How to start a Follow-up Marketing campaign with Telemarketing and gain zero customers.
Hi everyone, I'll introduce the discussion simply by saying that the aim of the follow-up, following an initial approach phone call, should be to initially set up an appointment with the interlocutor to delve deeper into the topic of the appointment itself with the prospect.
This is in theory, since practice now clearly shows that there is no longer the possibility of speaking directly on the phone with a purchasing manager or a manager of the specific sector, who is potentially interested in your product, since now all companies, from the largest to the smallest, tend to request an email presentation of your represented company in advance.
Nonetheless, you will still want to take note of the errors contained in this review, precisely because you may have to request an appointment, even after the introductory phase via e-mail has been successful, and in which such errors could potentially be made.
The initial phone call, obviously different in content from the one that follows a positive outcome of your e-mail message, should aim to set up an appointment, so it should aim to give a positive and concise message on the subject matter will go and discuss during the appointment.
Before creating a script for the phone calls you will have to make, I want to give you a list of the formulas most used by salespeople to make a bad impression on their prospects, customers, etc., and completely destroy any follow-up strategy from the moment of first telephone contact.
These are formulas with which it is very easy to get a refusal.
As I present these formulas to you, I ask you to pay attention to the sensations you feel, so as to immediately let the things you shouldn't do into yourself.
Ultimately it is a list of things to avoid and never do.
I remind you of the three main rules of communication, particularly in telephone communication and in sales.
The first thing to check is to understand what the potential customer is interested in, because he always wonders what is useful and interesting for him.
The second rule is that your prospects or customers like to buy, but don't like being tried to sell them something.
The third rule says that when the customer buys something he doesn't buy for your reasons, but for his reasons.
Let's say that within these phone call examples, which I will present to you, you will find the classic three errors that trample on these three rules.
In just a few seconds your customer will answer the phone.
I remind you that in the first 10 seconds you decide whether the call can continue, or if it is in the dying phase, therefore if you are dying in the call.
However, it is important that you know that the failure of the phone call is always predictable, because it is a direct consequence of what you say.
And here are some scenarios of what happens in customer calls.
When you read these phone call vignettes that are all different from each other, think about how they make you feel and what sensations they create in you, write them down and connect them to the type of phone call you are about to examine.
Then in the first half of the lesson we will talk about how to renovate the entire electrical system of your home and what precautions to keep in mind, what costs we will incur, and all the technical and operational details of the electrical system.
Instead, in the second half of the lesson we will see how easy it is to get another week of vacation, already paid for, in the Cayman Islands.
And you may be wondering, what is this talking about?
When I told you about the first part referring to the electrical system, you immediately thought that these things don't interest you, you don't need to know these things, they are not part of your interests, all this you are listening to doesn't interest you.
It happened differently when I started talking about free holidays, and your thoughts changed immediately, you must have thought and asked yourself, so what is it all about?
Oh yes, this interests me, and therefore I managed to attract your attention.
Then remember that in the first ten seconds of the call you can create emotions, like the one I have just described, or you can also generate boredom and therefore rejection of your commercial proposal.
So what's your purpose?
Why do you have to concentrate on understanding what your main purpose is?
Your fundamental aim is to completely avoid producing in the mind of your interlocutor the sensations that are created in the examples you will read and then do everything to implement an opening of the call so that it creates attention and interest, and above all to first you must eliminate the negative sensations that you yourself experience from your way of expressing yourself and you must create positive sensations.
First of all, know that to do all this you must always smile on the phone and you must not be driving a car, lying on a bed, or too comfortable in an armchair, because your interlocutor immediately senses your negative nature. , or not mentally ready.
Instead, you must sit on a normal chair, with your back straight and therefore alert and attentive to everything that happens, to what they tell you and to what you have to say.
So let's start by checking the words that evoke resistance from the prospect or customer, when opening the phone call, and which I absolutely recommend you avoid.
Know that I also made these mistakes, before learning how to make phone calls of a certain type.
From the examples you will read shortly, you will find some types of phone calls, affected by various types of errors.
Let's start.
Let's start from the first.
Mr. Rossi, I'm just calling to see if I could ask you some questions.
Let's see together what's wrong with this type of opening, this type of call.
Think about it for a moment.
In this sentence, if you look carefully you have to eliminate the word only, because it diminishes the action you are declaring and that you wanted to do and therefore you give very little importance to the person of your customer.
As a result you are also belittling your person.
I'll give you another slightly different example because it doesn't have to do with sales, to make sure you realize the type of error.
Suppose that one Sunday a family of friends comes to your house and this family is made up of dad, mom and children.
