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Category: Opinion Piece

What makes you think you’re so special?

Posted on by Doug Roots

I’m a great admirer of Jeremy Waite’s Ten Words. If you don’t know what this is, it is a book written by Jeremy that pledges to communicate ‘big ideas’ in ‘small words and short sentences’. We cannot escape it, we hear more and more about how people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter – meaning we need to be more concise, clear and sharp if we want to grab someone’s attention.

The reason I start with this, is because I often think about this when I am working with clients on their telemarketing strategies.

We know that attention spans on the telephone during a cold call are even shorter than the average. We’ve all been there, you are right in the middle of something, the phone rings and it’s a cold caller wanting to engage with you. Now they could be calling to offer you a service or a product that is exactly what you are looking for, but your attention span is already short because you know it is a cold call and you have been disrupted.

This is why a strategy for me is the most important part of the process. We have to understand what makes you special? What is your real value to a prospect? How does it solve the pain that the prospect will be feeling? How does it go above and beyond what else is available on the market?

There are so many questions that we cover and so many answers that we discuss – but then it is up to me to create that small magic opening that is going to win your prospect’s attention span and allow me to divulge a little more information than when they first picked up the phone.

I think it’s a great exercise for anyone to try, the idea of 10 words to describe your role? Your business? Your personal goals? Your career goals? What makes you special?

Sure, we may not get it right the very first time, but if we have all the information from the strategy and we test the opening, we are going to be able to sense how this is landing with your prospects giving us opportunities to tweak and sharpen the message as we learn and test.

I’m Richard, I open up your target market to generate you leads. What do you do?

Opinion piece by Richard Street, Account Manager, Air Marketing Group

Have you discovered the full potential of your voice?

Posted on by Doug Roots

We’ve all heard the famous saying, ‘you have a face for the radio’, which can be taken offensively by some who work in the industry, but there is something to be taken from this saying. People who are successful in the radio industry have such huge personalities that they don’t need to be seen to make an impression.

Telemarketing is not too dissimilar to this. Our conversations are all held over the phone, so we do not have the advantage of meeting people face to face or viewing body language. Instead we focus on demonstrating our personality, giving a strong portrayal of the brand and using our tone and inflection to guide the conversation.

I’ve run campaigns at previous companies that have been scripted using tried and tested techniques. But the same question arises – When someone is saying the same thing on each call, how can their results differ so dramatically from call to call?

As I was paid on their results, I made it my mission to understand why this happened, so I listened to hundreds of call recordings. During that time, I found that if one voice tone was used, then within roughly 30-40 seconds the call would often be over. The tone I identified was when an individual’s voice tone/inflection went ‘up’ at the end of sentences. It was the verbal equivalent of having your fingers crossed. Used when someone doesn’t have confidence in what they’re saying or does not understand the subject well enough and even, at times, when trying to ‘fake’ enthusiasm. It was clear that when inflection went up, credibility in the message went down. And this was the difference between the calls using the same script.

What I learnt from this is that when asking questions and closing it’s very important to use a downward inflection in your voice, it commands authority and instils confidence in the decision maker.

For example – try saying with the tone and inflection going down at the end of the sentence, “So John, if you’re 100% happy with everything we’ve gone through, is it fair to say you’d be happy to meet with one of our consultants?”

Now try it again but this time with an upwards inflection at the end of the sentence. Which one would you rather be at the end of?

In understanding this, you can also learn a lot about your decision maker when they throw you objections, what is there tone and inflection; do they sound confident, does it ‘sound’ like a superficial objection or genuine? In understanding how you use your voice, you’ll learn a lot about how others use theirs.

What I have learnt is that voice inflection and tempo are vital and valuable skills that once mastered will improve your telemarketing ability when speaking with gate keepers and decision makers.

To underline the importance of tone and inflection here is a sentence for you to try, “I did not steal the money”. Depending on which word you put the emphasis on it’ll change the whole meaning of the sentence. Go ahead, try it for yourself!

