Many business owners and sales people need to use the phone to book themselves appointments with prospect customers. To be successful at this you need to be confident in the relationship-building aspect of telemarketing. You are responsible for presenting your product or service in a trustworthy and professional light and you recognise the importance of what it means to exceed the expectations of your prospects.
All of that said, what can you do to ensure your best chance of securing that appointment?
Make sure you have a plan!
If you have already prepared everything you want to say during your conversation you can be confident in covering all key areas. This will also help you to maintain control of the discussion, enabling you to bring it back to focus if it strays off-topic.
Strike early with your offer.
Make sure you raise interest early and ward off any objections with an offer that is packed with benefits. If you don’t act quickly, negativity can set in making it harder to get an agreement for an appointment with your prospect.
Keep it conversational.
It’s vital you do all you can to engage your prospect throughout your phone call. Talking for too long or asking too many and/or confusing questions will simply lead to them ‘tuning-out’. If you’ve prepared well, you can avoid this. Make sure to ask short, open, relevant questions, one at a time to gain as much information as possible and keep their attention. Repeat their answers back to them when appropriate to get a head start on having them say ’yes’ back to you.
Handle their objections.
When you acknowledge the prospect’s objections, you demonstrate understanding of their situation. Show experience in assisting clients with this sort of thing before. “I understand how you feel. In fact, many of our current customers were in a similar position when we first got to know them.” Explain that the purpose of the appointment is to assess their needs, but don’t labour on the point, make an assumptive move and suggest an appointment time.
Don’t fear uncertainty.
Trying to blag your way through something you don’t fully understand is a risky business and you’ll almost always be found out. Relationship building with your prospect is heavily focused on trust so admitting you need more information or need to speak to someone else is not always a bad thing.
Don’t quit first time around!
Objections will happen and so when they do, the aim is not to reinforce that objection further, so avoid probing too deeply or repeating the objection back to them. Ask polite questions to gain a brief understanding of why the prospect said no and don’t ever take the rejection personally. It can sometimes take a number of conversations to convince the prospect to accept an appointment.
Advice that stands the test of time is usually best.
Sell the benefits of your product and service and not the features. Find out what their issues are and present the solution to their most pressing ones. When you’re offering them the chance to find out more about something that they would find it difficult to say no to, then is your moment to close, so offer an appointment.
SureTrain provides exciting, inspiration, effective and practical telephone appointment setting training. Call us for more information.
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