[E48] Q&A Week: Telemarketing, motivation when failing

In this episode, I answer:

• What is a good approach to keep people on the phone when you are telemarketing?

• How do you stay motivated when you continuously fail to achieve sales targets?

If you have any sales or mindset related questions, send me a message through the contact page or via LinkedIn.

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Episode 48 – Transcript

In this episode I talked about telemarketing and quotas. Welcome to Episode 48 of the Sales Experience Podcast. I’m glad you’re here, I’m excited. I love going through these questions. I love the feedback I’m getting from people.

This is so fun from my end, hopefully you’re enjoying it. If you aren’t, make sure to send me a message. If you’re not make sure to send me a message let me know your feedback, so that I can keep making sure that this has a lot of value as much as possible as much as I can cram into 10ish minutes every single day for everyone listening.

And if you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe online, iTunes, all of those places. If you haven’t done it yet, as well comment, leave a rating five stars, would love that. It makes such a big difference for people looking through the stat that I heard recently, which is 600,000 different podcasts out there on iTunes, not episodes, but different series, which is crazy.

So, there’s a lot out there, differentiate this, your comments, your notes, your reviews, everything you can do helps, and I appreciate it. And for now, let’s get into some questions.

So the first one, what is a good approach to keep people on the phone when you’re telemarketing?

Now, this is The Sales Experience Podcast mostly targeted to sales people inside sales, you’re in a call center, you’re mostly taking inbound calls, maybe you have some outbound calls. However, there are times when you’re making outbound.

There’s some people who might be listening and organizations that I work with, who are purely telemarketing or their hat, they have a team that’s telemarketing, who’s then setting up leads for somebody else, whether it’s appointment setting, live transfers of pre qualified people, whatever that might be.

And then there’s others of you who are listening that your outbound prospecting, maybe cold calls, slightly warm calls, it’s part of your job. It’s part of your prospecting efforts that you’re going after. So, this question would apply to you as well, which is why I wanted to address this.

So, what’s the best way to keep people on the phone when telemarketing outbound and cold calling whatever that is? The first thing is, don’t sound like a telemarketer, don’t sound like a salesperson.

There’s a lot of debate and I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and we both agreed on it. Don’t say the things that a telemarketer would say that triggers everyone to think they’re a telemarketer. Don’t do what other people do if you don’t want to be lumped into that bucket, even if you are a telemarketer. But that’s not a great approach.

“Hi, John, how are you today? How’s the weather? Hi, can I speak to John?” You know, all of those things where you’re leading into it or you’re setting yourself up to sound like a sales call that they’re not expecting will put you in that bucket. So you want to avoid those things. Don’t ask how are you. Don’t — if you can help it, don’t ask for the person if you’re just making lots of phone calls. Don’t say, “Hey, can I speak to John?” because you know what they’re going to do? If they don’t like the way your tone is, if they don’t like the fact that you called them, they weren’t expecting it, they can instantly tell that it’s a sales call.

They will literally tell you that “No, John’s not here right now when in fact, you know, that’s John. You know, it’s John, you know he’s lying to you, you know he’s dodging your calls. But what are you going to do? Call him out on it? “I know that’s you, John. John, I know it’s you stop trying to pretend and call yourself Bob, I know you’re John.”Like, you’re not going to go that route and you’re not going to do that even if you know it’s John.

So, when you ask for somebody, and they’ve got the sense that you’re cold calling telemarketing or it’s unsolicited, they are going to tell you that, that they are not available, even though it’s them. So, don’t ask for names, don’t and say how are you? “Hi, this is Jason, how are you today?” Like instant sales call, instantly the walls are back up, the walls are very high.

The key to keep in mind this day and age is 2019, people don’t answer their phone. People don’t like answering their phone. Even if it’s somebody you’re expecting or you know and you see your phone ring, it’s still an interruption, you may not answer it. It might be your family and you send them to voicemail and then send a text and see what they want because you’d rather do that then talk to them.

And so if that person answers the phone in this day and age, and they actually hit yes to answering the phone or picked up their landline if they still have one; keep in mind, they’ve got some kind of wall that’s up. And then when you sound like a telemarketer, it’s just going to go sky high.

So, don’t say “Hi, how are you?” Don’t ask for a specific name. Just roll into what it is and build enough value. And so there’s lots of different ways depending on if you’re calling consumers, if you’re calling businesses, different strategies, but just do that. So, that’s the first step. Don’t start out the gate with one foot in the hole where you’re already losing because they feel like you’re a telemarketer.

The other recommendation I have for keeping people on the phone as long as possible, is just be a person. I mentioned this all the time, just be a human having a conversation with another human. If you have something of value that you’re calling about, and you’re offering and you think the other person might be interested, obviously it’s very early in the relationship. You don’t know if it’s a good fit if they even qualify.