Opinion piece by Oliver Kernick, Senior Account Manager, Air Marketing Group

Motivation in a sales environment

Posted on by Doug Roots

An office full of sales people – some people thrive in this environment, others would rather be anywhere else! It is a challenging environment and not for the faint hearted, with some big personalities and lots of diversity. But the biggest challenge and one of the most important factors for success is motivation for the whole team.

No matter what job you hold, you want to feel motivated and engaged. This is not easy to achieve in our industry, nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘Ooh I can’t wait to jump on the phones and do some telemarketing today’. So, instilling motivation, providing the right incentivisation and a great culture means people enjoy their work and look forward to coming in day after day.

How does Air do this differently?

Motivation is key to ensuring sales people hit weekly, monthly and annual targets. We know that our team of Business Development Executives who are calling on client campaigns are our service, without them we simply wouldn’t be successful at what we do – so we have to look after them. From our experience it takes more than just commission to keep a happy workforce.

Of course, commission is important to most sales people. Being motivated by money and the opportunity of earning more means that we have a healthy commission structure in place. But this is based on results and client retention not purely speed of dialling and quantity of appointment made. Giving our whole team more motivation to work hard on retaining client accounts and delivering.

But on top of commission, we understand that internal culture makes a huge difference to motivation in a sales environment. Internal incentives tailored to help individuals meet client KPI’s and individual targets prove very effective for us. Team socials, rewards, identifying when people do the right things and the freedom of not micromanaging, all make our sales environment stand out from the crowd.

Our Aim – Motivation

As Head of Performance (Account Director), my role is to identify and understand an individual’s motivators, what is it that makes them tick? This can be a whole range of things, some people are purely financially motivated, whereas others are looking to progress their career by gaining more responsibility and further opportunity to do this – and of course those that are in between.

Working alongside colleagues in the leadership team we nurture a very special culture here at Air, where the team are performing at an optimum level and maintaining momentum, clients and crucially motivation to deliver and succeed.

Our workforce understands how important they are to Air and we respect their importance – so together we work to grow the company, our client base and team members careers by keeping people motivated and excited to be part of #TeamAir every day. Can’t believe it, why not come and see it for yourself!

Opinion piece by Marco Alfano-Rogers, Head of Performance (Account Director), Air Marketing Group

Lessons from Rugby by Chris Bentley

Posted on by Doug Roots

True north

Culture is a massively used term in rugby union. The top teams love to refer to theirs and the losing teams aspire to get it. There are many ways to define the culture of a winning team but the best way from my time was simply the team closest to finding their True North.

Different from magnetic north and grid north, True North is the direction along the earth’s surface to the north pole. We used to substitute our team goals for true north and then explore the behaviours that would get us there.

If everyone can identify the target and agree on the behaviours that will get there and those that won’t it suddenly becomes very clear. However, this list can often be quite broad, by coining a cover all phrase like true north we were able to have a reference point to consider actions and behaviours… ‘is that true north’ we could often ask one another when perhaps behaviours suggested otherwise.

Having worked as a team to agree on the direction we could then self-police one another and create a peer led culture rather than one with direction from above. This made it easier to adhere to (after all, we’d designed it) and created an arena where the critical mass stayed on task.

Stab in the belly

‘Et tu brute’ – the immortal last words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as his close ally joined the assassination party. It was at this moment that his will to fight back erodes and he bowed to the Machiavellian plot. Being stabbed in the back is a term that still exists today and can cause a huge amount of problems with trust eroded, reputations tarnished, and teams damaged.

In sport as in business things go wrong and people make mistakes. This isn’t a problem but dealing with things going wrong often is.  Its human nature to deflect and try to play down problems, nobody likes to be told off or have mistakes highlighted but this can be turned to a positive if you are on the same wavelength and willing to face issues head on.

During my time in rugby the culture was always to ‘stab in the belly’ and highlight problems you can foresee as early as possible. This wasn’t a freedom to cause consternation or have arguments but a strength of character to give and receive criticism, appreciate that it’s for the good of the team and move on.

This maxim only works if the team has the trust to accept, as well as give, honesty. Quite often the challenge is to be robust enough to take a criticism on the chin, appreciate its aimed at a ‘true north’ goal and move on positively.

Opinion piece by Chris Bentley, Client Relationship Director, Air Marketing Group. 

Outsourced vendor VS. outsourced partner

Posted on by Doug Roots

Outsourcing has become commonplace in businesses. If you do not have the capacity or resource in-house, then you are likely to look outside of your business for a solution. Whether that is to help you with your finances, your recruitment, you may need consultancy to help change management or operational changes or you’re looking to grow and need help with business development – which is where we help!

The term outsourcing is often used for any external business that you choose to engage with. But there is a very big difference between an outsourced vendor and an outsourced partner.

An outsourced vendor provides a service for an agreed fee. For that fee it is agreed what will be delivered and the vendor will ensure that it is delivered within the agreed timescale, to the agreed spec, for the agreed price. Whereas on the other hand, an outsourced partner will provide a service for an agreed fee, but this will go beyond simple briefing, fulfilment and delivery.

An outsourced partner works with you and has an interest in the company as a whole. A partner is interested in your business goals, objectives, the reasons behind why you are outsourcing and what can really be done to help you fulfil your requirements. You may approach a partner with a requirement and an idea of ‘how you feel it should be fulfilled’. However, a partner is likely to be the expert in what is required (hence why you are approaching them) and by partnering with them they will share their expertise and intelligence to guide your thinking. The right partner will not be motivated by the money they can make from your partnership, instead they will be focused on what they can do to help you grow your business as one team together.

It is very easy to work with an outsourced vendor on a one-off project to fulfil a requirement. However, a partnership is likely to be much more long term. Business culture, values and outlook become more important when establishing a long-term partnership. Working as one team with a like-minded partner will make the whole experience smoother and much more effective.

So, when you are next considering outsourcing a project or business requirement, stop and think. Are you looking for an outsourced partner to deliver more? Sourcing this partner could potentially make a far more positive impact to your business that you may expect.

Opinion piece by Shaun Weston, Account Director, Air Marketing Group. 

Focusing on quality is a winning formula

Posted on by Doug Roots

What do you think when you hear the term telemarketing or telesales?

The first thought that may come into your head; those PPI calls that the industry has been renowned for? ‘We understand you were recently involved in an accident?’. The process is simple for these organisations. They call large amounts of data, with the aim of getting the highest amount of ‘leads’ possible. This means you receive calls that are not relevant, you are called more than once – and you’re left feeling harassed.

But why?

Often the people making the calls will be incentivised with commission or bonus payments linked to the number of ‘leads’ they generate. Which is exactly why they are making so many calls to produce the highest amount of ‘leads’ possible.

But what does this actually achieve?

As we’ve seen from the example of PPI calls, this method of incentive may make your workforce produce a higher quantity of ‘leads’ but often at the expense of individuals you are calling and the brand you are representing. Focusing merely on quantity, may give the perception that you are extremely efficient at creating ‘leads’ and ‘opportunities’ for your brand or client – but bad quality, un-qualified individuals are unlikely to become customers in the short or long term.

The answer? Focus the incentive on quality.

Producing well qualified, high quality ‘leads’ and ‘opportunities’ for your brand will give you a much higher chance of converting that opportunity into a customer. And whilst this may mean a lower quantity, all you’re eliminating are those who would never have bought from you anyway, saving you time and energy on chasing shadows. Quality will also be what sets you apart from your competition – understanding your customer, being relevant and meeting their requirements or desires will make these conversations easier and make your brand the choice for them. This style of incentive still works for keeping your workforce motivated, we know because its exactly what we have always done.

Opinion piece by Owen Richards, Managing Director of Air Marketing Group. 

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