The moment he enters your house, happy that you welcomed him, the father tells you that they were just passing by and so they thought of stopping.
He imagines what feeling this situation creates in you, and it's the exact same situation as before.
Mr. Rossi I was just calling to see if I could ask you some questions!
With this approach you devalue the moment in which you are calling, that is, by saying this sentence, you devalue yourself and the people you are calling. Is the concept clear to you?
So never use the word only, or only, because with such words you devalue the actions you should perform.
And you decrease your customer's esteem.
And here we are at the second one.
Mr Bianchi, I wanted to introduce myself to your company for etcetera, etcetera.
Think for a moment about the concept you convey in this sentence: you are conveying a concept about yourself that takes it for granted that the customer is there for your reasons.
Feel what sensation this concept creates in you, if you have felt it, and if you haven't felt it, I'll explain it to you now.
First of all, you are the person who offers to sell and I want to remind you that you are not a person who has nothing to do, that is, you are not the person who leaves by car to visit a stranger, you are not going to a party, so you must always remember that you are going to your potential customer.
So always remember that when you talk to him, he always asks himself what's in it for him?
And in fact potential customers think of themselves, they don't think of you, they don't care about you, nothing, I repeat, nothing.
This sentence ultimately makes no sense, no meaning, and only wastes your client's and yourself's time.
So never let the customer understand that I have nothing to do today, and then I thought that I would like to introduce myself to his company.
Write down the emotion this type of approach creates in you.
And let's move on to the third presentation.
Remember well that when I started making cold calls, if I also had this information that I am giving you, I would have become an expert in much less time, and yet I am also here to always improve myself, and you who listen to me.
Here is the sentence from the third example and be careful of the sensations it creates in you.
Mr. Verdi, I am part of a company that provides cleaning and washing services for premises and I wanted to talk to you about the needs that we could solve for his company.
Put yourself on the other side of the fence for a moment, and imagine what response you could immediately give to this salesman who presents himself in this way, show me how you manage to surprise him with your response.
Have you found the answer?
If you haven't found it, here it is: in response to your request, people can express themselves in this way: we already have a provider of these services, or we are completely satisfied with the provider we use at the moment.
What did you provoke with this presentation?
When you present a product or service, these ways of presenting incite resistance very easily and then you will get the answers you have already heard before, like we don't need these things, we are completely satisfied with what we use, right now .
If, however, you want to continue along this path, and carry forward this type of openness in telephone calls, then you have to talk to customers not about products and services, but about results, only about results, because when you talk about results that have really been obtained, possibly equipped with a credible testimonial, these are much more difficult to scratch, and customer resistance decreases immediately.
Therefore it is clear that you have to talk about results that you can demonstrate otherwise you will find yourself in worse situations than a resistance on the telephone.
So if you want to start your call with an opening like this, study all the results that your products create, and then concretely demonstrate what you can achieve in terms of the results you offer.
And we are at point 4.
Mr. Rossi, as you know, we are the main supplier of sweets in the shopping center just a stone's throw from you.
Well, now put yourself in the customer's shoes and feel what feeling this phrase causes you, I'll repeat it.
Mr Rossi, as you know, we are the main supplier of sweets in the shopping center just a stone's throw from you.
If you understand and have a feeling then you have realized that the word as she will know actually clashes with your speech.
When I hear this phrase like you will know, I immediately start thinking about the reasons why I shouldn't know, or the reasons why I should know.
It makes you wonder spontaneously if there is something I missed?
Or should I really know?
One immediately wonders what is it that I should know that I don't know?
This situation creates an emotion of anxiety in the client's head and thus you light the fire of resistance and will only create resistance towards you.
So eliminate this very bad way of ports.
We have reached the fifth.
Even this way of presenting oneself is no less negative.
Feel a little of the sensation it creates in you, and when I tell you feel the emotion, please put yourself in the state of feeling and embracing this emotion, so that you truly realize what your words can create towards of your potential customers.
Here's the sentence: Mr. Rossi, I'm sure you would agree!
Have you felt the emotion it could provoke in your interlocutor?
This sentence takes one thing for granted, and that is that the customer must necessarily agree with you, right from the start to get into the merits of the discussion, and therefore a claim that is neither in heaven nor on earth.
An approach sufficient to stop your phone call and have the customer tell me to call me back in ten years, when he has learned to communicate.
But then ask yourself, why would the customer agree?
Who are you to assume how people might think and furthermore the very word agree implies that they will absolutely disagree.
Try to check if you have never said a sentence like this to one of your customers and you will certainly remember, if it happened, whether or not your customer really agreed.
It would be great for you to try out these openings and realize how your customers behave so that you can get hands-on experience.
