Some people perceive telemarketing as an annoying sales technique. To them it’s nothing but a non-requested call made from a contact center in order to sell a product in an unexpected moment to an unknown customer. In fact, it is commonly accepted that telemarketers mechanically read a script to offer a particular product. But I want to talk about our outbound business from the Transcom perspective. We follow a non-intrusive, well-structured strategy, and we handle each call with the utmost respect for the consumer. There is, of course, a sales argument prepared to capture the customer’s attention quickly and to expose, briefly, the product’s main benefits. Conducted by well-prepared professionals, it is a sales tool that performs very well even in a difficult economic context such as this. However, as all commercial approaches, telemarketing has its own ‘moments of truth’, with the added difficulty of not being able to rely on nonverbal communication; we must focus our effort in how to handle the initial contact.
To connect with another person over the phone, we can only count on our auditory perception; the only tool that the telemarketer has to keep the customer's attention during the first seconds of communication is his/her voice. Deprived of eye contact, the agent needs to engage in active listening, paying attention to what and how his/her interlocutor expresses. Any nuance in the voice tone can be decisive and can help reveal our customer’s motivation to buy our product. We should try to ‘tune in’ to the client as quickly as possible. To do this we must adapt our voice to our interlocutor, using key words or phrases that help us to inspire confidence and the utmost respect for our client's time, even proposing to postpone the call to a more suitable time if necessary. Seeing as a strong voice tone might seem aggressive and create resistance, we prefer to use an interrogative and neutral tone to handle any possible objections our client may offer. Having gained the attention of our talker, it is essential to be clear about our sales goal and structure the call in order to transmit our message in the best possible way. So in addition to making a good product explanation, we have opted to avoid long calls that might risk losing the client’s attention. Once we have reached this point, the persuasiveness and commercial techniques of each agent will play a main role. Regardless of having achieved our goal or not, we will always finish our call appreciating the time that our customer has spent with us, ending with a cordial farewell in order to leave a good memory.