Category: Sales

It’s common knowledge that the telemarketing industry carries with it strong stereotypes. The word ‘telemarketing’ has a negative connotation for many and this has resulted in an abundance of myths becoming associated with telemarketing.

This is extremely unfortunate for one of the most direct routes to market with incredible case studies to back it up. As a company that sees our clients get great results out of telemarketing campaigns, we’ve set out to debunk these and explore why they really are just myths.

FALSE: Telemarketing diallers always have to stick to scripts
Sticking to strict scripts does not result in conversations that are tailored to each and every individual on the phone. Although there may be some structure to the calls, a strict script is not adhered to. This enables real conversations that adapt to the prospect’s needs, build a relationship and trust in your brand.

FALSE: There’s no emotion – each call is just a number
If our diallers had no emotion and didn’t care, we wouldn’t have achieved what we had in the last financial year. Each call isn’t just a call. It’s a conversation which looks in to pain points and reasons why a service or product might help someone. This therefore requires a deeper and emotional understanding that goes way beyond statistics.

FALSE: Complex products or services can’t be sold over the phone
This all comes down to training. We would agree that without the right training, no product or service can be sold over the phone. If you’re looking to work with an outsourced telemarketing supplier, it’s important to understand that full training is carried out in order for telemarketers to be confident in what they’re talking about. At Air, we work on a vast range of products and services, which means we have to be seriously clued up on the details of each and what they could potentially offer a prospect. In the last financial year, we conducted 534 hours 45 minutes of training focused on our clients’ products and services.

FALSE: Telemarketers are inexperienced staff that don’t stick around
The phrase ‘call centre’ brings with it connotations which surround the idea of young and inexperienced team members who leave not long before their seat is warm. At Air, our diallers are ex-directors, business owners and sales professionals from a variety of backgrounds, spanning a wide age range. We take pride in nurturing all employees who wish to build a career with us – read Yasmin’s story here.

FALSE: Dishonest or aggressive methods are used to win sales
The belief that telemarketers hammer the phones, they’re aggressive and their practices are dishonest is one that is far from true. Before any campaign, we ensure that our data is as clean as possible with the right information and that we adhere to any TPS registers. Ethical selling and quality assurance are at the top of our priority list.

FALSE: Cold calling is dead
And this is the biggest myth of them all! There’s an ongoing debate which is based on the concept that cold calling just doesn’t work anymore. This simply isn’t true. Moreover, the results from both telemarketing and multi-channel marketing campaigns are proving this ideology wrong every year. In fact, our clients make an average return of £18 for every £1 they spent with us.

At Air Marketing Group, we don’t throw mud at a wall and hope some of it sticks; we look to nurture leads to encourage conversions. Read our top 10 tips for successful telemarketing blog here.

We’re passionate about the way we work with your business. We’ll ensure that any questions or uncertainties you may have surrounding a campaign with us are answered.

To arrange a free consultation with one of our Sales Directors, get in touch today or call 0345 241 3038.

Dependant on your business and the goals you want to achieve, there are a number of things to consider when running a successful telemarketing campaign. We’ve complied our top 10 tips for successful telemarketing below, with links to our blog archive for more information.

1. Understand Your USP

Today, very few businesses are totally one-of-a-kind. So, it is vital that you develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to help you to highlight what makes you a little bit different and stand out amongst the crowd. It helps if you can encapsulate this in a snappy slogan:

FedEx Corporation

“When it absolutely, positively has to be overnight”.

A strong USP will:

• Make the customer feel valued: what pain points can you solve for them that others in the industry can’t, or simply don’t look into?
• Avoid the superstar effect: don’t simply claim to be the best. Companies often strive to be the best, but the first thing your USP should strive for is a point of difference.
• Help to sell your product: it’s a form of differentiation that needs to be built around selling more products and services, not just to make your business a quirky brand that stands out but can’t get traction.

2. Know Your Audience and Utilise Market Segmentation

A simple and effective way to build a trustworthy brand is by implementing a segmentation strategy, however 20% of respondents to an Avention survey felt that segmentation was one of the biggest challenges facing their organisation. Segmentation is a tried and tested means of delivering results to your customers. We only have to look to email campaigns, where Mailchimp showed that clicks are 74.53% higher than non-segmented campaigns, to see this.

