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OUTBOUND Telemarketing 101

Part 1

1. What is Telemarketing

2. Types of telemarketing a. Outbound (definition) b. Inbound (definition)

3. Types of Inbound and Outbound telemarketing campaigns 4. Inbound

a. Customer service b. Technical Support

5. Outbound a. Lead Generation / Survey b. Appointment Setting c. Sales

6. Types of Outbound Telemarketing a. B2C b. B2B

7. B2B Basics 8. Eligibility / decision makers 9. Getting Past the Gate Keeper - Basic 10. Types of calls

a. Warm b. Cold

11. Leads and Files

12. Dialer / Different Dialing Modes a. Predictive b. Preview c. Power

d. Manual 13. Dispositions and Examples commonly used call Dispositions 14. Call Backs

a. General Call back

b. Specific/Personal Call back 15. Verification 16. Types of scripts

a. Verbatim b. Conversational

17. Scamming / Misleading 18. SPH

19. Time zones a. OBT time zone restrictions (B2B and B2C)

20. Monitoring and Coaching 21. Client Session

22. Seeded Calls

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WHAT IS TELEMARKETING

It is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson uses the telephone to solicit prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or

web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call.

TYPES OF TELEMARKETING

a) Inbound b) Outbound

OUTBOUND

When the representative calls up customers for an offer or service Examples: Selling, Promotions and Surveys

An OUTBOUND call center job requires workers to place calls using a list of contacts and a written sales script.. Outbound call center workers may be doing direct sales work such as asking for a donation or they may give the recipients of their calls information and try to book appointments for outside sales representatives to follow up on. Outbound call center workers may be asked to up-sell, or promote additional products and services.

INBOUND The representative is TAKING IN / ANSWERING calls.

Examples: Customer Service, Tech support, Directory Assistance, Inquiry Handling

An INBOUND Call Center job requires workers to answer incoming calls from customers. This work can be more unpredictable than outbound call center work as the worker does not know who will be calling with what problem, request, or information. The Inbound call center worker must have a thorough knowledge of the products, services, and policies of the company he or she is representing. Some call center jobs require extensive technical knowledge of the product or service and technical service representatives communicate with customers to troubleshoot problems with the product or service.

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TYPES OF INBOUND TELEMARKETING CAMPAIGNS

a. Customer service CSR pertains to agents who usually provide support and assistance to customers in correct use and optimizing a product.

b. Technical Support - Technical Support Representatives refers to agents that provides technical support to products

or services. - This especially applies to technology products such as cellular phones, computers, internet

connection (ISP), software products and other electronic or mechanical commodities. - Tech support representatives often receive higher salaries compared to customer service

representatives. This is apparently because of the technical skills and technical training that TSR employees are required to possess to effectively provide the said technical service

TYPES OF OUTBOUND TELEMARKETING CAMPAIGNS

a. Lead Generation / Survey A lead is a person who has in some way, shape, or form indicated interest in your company's product or service. Lead Generation is the Process of collecting names and contact information about qualified prospects which will be contacted by the salespeople for generating orders. Traditionally lead generation occurred at places like trade shows – visitors to a company's booth would fill out a card with their contact information and turn it in to receive a call back from that company's sales team. Since the rise of the Internet, many businesses use their websites as a lead generation option. Lead generation is a critical part of the sales process. It's the first step in the sales cycle, so a shortage of leads will affect the entire process. In marketing, lead generation is the generation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for sales leads.

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b. Appointment Setting

Appointment Setting is classified as a form of Telemarketing conducted to generate and arrange qualified sales meetings. The main purpose of appointment setting is to call potential customers, qualify and engage them in conversation, provide information and create interest regarding our product or service, and set up meetings with a member of the sales force of the company that they are representing.

c. Outbound Telemarketing Sales Outbound telemarketing is a proactive form of marketing or promoting a business, product or service. This type of telemarketing is associated with outbound sales calls when a business is trying to sell a customer their particular product. This process usually involves processing of payments on line or over the phone.

TYPES OF OUTBOUND TELEMARKETING

a) B2C Business-to-consumer

The exchange of services, information and/or products from a business to a consumer

b) B2B

Business to Business The exchange of products, services, or information between businesses

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN B2B AND B2C

B2B deals primarily with other businesses, not the general public B2C provides products and services directly to the end user.

