while on the shaky 16 bus so pardon my spelling/grammer mistakes

Good luck btw

lauras91

Thanks Roman, yes it's outbound, mixture of existing clients and cold calling as far as I'm aware. Great advice there. I will def buy a little notepad as I'm sure there'll be a lot of info to take in at first.
I'm a fairly confident, outgoing person by nature.. But very hard to know whether this line of work will suit me. Time will tell!!

RomanGod

lauras91 wrote: »

Thanks Roman, yes it's outbound, mixture of existing clients and cold calling as far as I'm aware. Great advice there. I will def buy a little notepad as I'm sure there'll be a lot of info to take in at first.
I'm a fairly confident, outgoing person by nature.. But very hard to know whether this line of work will suit me. Time will tell!!

The notepad is probably the most useful piece of equipment a salesman can own

Get one with three part sections

In one section write what you learn in training (i imagine the Admin operating systems will be tricky to get used to at first so maybe writing down a step by step approach at the beginning)

Second section should have your hot leads. Not everyone will buy off you straight away but they will show interest so tell them you will call them back and arrange a time in your diary.

Third section should have customer service related questions that you didn't have the answer to just so you have the answer next time it's asked. Means you're not asking your team leader the same question everytime