3. Gather Quality Data

The simple truth is that we are only as effective as the data that we use. It is our job to understand who we are calling and to establish a need, all culminating together to create a lead or opportunity for our client. Understanding the target market, key message and goal for our clients will help us to gain the correct data. With data that has been cleansed, we are able to do this in an efficient manner.

4. Place an Importance on Ethical Selling

At Air, we are honest and transparent, we never sell to a prospect who we know we can’t deliver for, whether that’s based on their budget or our capabilities, and this should be universal. Sales people often end up being tarred with the same brush, of being arrogant and pushy, driven by commission and not caring for their clients.

Businesses who demonstrate a clear focus on working with their clients for the long-term and help them to make smart business decision, will fare far better than those who are pushing for a one-off sale, clearly without taking into consideration the needs, values or constraints of the potential client. 

5. Hire Strong Telemarketers

Selecting the right telemarketer for your campaign is vital. Get this wrong and you’ll see potential leads deteriorate, your business reputation plummet and you’ll miss the full potential of ROI. Your team need to be able to:

• Absorb campaign training and fully understand the product they are selling.
• Stop talking and listen to what the prospect is saying. They may have the ‘gift of the gab’ but if they aren’t able to fully understand the needs of the prospect, they won’t be able to sell to a truly qualified lead.
• Lead intelligent conversations, ask questions and delve a little deeper. Those that give up at the first gatekeeper or objection will hinder campaign progression.
• Put mind over matter. Many of their conversations will end in a no, but if they let this wear them down, their motivation will fall and that golden opportunity may just pass them by.

6. Clearly Communicate the Value of Your Product

An inability to communicate their Value Proposition is one of the biggest inhibitors to businesses when looking to attract new customers and reach sales targets, with only 24% of organisations agreeing on the definition of their target audience. So how can you avoid that and make your value known?

• Make sure that you and your team fully understand your offering before you sell.
• Be customer-centric, demonstrate that you know your market and their needs.
• Hire professional sales people with experience in your industry.
• Use the human voice and make use of those telemarketing calls – don’t use automated systems.

7. Invest in Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is a great way of introducing your product or service across multiple touchpoints, over a variety of different platforms which include direct mail, email marketing and telemarketing to name just a few. When delivered tactfully this marketing tactic will:

• Help you build relationships with new customers using personalised and targeted messaging.
• Test the appeal of your new product or service.
• Take your prospects or current customers on a brand journey that appeals to their own values.
• Measure and advise you on which marketing platforms connect with your target audience best.
• Provide customers with compelling content that will help nurture them through your sales cycle.

8. Be Transparent Throughout Your Customer Journey

At Air, we provide our clients with live time reporting through a client portal so that they can see campaigns unfold to the minute and all call recordings. In doing this, we are able to build a relationship based on trust and accountability, and we encourage our clients to extend this to those that they on board through us. At the end of the day, in sales trust is key. People won’t part with their money if they don’t fully buy into both you and your product/service.

9. Manage Your Growing Pipeline

When developing your sales pipeline, it is essential that you have a definitive sales process. A few basic steps to follow when implementing a sales pipeline are:

• Clearly outline the stages your sales process will follow.
• Define the number of leads that you require to reach your sales target. From there, work out your average conversion rate. This will then allow you to outline how many leads you need to generate to enter this process in order to hit your target.
• Analyse what all of the converting leads have in common – how were they generated and converted which includes the activities of your marketing team, the actions your sales reps take and the feedback from your prospects, to help you shape future work.

10. Listen to Customer Feedback

Listening to customer feedback is especially vital for telephone-based sales professionals who are representing start-ups, businesses choosing to release a new product or service, and those marketing an existing product or service to a new audience. Asking customers, or potential customers, for their feedback is a key step in the process of reaching a sale, enabling you to assess your product/service, refine its offering and match to the customers’ requirements.

