I love to answer questions that are emailed to us in posts. Telemarketing questions are universal, and it means all of our readers get the benefit of the advice.
We recently received a query from a business to business telemarketing company offering health insurance quotes to business owners. They use a cold call method and wanted advise on rebuttals when business owners don’t respond to their free quote offer.
There are a few things to consider here:
- Firstly, if cold calling is how you choose to utilize telemarketing, then accept that you will have a lower call to quote rate. The reasons for this are clear – when you cold call, there is no prior relationship with the client, therefore no feeling on their part of recognition, comfort or even that they should listen to you. Personally, I use cold calling only if either:
1) I can’t think of a better sales funnel for that particular campaign or
2) I have decided that I will bear the cost of staff time and extra phone calls, knowing that my results will be lower.
To determine if cold calling is best for your campaign, start here.
- Secondly, it is easy to think, “But it’s free, so why wouldn’t people just say yes?” You need to remember that everything in the sales world is free, so people are exposed to free stuff all of the time. People are sceptical of free, they don’t believe that they get anything for nothing.
Rather than offer you a rebuttal to overcome this, I prefer to handle the objection before it comes up. Once someone has said no, it is very hard to change their mind, so it’s better to avoid the no in the first place.
So, as part of your script add in something like…
“You’re probably wondering what the catch is, am I right? Quite simply we feel this is a great way for us to introduce ourselves to you, so that if now or in the future you think of health insurance, you think of us. That’s fair enough isn’t it?”
Make sure you wait for the client to answer “Yes”, you must have their buy in before you continue.
- Lastly, the reason people reject your offer is because that’s what people do. Their natural first reaction to telemarketing is always to say no rather than yes. It is your job to know this, and then overcome it. This can be done in a few ways:
1) Look at your first impression, telephone technique is vital. If you sound like they think a telemarketer sounds (robotic, salesy or dull) then it’s really not worth making the call. The first impression is vital. In western countries you should be friendly and familiar, so use the same tone you would use when calling a business associate you know.
2) Make sure you only asked closed questions. This controls the conversation.
For more detailed information, our book Recruit, Train, Motivate has many suggestions as do the Top Telemarketing Tips website pages.
Hope this helps…Happy Telemarketing!