And we're at the sixth.
This is a little softer, it uses the conditional and puts the cart before the horse, saying: Mr. Verdi, I would like to present you with a system that always allows you to be in the top positions of Google, with the name of your company.
Do you always feel your heart, what sensation did you feel, if you felt a sensation?
When opening a call, never say this phrase, because you are simply asking a person to commit and make an instant decision!
In this case you are asking for something that you don't know whether he knows or not, and in what particular way he knows it, without even giving any details, taking it for granted that he must know it and accept it.
Put yourself in the customer's shoes and as a customer you will ask yourself what does this want, which challenges me in a certain sense to decide on the spot to give me an appointment, even if I can say no, or for something I don't know , but why should I accept his challenge?
I tell him I don't care and I solved the problem.
You have to imagine the feeling that goes through your client in that moment, that is, what you would feel if someone told you if you could show them a way to be in the top positions of Google, with the name of their company.
Furthermore, you put the customer in the position of having to decide and take responsibility for responding to you without having thought about it enough, without the time necessary to focus on your request and against his/her every will.
We are on the seventh opening formula to use to make sure you don't have an appointment.
Mr. Bianchi, are you the person in charge of... or... good morning!
Mr Bianchi, I'm Sergio Traversa from Soluzione Software srl, are you the person who makes decisions regarding your management software?
Never do these rides, you will disqualify yourself immediately.
Do you remember one of the times when you went into a shop looking for something and initially you find yourself alone and you look at everything you like and what you don't like and you imagine how nice it could be to have what you like and you think about it , but then the whole spell is broken, a person comes along and says can I help you?
Now I ask you to remember the feeling that that person created in that moment, and it certainly wasn't pleasant, above all, you must have thought here he is ready to sell me something.
Because as I told you before, people like to buy, but they don't like when you want to sell them something.
A presentation like I can help you is the same as before, that is, like the phrase, you are the person in charge of purchasing the management software...
It announces your sales intentions, immediately triggering and provoking opposition and resistance from customers, and it is natural for them to defend themselves.
So the first thing to do to avoid such a mistake is to qualify yourself and then to briefly and concisely introduce, especially if you don't have the right interlocutor in front of you, the advantages you offer, before trying to sell or before expressing your intentions of wanting to sell
And here we are at number 8.
Here is a technique that, like electric current, makes you feel an immediate shock of rejection, immediately creating resistance and hostility towards you.
Mr. Rossi, can you help me?
Used with decision makers, this is a truly terrible and horrible technique.
This question immediately creates resistance.
Think of an example of a telephone approach: put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer who perhaps finds himself in the typical situation of being interrupted in what he is doing and probably wasn't even waiting for a phone call.
The seller: good morning Mr. Rossi, I'm Antonio Bianchi from business services, can you help me?
What might the customer think to himself?
I ask you to feel the objection within yourself, and what sensation such a question can give.
The customer wonders, but who is this person, what does he want from me, you will probably see that he will be a salesman.
The customer asks what she needs to help her?
The seller replies, I was wondering if you are the person responsible for the management software.
Yes I am!
But let's analyze what happened, namely that the seller first of all wasted the customer's time, arousing suspicion in his mind and the more time passes the more the relationship is destroyed.
In fact, it made the customer think about this phrase, that is, who is this person and what does he want, and you will probably see that he will be a salesman, then confirming the customer's thought that he had already identified him before he showed up .
What you need to know in your approach, however, is that the customer does not have the task of helping you, he has no obligation towards you, if anything you should be the one to be able to help your customer.
Well up to this point I hope I have conveyed the concept that any communication you have to make on the phone you must first feel it inside yourself in order to listen to what sensation it gives you and how it makes you feel.
And only after having examined it and made sure that the sensations you experience are positive, then you can start using it.
And here we are at the ninth presentation.
Never apologize for wanting to help them!
In fact, when you apologize at the beginning of a call, you immediately lose importance and esteem from the potential customer.
Feel the sensations that come to you, feel what you feel, what you feel and what you say to yourself, here's an example: let's suppose you open the call by saying, good morning Mr. Rossi, I know you're busy right now and I'm sorry for interrupting you.
That's why I'm calling her...
Think for a moment about what you are about to offer your customers, think about the value you offer your customers, think about the sensations that being able to offer real value to your customer creates.
You are proposing something of value that can help make the customer's life better, but if you haven't sold your importance, if you haven't sold your time, then it's like declaring out loud to the customer, be careful, I'm selling goods. shoddy that has no value, and I advise you not to buy it.
