Telephone Sales Tips — Finding The Right Person
Business Telemarketing Depends On Knowing Who To Call
Sep 19, 2009
The objective of the business-to-business telemarketer is to set appointments for face-to-face sales calls. The most important piece of information for the successful telephone sales representative to have or discover is the name of the correct person to call — the person with the authority to purchase the telemarketer's product or service, or is a primary decision-maker.
If the telemarketer does not know a person’s name — often the case in cold-calling — the task becomes market research as much as a sales task.
Business Sales Prospecting
In the telephone sales experience of the author of this article, it helps to research for sales prospects in a target company before the call. It sounds obvious, but when the object is to discover the name of the person to call, it has an advantage and a disadvantage.
- The advantage is that the caller knows a name to ask for.
- The disadvantage is that it takes time and reduces the volume of calls in any one day. If receptionists, administrative assistants or others will cooperate and refer to a likely person, it can be quicker to call.
One useful technique is to cold call first and if the caller meets resistance from a receptionist or administrative assistant then to do the research.
Marketing Research Via Corporate Web Sites
Two sources are among the most useful:
- The web site of the company to be called;
- Search engines such as Google.
Many organizations list key personnel with titles on their websites, many with photographs. The caller can choose the person most likely to be the correct contact. If in doubt, sales trainer Mark Hunter suggests the caller should choose someone high in the organization. It’s better to start high and be referred by a senior person to someone lower down than to start at a middle-management and have to call someone higher up. By starting high, the caller can genuinely tell the person lower down that the senior person told him or her to call. The call comes with the senior’s person’s authority.
If there is no personnel listing, the caller can try the following:
- If there is a page on the website for News or Media, call it up and search for names in any documents, reports or articles. The correct name might not be here, but it can give the caller someone to start with who could transfer to a more suitable person. A note of caution: it is not a good idea to call the person listed as the media representative; this person’s job is to connect with media and will not usually be amenable to helping sales representatives.
- If documents such as white papers and backgrounders are available on the site and contain authors' names, these can be useful.
- Downloadable annual reports of many publicly-traded corporations contain names.
- Websites of many publicly-traded corporations have links for Investors giving the name, telephone number and email address of staff members (rather than an outside investment firm) who deal with investors. This will not be the correct person for a sales call but is someone who could recommend or offer to pass information on.
Another technique is to search the company name via Google. This can turn up a news report or other reference containing a name.
Internet Aids to Business Sales Telemarketers
The business sales telemarketer should always be on the look-out for names of people in business magazines, business news websites and anywhere else. But when the task is to cold-call a list of corporations without contacts being known, the Internet can reveal who to call.
Sources: Paul S. Goldner, author of Red Hot Cold Call Selling. Mark Hunter "The Sales Hunter"
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