I am sure you’re amongst one of those people in India, who is been approached everyday by Telemarketers to sell a Credit Card, Loans or Holiday!!! I also fall into the same league, and I ponder today on the future of Telesales, as I believe Telesales is a Great tool & technique to reach promote and aware people of any products or services.
The thought, which is in, question “Is Telesales in India for Indian consumer gaining popularity and acceptance or has it been a talk of their wrath & sense on intrusion of ones private space? Is it for handful of institutions & organizations, which misuses the power of phone and have wrong metrics to measure performance and effectiveness of tele-callers?
In India, telesales has not got the acceptance with consumer, organizations and recruiters. Primarily because anything tele is better known as “Call center job”, which is Not true. Why can I not run a Sales center where I use Telephone & Internet as a medium of sales, rather than flying and visiting customers? Its low on cost and high on revenue & margins.
Telesales in India for Indian consumer today represents Banks & Cell phone companies who keep calling without a goal / objective in mind. There has to be some basis of Tele calling. According to me these are some basics, which we need to keep in mind when we have a job on tele sales;
Telesales in India needs a BRAND to back it up.
A consumer receiving a call from any Brand will at least render their attention and you just have that minimal time to take the conversation ahead. Thus good planning in terms of what to speak, how to grab attention is very important. Use your Sales Training to plan your questions & phrases to grab the attention.
Do your homework before calling.
In India we do not have something called a Social Security Number, through which you have access to some important information about the customer, thus a customer database followed in India, which is not centralized and does not capture certain basic information about the customer. For e.g.: A Financial institution offering loans to customer should do some homework in terms of having some history of the customer picked from the database to call. If not you land up wasting time & effort as you may be selling a loan to a customer who already has a car loan & a home loan, and simple logic says its a waste to sell him another one for sometime now. If you push you land up diluting your company Brand, which is a bigger damage than just meeting a call quota for the day.
Respect the customer
This is very important. Its simpler to manage your call quota by calling a customer repetitively knowing he or she is not interested, but its a good Sales acumen to respect the customer but making a note of their choices and preferences and act accordingly. This does not only makes you a better sales person, it also helps from not tarnishing the brand you represent and have a better recall value with the customer so that he or she calls you when they need actually need it.
I have seen companies invest in Telesales, Soft skill & Customer Service training only to achieve instant objectives like increase call time, increase in reach and increase in sales which may be the basic KRA for any managers or individuals but they fail to look at the big picture like the Brand they represent, Customer Satisfaction and the end objective of Customer Repeatability.
I am a Business Development Manager in an MNC organization and previously I have sold premium services to our customers who are in India over telephone. My services were intangible and it is more of consultative selling, which I practice. When I joined, I was also very confused to the fact that how do we sell such premium services at such premium price? But then I convinced myself that all I do differently from the traditional way of field sales to telesales is that I do not meet the customer and what ever needs to be a good sales man, more is required to perform and be successful in my job when on phone.
Account Management, mapping of customer, understanding the criticality of the account, the requirement all is required to be done, to be a good account manager and this can be accomplished over phone if you yourself is convinced of the fact. The only handicap you have is that you cannot see the customer, cannot see the body language while you speak pitch or present, cannot see what kind of office he or she sits, which definitely provides a lot of information on the interest level, the acceptance and the affordability / buying power.
As an account manager, we need to qualify a lead, and all this above definitely helps in deciding faster in a Field Sales mode, than a Telesales mode, but I may disagree if you are good, you can make out of all the above through the analyzing the voice modulation in a planned call, and through response to good leading questions or what we call “high yield questions”. On the contrary, in a telesales mode, its easier and faster to reach more and more people in the same organization and collective information for them leads to better account planning mapping and qualification.
The thought, which is in, question “Is Telesales in India for Indian consumer gaining popularity and acceptance or has it been a talk of their wrath & sense on intrusion of ones private space? Is it for handful of institutions & organizations, which misuses the power of phone and have wrong metrics to measure performance and effectiveness of tele-callers?
In India, telesales has not got the acceptance with consumer, organizations and recruiters. Primarily because anything tele is better known as “Call center job”, which is Not true. Why can I not run a Sales center where I use Telephone & Internet as a medium of sales, rather than flying and visiting customers? Its low on cost and high on revenue & margins.
Telesales in India for Indian consumer today represents Banks & Cell phone companies who keep calling without a goal / objective in mind. There has to be some basis of Tele calling. According to me these are some basics, which we need to keep in mind when we have a job on tele sales;
Telesales in India needs a BRAND to back it up.
A consumer receiving a call from any Brand will at least render their attention and you just have that minimal time to take the conversation ahead. Thus good planning in terms of what to speak, how to grab attention is very important. Use your Sales Training to plan your questions & phrases to grab the attention.
Do your homework before calling.
In India we do not have something called a Social Security Number, through which you have access to some important information about the customer, thus a customer database followed in India, which is not centralized and does not capture certain basic information about the customer. For e.g.: A Financial institution offering loans to customer should do some homework in terms of having some history of the customer picked from the database to call. If not you land up wasting time & effort as you may be selling a loan to a customer who already has a car loan & a home loan, and simple logic says its a waste to sell him another one for sometime now. If you push you land up diluting your company Brand, which is a bigger damage than just meeting a call quota for the day.
Respect the customer
This is very important. Its simpler to manage your call quota by calling a customer repetitively knowing he or she is not interested, but its a good Sales acumen to respect the customer but making a note of their choices and preferences and act accordingly. This does not only makes you a better sales person, it also helps from not tarnishing the brand you represent and have a better recall value with the customer so that he or she calls you when they need actually need it.
I have seen companies invest in Telesales, Soft skill & Customer Service training only to achieve instant objectives like increase call time, increase in reach and increase in sales which may be the basic KRA for any managers or individuals but they fail to look at the big picture like the Brand they represent, Customer Satisfaction and the end objective of Customer Repeatability.
I am a Business Development Manager in an MNC organization and previously I have sold premium services to our customers who are in India over telephone. My services were intangible and it is more of consultative selling, which I practice. When I joined, I was also very confused to the fact that how do we sell such premium services at such premium price? But then I convinced myself that all I do differently from the traditional way of field sales to telesales is that I do not meet the customer and what ever needs to be a good sales man, more is required to perform and be successful in my job when on phone.
Account Management, mapping of customer, understanding the criticality of the account, the requirement all is required to be done, to be a good account manager and this can be accomplished over phone if you yourself is convinced of the fact. The only handicap you have is that you cannot see the customer, cannot see the body language while you speak pitch or present, cannot see what kind of office he or she sits, which definitely provides a lot of information on the interest level, the acceptance and the affordability / buying power.
As an account manager, we need to qualify a lead, and all this above definitely helps in deciding faster in a Field Sales mode, than a Telesales mode, but I may disagree if you are good, you can make out of all the above through the analyzing the voice modulation in a planned call, and through response to good leading questions or what we call “high yield questions”. On the contrary, in a telesales mode, its easier and faster to reach more and more people in the same organization and collective information for them leads to better account planning mapping and qualification.
I think we in India have a far lesser concept of private space, compared to the Americans. I dont think the intrusion on space is so much the issue. Might be more to do with why should i bother?
ReplyDelete