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Choosing to market your business or services over the phone to potential customers is an extremely daunting task. Cold calling already has a bad reputation due to the large number of nuisance calls that people regularly receive, so if you’re relying on this marketing technique, you could find yourself facing an uphill battle.
Indeed, if you don’t get it right, you may find your phone number listed as spam for the 0161 area code, for example, on online phone number databases. This certainly wouldn’t be good for your business’s reputation!
To avoid this issue, you need to know how to effectively market your small business and make sales over the phone. Here are some top tips for cold calling.
Top Tips for Marketing Over the Phone
Add personal touches
Your customer doesn’t want to feel like another number on your list. If you want to have any chance of them listening to your proposal, you need to build a relationship with the customer and show that you care about them and their needs.
To do this, you should always research prospects before calling them and add personal touches to the conversation, such as addressing them by their name and talking about their business. They won’t appreciate it if you fail to do any basic research before you make the call.
Be friendly and open
Another key part of building a relationship with potential customers is being friendly and open during your conversation. If you come across as aggressive or rude, your prospect isn’t going to listen to what you have to say, no matter how fantastic your proposal is.
It’s important to incorporate some friendly chit-chat into the conversation to build rapport, but just remember to balance this with being direct about why you’re calling – you don’t want to waste anyone’s time!
Be polite
Being friendly is so important for building a relationship with your customer, but make sure you don’t go too far and end up being too familiar. After all, you’re trying to establish a business relationship with someone you don’t know, so they may not appreciate too many jokes or the use of nicknames. Throughout the conversation, you should remain polite and courteous, showing the customer that you respect them and value their time.
Listen
Whilst you’re trying to communicate your proposal, don’t forget that you need to tailor your pitch to each person’s individual needs. Your customer wants to feel valued and listened to, so if they have any questions or concerns, make sure you address them fully. This is another reason why you should always research your customer database, as you’ll be able to anticipate their concerns and address them in your pitch.
Don’t be too pushy
To make a sale, you often have to keep trying and making new offers to convince an initially reluctant prospect, but this doesn’t mean you should be overly pushy or aggressive in your approach.
A few attempts at changing their mind will show that you care about getting the best deal for them, but if you keep going for too long, the customer will quickly become angry at your inability to take ‘no’ for an answer. If you want to build positive relationships in your industry, you need to know how to be polite, friendly, a good listener and not too pushy.