Empathise and think about who you’re calling and why.  When conducting telesales calls to organisations, it is important to understand your demographic, your target market. Find out when they are busy, when things go quiet. These are all things you can build on for the future.   Work hard to get your timings right, and to build a picture of when the best time is to contact them. So for instance if you’re trying to contact a school – the middle of summer is probably not a good time. Also research through use of your questioning skills, what quantities they buy, who they buy from, and what they think of their supplier. You may also want to find out what is important to them when choosing a supplier, and even what would make them change. Be bold – ask some good questions. http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=3      Thanks to Riz for this point. She was on a course earlier this year on telesales training in Leicestershire.

Matt Hazle submitted this gem “the philosophy I try to keep in mind on how I deal with customers is I try and deal with them how I would want to be dealt with myself, which I seem to remember you saying on the course. I like to deal with people on a human level but convey a certain professionalism at the same time i.e. that their order (or whatever) will be dealt with accurately and efficiently.”   I worked with Matt for 2 days on a telesales course in Leicestershire. 

It is easy to forget that your customers are human when you can’t seem them, but if you really connect with them – it will make your job a whole lot easier, because they will like you more. It’s that simple. This is one of the fundamentals of good telephone techniques and it is good selling advice. So we cover this topic on the first module on training. This is covered by the CD at this link http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=20