No matter what it is, there’s got to be some kind of parameter of does it make sense, do they qualify, does it even apply to them. But until you get to that point, it’s just a conversation. It’s two people talking, I would like to help you I have something to offer. I want to know enough about you to see if this even makes sense. If it does, let’s continue the conversation. If not, it doesn’t make sense. I’m going to get off the phone, I appreciate your time.

And so just have a conversation. Don’t try to be salesy, don’t try to be slick, don’t try to be perfect. Just be you, be natural, and have a conversation with another human and don’t be in a hurry. Take as much time as you need in order to have that conversation.

So, don’t rush through it, don’t shock on because that’s going to trigger them to feel like there’s something that’s up or you just do thousands of calls like this a day, and it’s really impersonal and everyone wants to feel special. So, try to remember that some great things just out of the gate, how to keep people on the phone.

All right, second question. How do you stay motivated when you continuously fail to achieve sales targets?

Well, the first thing we got to talk about is why are you failing to achieve those sales targets? Why are you failing to hit the quotas? Is anyone else in your organization hitting those quotas or those sales targets?

If nobody’s doing it, or only a couple of people in your organization are hitting those numbers, then that might be a sign of the system isn’t working well; the sales system, the process, the marketing, the management, coaching, leadership, the service or product that you’re selling isn’t actually very good. If very few people in your group or in your organization are actually winning, then that might be one where you need to move on and find a different company to work for.

Now, if lots of people are hitting it or enough people are hitting the sales target. And then out of that, obviously, some people are doing well above that, you know, the 80/20 rule always applies, then that may be you and then the question is what do you need to do about it?

So, we’re not even getting to the motivation part yet, talking about skills. So, is there skills that you need to build on? Is there practice that you need to do? Do you need to study more? Do you need to get more familiar with the script, with the product with a service that you sell, with your company, with how to deal with people with understanding personalities and behaviors and persuasion and actively listening and asking better questions?

So, there’s a lot of that where if you’re one of the few people in an organization not winning, then that’s about you need to fix that. Now, during that, how do you stay motivated? Well, the first thing is, is do you want to be there? Why are you there? And that’s where you want to go to first. That’s the very first step.

I talked about this episode in week one, you got to know your why, you got to know why you’re doing it, why you get up every day. And of course, the outward sign and the outward answer is going to be money. I’m in it for money, I’m trying to make money, I want to make more money. That’s why I’m in sales. Yes. But what does that money for?

Okay. Well, that money is going to buy me a house, I want to buy a house. Okay, why? Why do you want to buy a house? Well, I want to have a place for me and my family to live. Okay, why? And and just dig as deep as possible. Where on the surface, of course, you want to make money.

Of course, I want to buy a new car. But like why? Why is that important to you, because that will help you stay motivated, that will push you through when you’re not hitting targets, and you’re not hitting the quota.

Because you may be new in the business, you may be just in a slump, and you just got to give it time, right? It’s tough when you show up for work, and you see other reps who are doing really well and it seems easy to them. And if you’re not in that same place, then it can cause this disconnect where you then feel like you’re less than.

But what you don’t always see is how long they’ve been doing it; how much time how much effort, how much in the seat time they’ve spent on the phone, talking to people, and then how much out of the office time they think about it, they’re practicing there, they’re running through it in their head, they’re researching, you don’t see all that necessarily. And so maybe you just need more time, maybe more effort. But you want to stay motivated based on why you’re doing it, why it’s important to you, why you show up every day, why you want to win.

And then you also have to have some faith. If you know that you’re giving it 100% effort, every single day you’re doing all you can, you’re willing, you’re open, you’re taking everything that the company is giving you; the tools, the processes, the scripts, the systems, you’re putting that into play, you’re giving everything effort, you’re driven for why you’re there every day, and it’s not happening and you’re not hitting your targets, then maybe you just need some more time and focus on that. Focus on just keep stepping up to the plate over and over again and trying it and again, if you’re continuously failing, if it’s been a long time.

Again, this is where self awareness comes in, maybe sales isn’t for you, this might not be for you. But if you feel like you’ve got it, you’ve want it bad enough and you have a why that’s driving you to keep going, then just stay motivated, stay focused, and do it for your reasons, and don’t worry about everything outside.

Hopefully that helps somebody out there, whoever you are listening to this, want to stay motivated. Whether you haven’t hit your sales quotas for a while or you’re in a current slump or you’re new and you’re not sure how long it’s going to take to get there; just stay motivated. Just stay focused, just keep plugging away, just keep doing what you need to do, put in the time and effort and you’ll get there.

And that’s it for another episode of The Sales Experience Podcast. As always remember, everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.