Nowadays everyone is busy, everyone has things to do, it seems that the world runs at supersonic speed and that people don't even have time to live, given how much they have to do!
So if what you have to offer is truly valuable and you demonstrate that you want to win their time, then customers will want to talk to you and want to know more, they will want to see you and talk about their interests.
And now we are at the tenth of the spectacular questions to never ask.
Thanks for answering my call!
When the seller thanks the customer because he was able to talk together, this diminishes his importance and prestige as a seller.
Assuming he had any beforehand.
Such a phrase creates sensations in the sense that it diminishes your importance in the buyer's mind and gives the feeling that you are wasting your customer's time, so you talk and waste words and time.
To say the least this is a horrendous way to present yourself.
It's quite similar to the previous example of when the salesperson apologizes for wasting your time.
There are very few cases in life where saying thank you doesn't make the situation better and I'm sure this is one of those few cases.
When a salesperson thanks you for answering the call it makes you feel as if the salesperson is not worthy of talking to the customer.
What immediate consequences can this presentation create?
Think about it and collect your ideas.
And here we are at the eleventh.
Try to imagine asking your customer for a cold decision, right away, immediately, please imagine the feeling it creates in this type of call.
Imagine a different story like we are in a bar and a man approaches a woman he doesn't know, starting an argument and asking will you marry me?
How do you think a man who makes such a proposal to you might be seen by a woman, or what might that woman think?
This is going to be a poor fool.
Here are some real-life examples of phone calls that imply an immediate decision from the customer: the salesman asks, for example, Mr. Rossi, I would like to speak with you to start a collaborative relationship.
Put yourself in the customer's shoes and imagine what feeling this approach creates in you.
And here's another one: I'm Andrea Farina and I'd like to talk to you about becoming one of your stationery suppliers.
Put yourself in the customer's shoes and imagine what feeling it causes you.
I'll let you listen to another one: Mr. Customer, I'm Andrea Gnocchi and I would like to talk about how to develop a commercial relationship with his company.
Feel what situation this question creates for you.
And here's the next one: I'm Giorgio Ferri and we have excellent products for industrial cleaning.
And I would like to discuss it with you.
Would you be okay with Thursday at 3pm?
What are the sensations that came out of you?
All these requests made by telephone pursue a final result that is different from the result that you want to obtain with a phone call.
In fact, the object of the phone call is to sell the appointment, not to try to convince the interlocutor about the quality of your product already during the phone call.
One must realize that such a request is too early compared to the time of the call and is made in a ridiculous way.
Why too ridiculous?
Because you asked the customer for a decision too quickly.
An opening of this kind requires that you have conquered your ground, that is, before you can ask this type of question you must and I repeat must conquer the right to ask it, you cannot shamelessly ask your client anything, especially asking to take a first-time decision.
You can only win the right in this way, arousing curiosity about what you are about to propose and quickly communicating value for your customer.
Only in this way can you ask questions that are similar to the previous one.
And here we are at the twelfth.
Listen to this one and tell me if you don't feel a certain feeling of unease towards the seller.
Good morning Mr. Rossi, I'm calling people in his area and I was reading the old cards I had in my drawer, and I found his name...
This is absolutely no way to make the customer feel completely special!
In fact, in this case you make the customer feel like an ordinary person, an ordinary person, in short, an ordinary person, an anonymous person.
The people you call do not want to be treated like one of the many, who are part of the names on your list, and who you are listening to at that moment.
People, on the other hand, want to feel as if they are the only person in the world you are calling and do not like being part of a mass of names taken from a list.
So make sure he feels treated as unique.
The same happens when you send a single message to a large number of recipients.
In fact, you will have considerable chances of success for your message if it has been personalized with the email address and name of each individual recipient.
Otherwise you will get a total failure if, using a program, such as, for example, Microsoft Outlook, you enter all the recipients' addresses in the To: field, and at the same time there is no trace of the recipients' names in the subject or in the body of the message itself, provoking the right reaction of every single recipient, of having been treated like any recipient and not like a special customer, as he would like to be understood.
And we're at the thirteenth.
She and I have never spoken together!
It's an obvious situation!
This presentation is a waste of words!
This is a sales call with which you give the feeling of trying to make fun of the interlocutor.
It's as if the salesperson is saying ok I know I have no shots to fire and you're probably preparing to resist my call, while I just wanted to connect with you.
Ultimately it could also be right but what does it mean for the listener?
We are at the fourteenth.
I thought I'd give you a call to see how things are going, or I'll call to see if you received the email or the vacation package brochure.
These are all situations that evoke the feeling that you are wasting time on things of secondary importance, generating in the customer, here too, the feeling that you want to make fun of him.