If you feel that you could use our help implementing and conducting a successful telemarketing campaign, get in touch. Our expert team have years of experience across a range of industries and we will be able to help you reach your business goals. Call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Sales appointments play a crucial part in the sales journey, giving your sales reps the opportunity to further develop relationships with prospects and encourage them further along the sales cycle, towards the point of closing the sale. But which is better, phone appointments or face-to-face?

We’ve booked thousands of appointments for clients, across an array of different industries, both over the phone and face-to-face. Based on their experience, our expert Sales Directors feel that you should always strive to organise a face-to-face appointment.

We’ve listed their top three reasons to schedule a face-to-face appointment:

1. Higher uptake/contact rate

The world of business is a busy one, with schedules changing on a daily basis, even hourly, and unexpected tasks popping up. With this in mind, your prospects could find it tempting to ask their gatekeeper to hold their calls and deliver the all too familiar line;

“Sorry, they’re busy at the moment, could you send over some information?”

However, if you’re already sat in reception, or they’ve come to meet you, the meeting becomes harder to reschedule and ignore, so you’re therefore more likely to make immediate contact with your prospect.

2. Body language

A good sales professional will be able to read people and assess whether or not they are truly interested in a product/service quickly, in order to avoid wasting time on unqualified leads. Whilst it is possible to gauge a prospect’s degree of interest over the phone, there is more value in getting in a room with someone and paying attention to their body language – do they seem open or guarded, do they look bored or alert? And this works both ways, whilst sales calls, for some, are the bread and butter of being a sales professional, they can take their toll throughout the day. Removing yourself from the phone and offering a face-to-face appointment can let your prospect gauge your body language too and determine your investment in what you are selling.

3. Engagement

If the prospect is not directly in front of you, it’s impossible to know how well they are actually engaging with your conversation. Whilst they may say all of the right things or appear to be listening, they could also be answering emails, texting, or being distracted by their surroundings. If you want to truly engage your prospect and build a relationship based on rapport and trust, it is far better to organise a face-to-face appointment and talk directly to them.

Got a question about how to fill your diary with quality, face-to-face sales appointments? Give us a call on 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Request a brochure

What is the best thing about your job?

A fairly common question, asked by relatives, friends, new employees during an interview process. The answer, well my answer, is not normally based on the actual delivery of the job but more around the culture.

When you break the concept of work down, no matter who you are or what you’re doing, I can almost guarantee nobody likes the concept. You spend the majority of your life, typically working at least 8 hours per day, 5 out of 7 days per week. Within this you commute, you work hard, you may interact with people who may not be the characters you’d typically choose to spend time with and then you cram the rest of your life into the time you aren’t working.

Crazy when you break it down isn’t it! But we live in a world where we have to work to earn money to enjoy the ‘rest of our life’ segment.

So, for me, essentially culture is the difference between making work bearable, enjoyable, giving some meaning to all those hours, or not!

For both me and for Roots as a business (and part of the wider Air Marketing) culture is key.

Culture is the feeling that you get when you walk into the office, the relationships you build within the team and the support offered from those relationships. We want people to enjoy coming into work, into a thriving, high-performance, motivated environment. Having experienced workplaces where culture was never considered, where environments were tense and going into work was anything but enjoyable – I don’t want Team Roots to experience that. Of course, that doesn’t mean we eat cake, finish early or slack off daily, but what it does mean is that we have established some core aspects of our culture which our team can rely on including:

• Quarterly and yearly performance-based treat outings
• Idea brewing sessions – allowing everyone to be heard and new ideas to be brought to the table
• Friday end of day catch up meetings over a little tipple
• Monthly one-to-ones, no matter how long someone has been part of the business
• Monthly try something new Tuesdays as a team outside of work
• And much more…

You see our service is delivered by our team, so to get the most out of our team culture is key which in turn delivers even better results for our clients. It’s win-win with a happy, motivated team and happy clients.

In my eyes, it should never be just a job – you are investing precious time into this job which you can never get back – make it mean something.

Opinion piece by Verity Wootton, Associate Director

Appointment setting is a vital component if you want to build your business. After a prospect enters your sales journey, they need to convert into a lead to then become a sale, and what better way is there to do this than by setting aside time to talk to prospects and understand exactly what it is that they need or want?

