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6 Telesales Tips to Increase Efficiency

October 18, 2018

Why would you need telesales tips? There’s no doubt that most customers find telesales calls annoying. So, why do businesses still rely on telesales to contact their audiences? 

Because, despite its bad reputation, telesales is a great way to engage with your customers, promote your products and services, and increase your sales on a global scale. In addition, while customers may be looking for exactly the kind of product or service your company provides, they may actually not know about your company – unless they receive a call from your telesales team.

Telesales has great potential for any business – but only if you have an effective strategy. In order to be successful, you need to follow a few steps.

So, in this article, I’ll show you how to increase your telesales efficiency. Stick to my telesales tips and success will definitely follow!

1. Recruit smartly

As I’m sure you’ll be aware, telesales is not for everyone, so it’s important to know what to look for when recruiting telesales staff.

A successful telesales agent needs to be optimistic, extrovert, and emotionally intelligent. In addition, a friendly attitude and great communicational skills will without doubt help them close more deals.

When it comes to recruiting telesales staff, I would recommend considering hiring part-time workers. As we already talked about in a previous article, the gig-economy workforce model works perfectly in call centers, so maybe it’s time for you to give it a shot.

Last but not least, always bear in mind that it’s a bad idea to try to ‘convert’ customer service agents into telesales agents. As mentioned above, telesales agents need to have specific skills that are very much different from the skills needed by customer service agents.

2. Invest in training

Having previous telesales experience, while ideal, is not essential for someone with the right attitude and personality.

That is why you should invest a lot of energy and resources into training. Make sure to take induction periods seriously, and organize in-depth training sessions to ensure your agents can master their telesales skills before they start working on your campaigns.

Furthermore, comprehensive knowledge of your products and services is a key to success. In order to close as many deals as possible, your telesales agents will need to know your products and services like the back of their hand.

And, as we all know, there’s always room for improvement, so it’s also important to offer ongoing support to agents once they successfully pass the induction period. Make sure to organize systematic training sessions and empower your agents with the opportunity to improve their skillsets.

3. Start with the manager

One thing is certain, a good team needs a good leader. So, once you have the right telesales agent team in place, you’ll also need to appoint a manager who will empower them to thrive.

Managing a team of telesales agents is no small feat, so don’t just appoint someone who seems to be promising but is not ready for the position yet.  

Telesales managers really have to be able to see the whole picture as they are responsible for the overall performance and budget of the telesales department. In addition, they will not only need to cope with processes, technology and customers, but also with employees.

In fact, good telesales managers don’t just give instructions to their team, they actively coach and motivate them. Therefore, if one of your potential candidates is exceptionally good business-wise but lacks people management skills, it may be a good idea to keep on looking.

Last but not least, bear in mind that a good leader needs to give plenty of feedback to their team. And if you haven’t mastered the method of giving feedback, make sure to check out our article on it.

4. Have realistic targets and appropriate tools

‘Anything is possible’ is a well-known saying, but let’s admit it, in business, one normally has to be a bit more down-to-earth. In order to reap success in telesales, you’ll need to set realistic targets, meaning you shouldn’t aim too high or too low.

Furthermore, as technology is advancing at lightning speed, and changing the world around us every day, in order to increase your telesales efficiency, you’ll definitely need to rely on a comprehensive software solution.

Software options these days come with many powerful features, such as predictive dialers or real-time statistics, which are vital when looking to increase your team’s efficiency. VCC Live®’s predictive dialer, for example, allows telesales teams to process a large number of calls and sign more successful deals by maximizing talk time per hour.

On the other hand, tools like Weflow can help automate repetitive data entry tasks, allowing your agents to spend more time selling and less time updating your CRM.

In addition, real-time statistics allow your team to make the most of customer data, as well as react to real-time situations including allocating more resources during peak times.

5. Have a powerful script

When it comes to telesales, having a powerful script can help your agents close more deals. Luckily, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create a powerful sales script. Just make sure to do your research, check out how your competitors achieve success using scripts, and you can start creating your own.

Not so long ago, agents printed out their scripts, and read them out from their hard copy. Fortunately, these days, you can easily create powerful telesales scripts and integrate them within call center software.

Our call center software, for example, allows you to build and customize your scripts using an intuitive drag-and-drop editing interface.

6. Be patient

Last but not least: it requires patience to achieve success in telesales. My experience is that it takes about 2-3 months for even the best telesales operators to start performing well at their job. For most telesales agents this period is between 4-6 months, while for those who develop a bit slower than others, this period is normally about 10 months.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should fire your agents just because they need more time to perform well in their role than you would like. As mentioned above, it is definitely worth focusing on hiring and investing in training programs, as in the long term they will help you build the team of high-performing telesales agents you’ll need to maximize your success!

So, these are my telesales tips that will definitely help you put your business on the path to success. Make sure to follow them, and reap success in telesales!

Are there any telesales tips you follow? Share with us in the comments below!

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