B2C – Businesses that Sell to Consumers

Product driven Brand identity created through repetition and imagery

B2C companies employ different marketing campaigns for publicizing their goods and services. This would include coupons, vouchers, email blasts, banner ads, limited edition offers and the likes to entice their target market to buy

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Maximize the value of the transaction Single step buying process, shorter sales cycle

These campaigns are much shorter in duration thus the urgent need to secure the customer’s interest very quickly. The path to purchase must be short and simple – just a few clicks from email receipt to order confirmation. Any more than a couple of clicks and the customer is likely to abandon the shopping cart. The call to action must be obvious and the offer enticing.

Large target market Merchandising and point of purchase activities Emotional buying decision based on status, desire, or price

Loyalty is an important aspect in B2C marketing. This proved very true for companies like Amazon, Best Buy, and Staples. They combine good customer service and education on their product and services thus their customers keep coming back.

B2B – Businesses that Sell to Businesses

Relationship driven Maximize the value of the relationship

The sales cycle in the B2B world is often much longer and more complex. It mainly maximizes on the value of relationships. A B2B company needs to focus on maintaining communication and building relationships.

Small, focused target market Multi-step buying process, longer sales cycle

Marketing activities involving lead generation that can be nurtured during the sales cycle can be used to attain this goal.

B2B features a multi-step buying process that needs more than one person to decide on the purchase thus B2B companies employ marketing to educate its target audience

Brand identity created on personal relationship Educational and awareness building activities

In B2B, “content is king” for marketing paraphernalia The content must be straight to the point, should have contact information for

offline communications and the landing pages are easy to navigate and utilize. It must contain information on features, benefits, and possibly pricing.

Rational buying decision based on business value

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B2B BASICS

Understand the bottom line of every business: Every business wants to make as much money as possible, using as few resources, time

and effort as possible. It won’t matter if you are the biggest, best, or brightest. Businesses only want to know if

your service or product will help save or make money, save time, or boost productivity.

Understand YOUR bottom-line rule:

Your objective is to speak with someone in a position of authority. It doesn’t matter when it happens, as long as it does.

B2B accounts requires that you speak only with the qualified Decision Maker (DM) Contact your prospects early! That's the best time to reach the decision maker directly,

and for most people, it's the time that they're most open to discuss new ideas.

In most B2B telemarketing call centers 85% of the day’s total appointments are set before noon.

Gate Keepers

In B2B telemarketing, you will deal with a Gate Keeper in almost every call

They Do NOT make buying decisions

Their main job is to screen the calls that come in and eliminate unimportant

interruptions in the decision-maker’s day, while making sure that those who should be

put through are

B2B Scripts

We really never know what the prospect will say, so B2B scripts and responses are meant to be flexible..

The secret with scripts is not to read it word for word but to have enough information in it to give yourself confidence when you’re engaged in conversation. The point is to use the script as a tool for guided discussion.

B2B: KISS Me

Use the KISS principle. KISS is originally an acronym for "Keep it Short and Simple". KISS states that simplicity of the callflow and your lines should be a key goal and that

unnecessary complexity should be avoided.

Simple words are the best words.

B2B: Quick and Easy You’re much more likely to succeed in your goal if the prospect fully understands what you are offering or require. Consequently, keep your reason for calling clear and make sure that you can get your point out quickly and effectively.

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B2B: Tell Me What and Tell Me More

You’ll have maybe 20 seconds to make a credible pitch. Any longer and your lines or callflow must be adjusted.

If the prospect says “tell me more,” you’ll need to be ready to provide details yourself, or be ready to create an opportunity for the prospect to obtain such details.

Dealing with Direct Questions

Many questions during a business call environment are intellectual and are almost always tied in to the Bottom Line.

You need to answer questions like these without being evasive. A direct response which approaches from two or more angles is best Q: How much is your service?

Bad Answer: It depends on what you need. Good Answer: Most of our clients request about $10,000 worth of work for a full featured website; however, depending on what you need, it could vary by a few thousand each way.

B2B: Provide Value

Have something of value to say on every telemarketing call.

Be sure they're able to say they are better off after your call than they were before it, even if they don't make a purchase or set an appointment.

It can be helpful to call with ideas you've heard from other customers that might be useful to them.

Eligibility and Decision Makers

Refers to the person or persons who can actually ACCEPT a product or service we are selling

Lead-Only Programs: can only sell to the lead name

Eligibility Programs: (campaign specific) • SPOUSE can be eligible for an offer. • ANYONE in the home who is OVER THE AGE OF 18 and is AUTHORIZED to make a

decision

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OUTBOUND TELEMARKETING BASICS

TYPES OF CALLS

a) Cold Calling a prospect (who may not know the caller) without a prior contact/ appointment.

b) Warm

calling customers who initially made contact with us(online survey, email) to follow up on the product/services that we offer

calling the existing customers of our clients to offer new products and services

TYPES OF SCRIPTS

a) VERBATIM - to read the script word for word

b) CONVERSATIONAL- can add some words, or explain the presentation in their own words (the

context of the script should not be changed to the extent that it becomes misleading)

LEADS

term used to describe the PHONE NUMBERS that are dialed to call potential customers Also known as prospective customers

FILES

DATA BASE of PHONE NUMBERS. Phone numbers of PEOPLE that a client wants us to call. The I.T. department receives the file from a client and then downloads the phone numbers into

the DIALER.

DIALER and DIALER MODES

DIALER

is an electronic device that is connected to a telephone line to monitor the dialed numbers and alter them to seamlessly provide services that otherwise require lengthy National or International access codes to be dialed

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DIALER MODES 1. Predictive 2. Preview 3. Power 4. Manual

1. Predictive

Predictive dialing is a state-of-the-art pacing mode used to call a large number of customers within a short period of time.

Screens out no-answers, busy signals, answering machines, and disconnected numbers, and delivers

the call to the next available agent Predictive dialing optimizes the time of agents by reducing the idle times between connected calls and freeing agents from dialing calls. Predictive dialing gathers statistics concerning the duration of calls, how long it takes for calls to be answered, and how often are calls answered. When an agent is about to become idle, the system places several calls.

Predictive dialing campaigns can achieve agent productivity of 50 minutes per hour and nuisance ratios of 3% or less. The system is continually updating predictive dialing probabilities and monitoring nuisance ratios for performance and compliance with legislation. For example, predictive dialing is useful in sales campaigns to call a large number of contacts and maximizing the working time of agents.

The performance of predictive dialing takes into consideration the accuracy of the contact lists and the policies on nuisance calls. If the contact list is poor, the performance of the predictive dialing campaign is at risk as agents are not connected to live contacts and are not able to do business.

2. Preview

Preview dialing enables agents to first view the available information about the customer and decide when to place the call. In addition to the information about the customer, agents may also view all the history of the customer with the contact center. After viewing the information about the customer, the agent requests the system to make the call.

For example, preview dialing is useful in debt collection campaigns to allow agents to view information about the customer and define a strategy before starting to talk to the customer. The system delivers preview calls to agents automatically, taking into account the priority of the call and the skills of the agent to handle the call. Preview dialing keeps agents from dialing calls manually.

3. Power

An automated dialer shows the account information and phone number on the screen after the number is dialed, but is not predictive.

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Also called Progressive dialing, Power dialing places calls only when an agent is available to handle the call. Automated dialers consider the priority and the skills of the agent to automatically place a call to the agent. In power dialing, an agent is always available to talk to the customer.

Power dialing is suitable for all campaigns, from customer care follow-up calls to telemarketing. For example, power dialing is useful to call predictive dialing contacts that resulted in nuisance to ensure that an agent is available to talk to the customer. A 2012 research study conducted by The Bridge Group, Inc. discovered that while inside sales jobs and career demand is up 54 percent, most sales leverage comes with power dialer software.

4. Manual Manual Dialing' refers to calls that are placed manually by an agent. Usually done when a customer provides an alternate contact number that’s not in our Files or provides referrals

SPH

Sales Per Hour, and is one of the performance goals set by clients in order to continue doing business with them.

Calculated by dividing the total number of SALES by the total number of HOURS WORKED.

For example, if a representative made 8 sales while working 7 hours, then their SPH would be:

1.14 sales per hour (8/7)

OUTBOUND TELEMARKTING CALLING RESTRICTIONS

Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, telemarketing firms were restricted to

making sales calls only during the hours of

8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the called time zone. (B2C)

9am-5pm in the called time zone (B2B)

The law does allow some exceptions. A customer who expressly asks to be contacted at a

specific time, for example, may be called outside the legal window.

