Get them to say yes! - telephone marketing - Sales & Marketing

Home Office Computing, April, 1992 by Rosalind Resnick

In marketing your business, the direct route is generally the most profitable one. If you can grab your prospect's ear for even a couple of minutes, you'll dramatically impove the odds that you can get him or her to say yes--to scheduling an appointment, to letting you come in and demonstrate your service or product, even to closing the deal.

The trouble is, of course, getting your customers on the line--and holding their attention once you've got them there. This is true whether you're new to marketing or just haven't been successfuly yet doing business on the phone. Although business-to-business sales calls don't encounter the same chilly reception given to slick telemarketers peddling solar heater at dinnertime, it's still a challenge to get through to the person who does the buying.

Even so, there's no reason to sy away from doing business by phone, no matter how tiny you organization. The secret? Understanding your prospective customers' needs--and hooling them on your idea before they can hand up.

IT STARS WITH ON CALL

Take Larry Archer, an independent software sales rep in Coral Gables, Florida, who works from home and sells high-end software to corporations. Archer recalls a sale he made last June that started with a phone call. Although the Texas oilman on the other end seemed only mildy interested in Archer's software, Archer persisted for months, calling again and again. Finally, Archer told his prospect that he'd be in his town on business all week and asked him to pick a day for an in-person appointment. The executive reluctantly agreed.

"It was uncomfortable all the way," Archer recalls.

Nevertheless, the first face-to-face meeting led to another--this time with the man's boss. Last June, Archer closed a $20,000 deal, eight months after the initial phone call.

As Archer's experience shows, using the phone can be a great way to get your foot in the door. It's also possible to use the phone to negotiate a deal from start to finish--saving you and your customer time and money. As California telemarketing guru Gary Goodman points out in his book You Can Sell Anything By Telephone, a single face-to-face sales call can cost several hundred dollars--whether the sale is made or not. The cost of a phone call, unless it's overseas, is negligible.

THE RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS

As with any marketing technique, there's a right way to do business by phone and a wrong way. For years, the "right" way--the method still commonly employed by telephone sales forces at some larger companies--involved high-pressure arm-twisting that turned off potential customers in droves. In this generally helpful book, even Goodman advocates a tightly structured sales pitch consisting of an opener, a description of the product or service, a close, and a confirmation that the prospect has actually swallowed the bait.

Goodman, who wrote the book in 1984, has not entirely abandoned his earlier methods. But he now believes that the rigidly scripted, hard-sell brand of telephone salesmanship has become a dinosaur--made obsolete by the public's disdain for telemarketers and a proliferation of state and federal laws cracking down on them.

Rather than turning up the heat, Goodman advises building business relationships through "incremental commitments," which shifts the emphasis from closing the deal to inducing propsects to commit themselves. With each prospect, Goodman suggests, call first to introduce yourself, then mail out some company literature, and, finally, use a series of phone calls to educate each person that your company's solution is really the right one.

"Telephone sales is much more powerful when people think they're persuading themselves," Goodman says. "It should never occur to them that they've just been telemarketed."

TIPS FOR TELEPHONE TALK

To make your telephone marketing efforts a success--whether you're selling word processing, mailing lists, software systems, or consulting services--it's a good idea to keep these principles in mind.

You can't fake it. Most of us would not last long selling used cars. So unless you're comfortable with high-pressure sales techniques, don't even attempt them. On the other hand, you'll never sell anything if you don't project confidence. It's no secret that good salespeople sell themselves first and their product or service second.

Make well-prepared presentations. Many experienced telephone salespeople use a hook or a script to make their pitch. Though it's not always necessary to write down every word you plan to say, it's often a good idea to have a few notes in front of you when you talk. It's also a good idea to write down you opening line--or, even better, to rehearse and memorize it to the point that it doesn't sound canned.

Once you get the hand of doing business by phone, you may find you need no script at all. Says Wayne Stoler, president of Letter Perfect Information Services, a Baltimore company that sells mailing lists, "I prefer to be spontaneous over the phone. I can't stand it whe someone reads a script."