However, appointment setting can often be a time-consuming challenge, both for small companies or those growing at speed, who lack the resources to manage and nurture their opportunities.

If this sounds familiar, then outsourcing your appointment setting to our team is a simple and effective way of giving you back the crucial time that you need to sit with prospects to ensure a sale through a meaningful interaction.

Our campaigns are straightforward to set up, all you need to do is give us a call and we will do all of the hard work for you – you’ll receive a proposal within 24 hours and then we can begin the process of allocating your account director, your dialling team and forming your campaign. On average, our client’s campaigns go live in just 4-6 weeks.

How can an appointment setting campaign help you?

Data Analysis: A call list is only as good as its quality. You may have hundreds of records, but if these aren’t qualified leads then you aren’t likely to get many appointments out of your calls. Our team will help you to gather and analyse data, ensuring that you are speaking to the appropriate decision makers who have a real investment in your offering.

Technology: You may be worried that in outsourcing your appointment setting campaign you lose that brand focus, however at Air we are able to replicate your internal teams processes and free them up to work on gathering leads. Our software allows us to mimic your local caller ID, use your personalised voicemail messages and track your prospects calls.

Skills: If you don’t have the capacity to hire an internal appointment setting team and you are currently passing this task to your sales team, you may be doing yourself a dis-service. Whilst they may be excellent sales people, appointment setting requires different skills. Cold calling requires dedicated diallers who aren’t demotivated by the perseverance that navigating discussions with gatekeepers requires. So, even though you may have an exuberant and energetic sales team who are brilliant at one-to-one discussions after the gatekeepers have been bypassed, this energy may not be maintained with the repetitive nature of appointment setting.

Automation: Much of the appointment setting process can be easily automated by our team so that we can process as many leads as you can send us. By automating parts of the process, i.e. calendar invitations, we can swiftly work through your data ensuring that as quality many appointments as possible are set.

Cost: At the end of the day, business boils down to money. In investing in outsourced appointment setting, you know the upfront cost of your appointment setting campaign and know that you can upscale or reduce those hours at any time. However, if you keep this in-house and hire a whole team, it will cost you a lot more in the long run.

If you feel that you could benefit from outsourcing your appointment setting to our expert team, get in touch today. Call us on: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Outsourcing your sales team can be an efficient and effective method for you to increase leads and sales opportunities, therefore aiding the growth of your business, without incurring the costs and time restraint demands that arise when on-boarding a team of full-time sales reps in-house. Outsourced sales are nothing new. However, companies are often still dubious when it comes to handing over a pivotal part of their business to an external party. It seems that there’ll be an everlasting debate – to outsource or hire in-house.

So, why might you need an outsourced sales team?

• Accelerated sales growth: Whilst your business is growing, or looking to expand further if established, you may not have the capacity in-house to deal with the flow of leads coming in or the time to outbound sell to new prospects. A dedicated outsourced sales team will take this weight off of your shoulders and allow you to accelerate your sales pipeline.
• Immediate access to sales expertise: Recruiting and on-boarding local talent is costly and often a time-consuming process, even once you have formed an in-house sales team, training each individual will be a lengthy process. When outsourcing a sales team, you will already have the raw talent there, with diallers who know what quality calls look like, it is just a matter of building their knowledge of your business and moulding their talent to fit around your product or service.
• Lower risk and overheads: Outsourced sales teams are used to working on multiple campaigns and picking up the intricacies of various campaigns swiftly. By working with experienced outsourced sales teams, you will be putting your sales into reliable hands, avoiding errors and reducing the on-going costs of in-house employees.
• Efficiency: For new business or those looking to launch a new product or service perhaps to a new market or industry, your management team will be putting much of their efforts into product development and marketing. By outsourcing to an experienced team, who have the time to dedicate to sales, you can focus on growth or launching your new campaign.

Could you benefit from using an experienced outsourced sales team, with experience across multiple sectors including Fintech, Saas, Professional Services and Energy? Then get in touch, call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk