Account management on the telephone is becoming increasingly important. Selling costs are going up and in many markets there are fewer customers. Consequently it is important to focus your time on where you are likely to get the best return.

Telephone account management - growing business area

As one of our latest batch of audio products, we have a CD that guides you through all the things you need to know to add more customers and clients and equally importantly – keep the ones you’ve currently got.  How often do sales business models focus and reward exclusively new business accounts. You can find the audio training CD buy following this link http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=32

It guides you through understanding what the function of account management is, how to do the key parts of the job effectively, and how you are the single biggest factor in determining outcomes !

Interestingly, 5 out of the last 7 people who have bought this audio CD, also bought the audio CD on time management too. Running your customer portfolio is partly about being well organised yourself of course too. Find more details here http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=24 All CDs are currently £34.99 + VAT and payment is easy through PayPal. You can use your credit card too.

 Training audio CDs for United States despatch.

Unsurprisingly most of our enquiries, orders and websites come from the English speaking world. The United States is our second biggest market. As a result and in order to make it easier for our American customers to work out the prices in dollars you will see we’ve added a click through currency converter against each of the products here.

Training CDs - ready to ship to United States

So if you’re in California,Wisconsin, New York state, Florida, Ohio, Washington, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, or Canada or any of the 50 U.S. states and you’re after some best practice advice from the U.K. on customer service, telesales or general telephone communication skills, try us out. A few clicks and the products are on their way to you.

Now is the time for you to set up your own business. It really is. With the economy showing signs of slow recovery, and the job market changing beyond all recognition, now is the time to take the plunge – if you’ve always harboured the desire to work for yourself and generate your own income.

It doesn’t even need to cost you anything to get started. The rise of the internet makes this possible. In fact you can cast your net (to use a fishing analogy) and see what bites. You can even do this while working in a job if necessary. You might have an outside hobby or interest that you’re wondering if you could make any money out of.

Our top tip is create yourself a business profile on a site such as HotFrog. It is completely free and you can add searchwords and build your own business listing.  Follow the link http://www.hotfroguk.co.uk/ So if you’d like to try your hand at jam making, or buying and selling cameras or floristry or palmistry, you can do all this for free. Then of course if you start to get some responses it will tell you whether you have a viable business idea.

Never has the opportunity for starting out on your own been so good. Most markets are likely to get more buoyant so if you can build an effective small scale business model that works now, your prospects should grow over time.

Everyone has skills, things they’re good at. Now is the opportunity to tap into your entrepreneurial spirit and give it a go. Best of luck !

We should still be focused on how we can be going for growth in these challenging times – with help from these wise words.

I came across a quote from Theodore Roosevelt the other day, and while he may have said it in the last century, it still holds true today.

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

This is a salutory lesson for all of us in these challenging times. To beat the recession, we may have to radically alter our business model, and the time honoured phrase “but that’s the way, we’ve always done it” no longer holds much credibility.

Be prepared to think outside the existing model. Talk to others, get opinions, listen to advice, get networking, have a coffee with like minded people. Whatever it is, get out there and do something. As Teddy R said doing nothing is the worst option, doing something and it being the wrong thing is still preferable. It provides learning and the chance to explore other ideas.

Tap into the intellect and creativity of others, and spend at least once a week with a blank sheet of paper and pen in the quiet working on ideas. It can be motivating and may give future focus for your business.

There are many ways you can gather great business growth ideas at the moment. And many of the best ones are free !

You are surrounded all day, every day by people willing to share their wisdom with you. So have a coffee with someone who has a business idea or a product or service that you could learn something from.

There are an increasing number of free seminars being run at the moment. Apart from a little time, what do you have to lose ? 

And networking meetings – a great device for meeting new people – some of whom will know of people who could benefit from your services. You may be thinking that you can’t devote regular time to a networking group, or you can’t afford it at the moment. However most groups are always interested in attracting new members so it is always easy to attend as a guest. You can even stand in for regular members often. This will merely cost you your breakfast.

So get out there and circulate and you’ll be amazed how many new ideas you can pick up easily.

Some funded and free training is now available through Train to Gain. Our friends over at To Market who specialise in training and development work with customer service, telesales and telemarketing tell us they’ve got hold of some training funding for you. 

Partially funded customer service training - through Train to Gain

At the moment they are looking to offer both free and partially funded training to organisations In Leicester, Northampton, Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds, Coventry and Birmingham as well as wider parts of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire plus East Midlands, West Midlands and East of England. If  this is of interest to you, follow this link to http://www.tomarket.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=51. This gives details of the East Midlands training, the West Midlands and East of England will go live we are told over the next 2 days.

But this really is a chance not to be missed so have a look at the details and sign up ! Maybe you’ll even get to hear some of the material on the audio CDs you will find on this site.

One of the questions we are frequently asked is who do we look to – to give us new ideas, and to inspire us. So as a result we’ll include some material in the blog that gives you some of the top people and their work that we have come across.

There will be a book review on the first of each month for the next few months. These are easy to access – just dip your hand in your pocket and for less than £15 generally you can pick up a wealth of information.

Today’s guru tip is the Birmingham based sales trainer and motivational speaker Peter Thomson. http://www.peterthomson.com/ is a link that will take you directly to his site. You can even sign up for his little weekly tips TGI Mondays at www.tgimondays.com.

I have seen him ‘perform’ at a number of different events, and particularly if you’re a business owner or senior manager, you will find his material inspiring ! Our advice check it out !

How easy is it to give up on a business account because you feel you’re getting nowhere ? Sometimes you feel it is impossible to build rapport with the key decision-maker.

Sometimes even sales people following up a quotation or proposal will try the contact once, but then give up if they don’t get through.

If you’ve decided an account is worth pursuing because it meets the necessary criteria, then it is worth pursuing! This means a structured, thought through communication plan. And no this doesn’t mean you need to contact them every day or every week – it has to be what is approriate. Contact them too much and they’ll start to get irritated. So that is clearly counterproductive.

Instead try to build up knowledge about all accounts you’re working with so that you understand what they do, how they do it and why they do it. There will be an audio CD available in early 2009 on the subject of account management. The working title is ‘highly effective account management (how to get more from your customer base)’ and you will be able to find it in the telesales skills section, follow the link http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_list.asp?Section=TELESALES%20SKILLS 

If somebody leaves (whether good news or bad news for you personally) it changes everything ! So it is vitally important to build good relationships with as many interested parties as you can at all times

You may run a team which deals mainly with incoming sales enquiries and calls. So this doesn’t involve cold calling or even making outbound calls but it does involve persuading the callers to spend their money with  you, and maybe you’re also looking to get them to buy more than they called for.

As a result of many of these requests To Market www.tomarket.co.uk has recorded a new audio CD on these 3 interrelated sales topics upselling,cross selling and switch selling. It will be available soon within the telesales skills section of this website, the other sales related CDs can be seen at http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_list.asp?Section=TELESALES%20SKILLS

It is important to understand how each of these 3 parts of the sales process can work for you, and how you can get more out of our your customers. If you are interested in particular elements of this, add your comments to this post and we’ll add some specific future posts in response. 

Whenever a customer or prospect turns down your offer – always remember to ask why. This will display self-confidence and will tell you many important things.

Understanding what motivates customers to make certain choices is really important. They’ll respect you for the fact that you’re not taking the easy option and turning on your heel. 

You must then start the process of building the relationship for the next time – the next order. There are 3 audio CDs available on the sales process. Simply follow this link to find out more http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=16

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