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DISPOSITION

a) Something that is done at the end of EVERY call b) Process of letting the computer know WHAT HAPPENED on a particular call

Examples commonly used call Dispositions

Sale

Not Interested

Callback Answering Machine

No Answer

Language barrier Wrong Number

DNC/Do Not Call

CALL BACKS

A CALL BACK occurs when the person a REPRESENTATIVE is calling is UNAVAILABLE REPRESENTATIVES can simply set another time in which to callback the customer

GENERAL CALLBACK – no specific time and date given (no appointment was set)

You were able to speak with someone who is not the decision maker and asks you to call back You were able to speak with the decision maker but has no time to speak over the phone and

asks you to call back at another time

SPECIFIC CALLBACK / PERSONAL Callbacks – there is a specific time and date given A Personal Callback is defined as one where you have made a presentation to a decision-maker, but are not able to close the sale for one of the following reasons:

The Buyer must consult with a partner or spouse

The Buyer has requested literature through e-mail or wants to do his/her own research to know more about the product

You will have already attempted to close the sale, but the Buyer insists that you call back for a decision. In this case, you will always do the following:

Be sure that they Buyer has no questions remaining that you have not answered

Set a specific day and time for the callback—an appointment Let the Buyer know that he/she will need to set aside time to place the order

Do not allow too much time to elapse between the initial call and the callback

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When you call back, always mention that in your introduction: “This is Susan Brown calling for (company name). John Smith asked me to call today at this time. Is he available right now?” Assume the sale: “Mr. Smith, this is Susan calling again for (company name). Can I go ahead now and process your purchase for you today?”

VERIFICATION

process of verifying the name, address, and details of an offer while being RECORDED

Confirming what the client is agreeing to

Confirming all the information that you have gathered to avoid clerical mistakes

Serves as a verbal contract between the customer and the client we represent

Terms and Conditions is also known as Disclosure

This is to ensure that we have the CORRECT information as well as letting the customer know EXACTLY what they are agreeing to.

Done in case the customer claims that they NEVER AGREED to the terms and conditions of an offer.

If ever there is a dispute, a company can simply pull the recording for PROOF.

A sale can either be HELD or CANCELLED after being verified by the QA department

HELD

Term used to describe a sale that is being put on hold after being verified by the QA Department Held reasons differ per campaign

CANCELLED

Term used to describe a sale that is LOST after being verified by the QA Department

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EXAMPLES OF HELD/CANCELLED REASONS

Significant words or phrases not mentioned clearly.

Example: rates, fees, charges

Failure to verify information accurately

Example: address, date of birth, credit card information

Fast Pacing (inaudible)

Example: disclosure

Not Verbatim

Example: omitting important information during verification

Failure to gather a clear response from CM

Incorrect tagging of information

Example: enrolling CM to a different package

Misrepresentation / Scamming

Example: changing rates, misleading information

SCAMMING/MISLEADING

Term used to describe representatives who achieve sales by LYING OR MISLEADING their customers.

Representatives who lie or mislead customers will be TERMINATED IMMEDIATELY!

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Example of misleading:

(Script) “And what’s even better is that the Comcast High-speed Internet service is now offered at a low cost of only $22.95 per month for the first three (3) months, and that already includes the $3.00 monthly modem fee rental! That’s a savings of $23.00 off the normal monthly rate for the next three (3) months! Isn’t that great?!”

(You) “And what’s even better is that the Comcast High-speed Internet service is now offered at a low cost of only $22.95, and that already includes the $3.00 modem fee rental! That’s a savings off the normal rate! Isn’t that great?!”

MONITORING AND COACHING

Listening to agents’ telephone calls to assess the quality with which the call is handled. Monitoring can be silent,

announced, side-by-side, or recorded for later review.

QA’s and Supervisors monitor calls every day.

All of the live monitoring that they will be conducting are ‘BLIND’.

Constructive feedback on monitored calls are given to the representatives to MOTIVATE & IMPROVE PERFORMANCE

Passing mark for monitored calls is 90%

COMMISSIONS are also based on monitoring scores.

CALIBRATION / CLIENT SESSION

Clients also monitor calls from the US to ensure the contact center’s adherence to the policies and quality guidelines

They RANDOMLY choose representatives and listen in their calls

Client, Managers, team leads, and QAs evaluate and discuss the calls and provide feedback and coaching to the representative whose call was monitored

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SEEDED CALLS

In the Files that the Clients provide, there will be one lead name that is ‘planted’ .

That planted lead name is actually one of the client’s representatives and will pretend to be a

customer.

This is one way for them to gauge if the TSRs are really following their policies