Seventh in a series of articles, we'll discuss various issues and practices associated with modern ways of selling over the phone.
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The New Telemarketing™ is a set of selling practices designed to accomplish several things:
(1) To sell more goods and services than its predecessor, the "traditional" style;
(2) To be less offensive than its predecessor to buyers;
(3) To be consistent with a customer service style of communicating;
(4) To help in recruiting and retaining qualified phone representatives and managers; and
(5) To repair and reform the image of telemarketers in business and consumer communities.
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In previous articles in this series we mentioned the fact that traditional telemarketing is tough on everybody, because its one-way, spray and pray style is authoritarian and it invites interruptions and objections.
Reps can only handle so much rejection before they burn out, and traditional telemarketing burns out more people, faster than any other job we know.
So, how can we make the job more achieving, enjoyable, less riddled with rejection, and a softer sell with customers?
The New Telemarketing™ accomplishes this feat with PDM, Participative Decision Making.
You might recognize this term from the literature on group dynamics and team building. Its principle is clear and well established. When we involve people in making decisions that affect them, they're more likely to own the ultimate decisions, and feel better about implementing them.
Contrast this with managing by fiat or force, where senior people make all of the rules and force their juniors to implement them. When this occurs, there's generally more misunderstanding about and resistance to the imposed solution.
The same concept applies to selling. Where the sale is built from the ground up with the customer feeling he is a full partner in the process, he's likely to object less and to stick to his decision to buy, and feel better about the entire process.
The New Telemarketing™ follows the wisdom of PDM by opening the conversation with a credibility statement, explained in a prior article, and then it uses carefully crafted questions to elicit needs.
Once a client recognizes he has a need, and it's important, he's asked if he wants our help in fulfilling it. When he says yes, his objections vanish.
At that critical moment, he supports the next step in a New Telemarketing™ call, the possible solutions step. He wants to hear how he can solve his problem or reach his goal, so there is no need to object.
He becomes a teammate of the seller, because he has participated in the all-important process of identifying his need, prioritizing it, and asking for help with it.
What will come up are questions, but generally, they come later, and when they do they tend to be friendly, and not hostile.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone®, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone! and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, "The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable," published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
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