If you are looking for ways to build your business offline and you expect to make telephone calls to many people, telemarketing (tm) skills can improve your chances of success. The same holds true when you’re working online. The one common denominator in both cases is there is no face-to-face contact. Many people today work from home as well as in
office. I believe it’s called telecommuting. If you’re a tm or sales person, you accomplish many tasks contacting prospects and customers as well.
Do you know where to start? Are you provided contact lists of prospects to call? How do you qualify prospects? Do you know what a gatekeeper is? Are you expected to close sale or forward prospect information to sales organization? If your working in an office or home, is telephone properly setup, do you use a headset and most important of all are you using acceptable contact software on your computer?
SET UP
If your working online trying to develop and grow your business you must at times speak to your customers, clients and prospects by telephone. If working in an office and you’re responsible for any telephone activities involving prospects, client and customers, you most certainly use telephone.
Most everyone has a computer and a telephone in home/office environment. Is it set-up properly? The telephone should be next to your workstation on a desk close to your monitor. It is very difficult to hold a phone to your ear while using computer keyboard to make online entries.
That’s why a good reliable headset is worth its weight in gold. Your company should provide you with a reliable and comfortable headset especially if many calls are being made in tm program. If you have to purchase your own, Radio Shack has a wide range of headsets and prices.
It’s worth it to make expenditure for your comfort and ease of use with telephone and computer. Headset instructions are simple to follow and connect to most any desktop phone.
Let’s face it; if you’re doing tm for local storm door company or selling software/hardware/services consulting for a company, you need best telephone skills that you can muster. Now what do you need to track all those good prospects that you have? You can use a note pad to record all your contact information.
But, that becomes unwieldy and really old fashion. What you really need is a good up to date contact software program that helps you to keep track of your prospects/customers. There are a myriad of programs out there that can help. Some good ones are Contact Plus and Telemagic and Act.
