I’ve recently done some consultancy and telemarketing training for company that sells ERP software. When I asked the telemarketing team what is success, all of them said getting an appointment for the sales team and that was all.
This team were also quite de-motivated. There was quite a lot of callers leaving and they were deemed as not being successful as they didn’t get enough appointments.
For those that don’t know the ERP market place, these IT systems can cost millions of pounds and companies stick with their systems for at least 10 years; for those that do look for new systems, less than 50% actually go out to market.
So looking at these stats alone you know that less than 5% of the market are looking for new software, which in turn means that at least 95% of calls will result in failure according to the team I was talking to. That really isn’t good for motivation, knowing you will fail in the vast majority of your job.
Throughout the training, we talked about what else can be achieved on a call that will progress a prospect towards a future sales appointment and we came up with a number of successful outcomes:
– Verifying the contact details or getting additional contacts at the same organisation.
– Getting email addresses or direct dial numbers to help future communication.
– Understanding what systems are being used currently, how long they’ve had them, what their pains are and when they will be going to market. This is probably the most vital – every conversation should end in success and you are building vital market intelligence that will help convert prospects to sales appointments in the future.
– Signing people up to receive a newsletter or other information.
– Agreeing future call back and a reason for the call.
All of these outcomes progress a prospect towards the ultimate goal – converting them to a sales appointment – and should be counted as successful calls.
Having multiple goals in calls doesn’t just help with motivation, but means that the conversation is always looking at other angles or things that can be got from the call and so helping the sales generation process.
I’m hoping when I go back to this client in 3 months I will find a happier, more motivated and successful team.
