So… you just bought 50,000 leads from ListShack for just 50 dollars.

WHAT A STEAL! Right?

Well, yes… If you know what you’re doing.

Most businesses that engage in outbound telemarketing – otherwise known as cold calling – buy data from lead gen companies in large bulk. It’s by far the easiest way to obtain lots of leads, FAST.

But all those leads could go to waste if you don’t know how to convert them into clients over the phone.

That’s why we put together this guide, which outlines the 7 best outbound telemarketing practices that will enable you to capitalize on lead generation and maximize the effectiveness of your cold-call campaigns.

1. Thoroughly Plan
2. Have a Strong Opening
3. Use Conversational Language and Tone
4. Play the Numbers Game
5. Persistence Beats Resistance
6. Ask Good Questions
7. Record Calls and Learn from Them

Follow these core guiding principles, and you will up your cold call game 10-fold, leading to higher conversion rates, and overall better conversations.

1.) Thoroughly Plan

There is no “winging it” with cold calls. Every lead is a potential customer, and you don’t want to miss out on business simply because you came to the call ill-prepared.

You must be methodical in the way you conduct your calls. This requires developing a calculated plan.

There are four basic components of an efficient telemarketing plan:

- A concrete goal
- A well-defined buyer persona(s)
- A go-to script
- Thorough note-taking

A concrete goal gives you a purpose for calling. Be very specific about what it is you want to achieve with each call. Your telemarketing goal will shape the way you conduct your calls.

Some examples of a goal you may work towards in a call include scheduling a meeting, making a sale, conducting a survey, or simply informing the lead of your business's existence. Whatever your goal is, it should be at the heart of how you plan your telemarketing strategy.

A well-defined buyer persona helps you imagine who you’re speaking to, thus allowing you to cater your language and tone to their personality. A buyer persona is a detailed, written-out biography of your ideal customer. You may want to create two or three buyer personas, as your product/service likely appeals to more than one type of client.

To create an accurate buyer persona, you must conduct in-depth research on your market. Who are your current clients? What attracted them to your company? Or more generally, what types of people typically shop in your industry? You’ll want to consider age, education, income, relationship status, career, homeownership, hobbies, and interests.

A go-to script is a way to stay consistent and professional when speaking with prospective customers. While you don’t want to sound scammy or unauthentic, you do want to be ready to answer any questions your contact may have.

You don’t necessarily need an exact script of every single word you plan on saying. However, your conversations on cold calls need to be organized and precise in order to use your limited time effectively. You’ll only have a few minutes if you’re lucky. The average successful cold call lasts 5:50 (compared to 3:14 for unsuccessful calls)

Thorough note-taking will allow you to remember clients and improve your telemarketing strategy. As you record notes on each call, you equip yourself to better plan follow-ups with your leads. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to make notes of questions the leads ask and the parts of your pitch that need improvement. This will help you to make necessary tweaks to your script.

But where do I take all these notes?

Use List CRM. It's free, it's easy, and it will save you from the hassle of having to keep track of sticky notes and spreadsheets.

2.) Have a Strong Opening

It’s true… first impressions are EVERYTHING.

Rule #1:

Don’t sound like a salesman.

Sound human. Be personable. Be confident.

You know people hate being sales-pitched, especially in the middle of their day, on the phone. So if you open your call with a sales-pitch line or tone, you better expect to be instantaneously hung up on.

Your goal of initiating the call isn’t to get the prospect to listen to your whole script and pitch. Your goal is to begin a relationship of trust and respect, which you can then build off of to offer your new friend a much-needed solution to one of their problems.

Remember:
Sound Human. Be personable. Be confident.

Don't Say	Do Say
Hi, my name is Justin with ABC Co. and I have this awesome new product that will change your life…	Hi, my name is Justin. How are you? *Pause*
Did I catch you at a bad time?	I know I might be catching you at a bad time, but I just wanted to offer you the opportunity to…. Do you have a couple minutes? (If they say "no") Okay, what day this week can I call you back?
Wait, this will only take a minute! I understand you’re busy, I’ll be really quick!	I totally understand! You’re a busy person with your own crazy schedule. Is there a time later today (or this week) you’ll be free?

Also, keep in mind that telemarketing is 10% what you say, and 90% how you say it.

There are 4 tones of speech that are automatic psychological turn-offs for most prospects:

Apologetic
This conveys weakness and makes the prospect perceive you as a guilty person who believes that what you’re doing is wrong. Of course, you should be extremely polite throughout your call, and apologize when it’s socially necessary. But beginning your call with an apology gets you off on the wrong foot. You will successfully put the other person in control of the call, as they will feel they’ve been wronged, and they have the right to dismiss you at their will. Never apologize for trying to be a good business man or woman.

Apathetic
People want to feel listened to and cared about. If you’re so focused on following the script and delivering the punchline that you aren’t paying attention to what your prospective customer is saying, you’re sure to lose their trust and business, if there ever was any in the first place.

