Tips for Telemarketers
presented to delight the caller and enrage the public
The Do Not Call list will
be impossible to maintain in a primitive phone room. Where
even sophisticated contact management software will fail,
how can handwritten lists be followed in a paper
environment? As a TSR, be aware that only the exact wording
by the prospect (which I will not give here) can invoke the
required list, and a simple imperative "Take me off your
list!" will not suffice. Additionally, it will
be difficult for the customer to prove a subsequent call,
and your company, not you, stands liable. A simple remedy
to avoid the dreaded invocation is to disconnect the call
before the phrase is uttered. With practice, you can learn
to hang up by the time you hear the (always somewhat louder
and higher in pitch) "Put me...". You will have
avoided unprofitable paperwork which is simply a waste of
your time. You were hired to write leads or set
appointments or make sales, you know, not to be a
secretary. You will have saved your company expensive fines
if that person is accidentally called again in the future.
Don't worry about making a bad impression at this point;
this jerk was just about to tell you to never call him
again. And it was on your and your company's time and long
distance bill, too. Why should you give the lazy bum the
chance? It was an opportunistic shot on his part,
since you had just happened to call him. If he is serious,
that's fine, let him write a letter or make the call
himself (in which case the paperwork would go to the front
office). Like that would really happen! No doubt, you will get sales. Don't forget to get the
name and address.
The third type of referral, of course, would be to this
site. Sending me
the numbers of rude customers will get them listed here.
Well, that's all for now, at least until I think of more.
Send me your ideas, telemarketers. Until next time, smile
and dial!
First, if you work in a place where you cannot get away
with the following, find another job. There are too many
places begging for telemarketers, so you should expect a
decent hourly wage plus a generous commission. Benefits are
still sketchy in many areas, but look for
improvements.
The Do Not Call List is a government-created entity
and should be recognized as such. Naturally, for years
telemarketers have removed names and numbers from prospect
lists once they were identified as unlikely to become
customers. The "Do Not Call" list is a bit different, as it
has become the requirement to actually create a list of
numbers that were once simply culled. In the computer age,
this can still require paperwork for the TSR and extra
steps on a daily basis for the IT worker, plus additional
training for anyone in the industry. Realistically, the
laws regarding this are nearly unenforcable, and their
passing was simply a cheap political gambit. Look for more
laws like this in the future.
Laughter
is a
wonderful stress relief. I mean,
laughing on the phone when a prospect says something really
stupid. You could say you are laughing with them but they
just never got it. You just don't hear laughter in a phone
room very often. So, the next time someone is rude or
stupid, go ahead and laugh right at them on the phone. You
might turn some heads in the office, but I have never heard
of anyone getting in trouble this way. The worst thing that
could happen is you get the prospect laughing too, and wind
up making a sale.
Unlisted numbers are easy to get. Anytime you get
really bored, try calling some to see how you like it. On
the one hand, some of them might get really irate, since
they pay more money to the phone company not to be in the
phone book, but then, these folks don't get many
telemarketing calls either, so it might balance out,
depending on the area. Using a city or street directory,
use the pages in the back where it lists the exchanges
numerically (these pages are often green or a different
color). Any gap in the sequence may contain unlisted
numbers, and of course you will get a lot of disconnects.
On Seinfeld some time ago Jerry did a joke by asking
a telemarketer for his home phone number. Not too many
people emulated this until it got circulated by email. What
the customer expects is for you to object or refuse. Have
fun with this. Invariably respond, "Got a pencil?" You then
have a couple choices. Perhaps most fitting would be to
give the phone number of the last jerk who tried pulling
this stupid, wornout joke on you. Once I read an old clod
back his own phone number, and of course he didn't
recognise it. I still smile at the thought of him trying to
call himself at 2 AM and getting a busy signal.
Actually we will conclude with mention of THREE
types of referrals. Anytime you have built rapport on the
phone, you can ask for a referral. A key phrase I prefer
is, "Maybe you can help me..." Don't forget to buddy up
with a local hearing aid franchise, too. Anytime someone
can't hear you on the phone, there's a good potential
hearing aid candidate. A lead resulting in a sale should
bring you $25 or more. You don't have to say anything to
the deaf person about this, just make notes for the lead.