Rushed
Saying things like “This will only take a minute!” or “I’ll be super quick!” makes you sound like you really just want to read through a script as fast as you can. In this case, the prospect is likely to only hear your sales pitch out of pity, if at all. Plus, it sends them the message that what you’re saying isn’t really important. You’re just trying to meet your quota. If what you have to say was truly important, you’d want to take the time to explain it thoroughly.

You should be concise and straight to the point in your sales pitch. But you shouldn’t make it feel rushed. Speak slowly and clearly. And don’t try to force a sales pitch that just isn’t going to happen. It’s much better to reschedule a call than to try to say everything you want to say in 30 seconds.

Aggressive
No one likes feeling attacked or forced into anything. If you try to make your prospect listen to you, you’ll only receive mutual aggression in return, and a deafening *click * as the line goes dead.

3.) Use Conversational Language and Tone

We’ve already been hinting at this practice throughout the article.

And maybe we’re beating a dead horse here. But this eternal truth cannot be stressed enough: To be a good salesman you cannot sound like a good salesman!

With the exception of using slang or swear words, your phone calls should sound like two normal people having a normal conversation.

As you’re writing your script and thinking through what to say, ask yourself this:

“Would a normal person word a sentence like this?”

Use regular speech. Be friendly. Don’t be afraid to go off-script. And definitely don’t do all the talking. Allow your prospect time to speak. They just may say something crucial for you to know in order to successfully convert them to a sale… who would’ve thought!

Ideally, the talk-to-listen ratio for a successful cold call is 55%:45%.

A little casual banter can go a long way in gaining trust and respect from prospective customers.

With that said, be sure not to waste people’s time with meaningless “fluff”. People are busy.

And lastly, always end the call by thanking the prospect for their time. Almost just as important as your first impression is your last impression. If you leave people with a good feeling at the end of your call, you leave the door open for a successful follow-up.

4.) Play the Numbers Game

Yes… people are more important than numbers.

But you aren’t going to meet a whole lot of people if you aren’t calling as many of them as you can.

Telemarketing really is a business of statistical chance. The more people you call, the more likely you are to find a new client. Plain and simple.

But you probably already know this. Why else would you be buying 50,000 leads for $50 from ListShack if you weren’t planning on calling them?

In 2018, sales reps made an average of 45 cold calls per day, and the number of daily quality conversations is 5.1 calls. That’s roughly 1 quality conversation for every 9 calls. And not every quality conversation even turns into a sale. It follows that if you wish to achieve above-average results, you’ll need to make more calls than the average sales rep.

But the numbers game isn’t just about the number of people you call.

It often has a lot to do with how many times you call a person. And that’s what brings us to our next practice of successful outbound telemarketing.

5.) Persistence Beats Resistance

Sales reps can increase conversion rate by up to 70% with just a follow-up call or two.

That’s HUGE.

Salespeople don’t follow up on 50% of marketing leads

Why? One word:

Discouragement. It’s no secret that you have to have thick skin to be a successful salesman. Get used to hearing “no” a lot. Thrive in it. Allow it to push you to work harder. Don’t let it discourage you from trying again later.

But how many follow-ups are too many?

Well, according to studies, 80% of deals are closed after the 5th follow-up. That’s a lot of follow-ups. Persistence beats resistance, friends.

With that said, be smart about who you decide to call back. The last thing you want to do is waste your time calling old leads that have expressed multiple times they have absolutely no interest. That’s time you could’ve spent talking to someone new! You’ll be able to gauge how appropriate a call-back would be with the thorough notes you took on the previous call.

Are you starting to see how all these good practices are connected to one another?

6.) Ask Good Questions

Yes/no questions play a crucial role in qualifying your leads. However, you don’t want to ask too many of them.

Not only does it greatly limit the kind of information you can gather, but it also makes the call feel like an interrogation. No one likes being interrogated.

Instead, implement practice #3 and be conversational. Try to rephrase yes/no questions to make them open-ended questions that require your prospective customer to explain their answers.

This practice achieves 3 important things:

• It shows your prospect that you have a genuine interest in what they have to say.
• It provides you with higher-quality information that clarifies your prospect’s needs, challenges, and preferences.
• It helps you to maintain control of the call. You direct where the conversation goes.

Here are some excellent open-ended questions you can use:

“What have you found works best for you in solving this problem?”

“What else do we need to do to make this work for you?”

“How do you feel about that as an issue?”

“When would you like to have that issue resolved?”

You should also use leading questions. Leading questions are questions that subtly lead the prospect into giving you the answers you want to hear, but they still feel like they came to the conclusion on their own.

This is done usually by attaching a conditional clause to your question. They are “If, then” statements rephrased as questions. For example:

“If you’re happy with that, then why don’t we go ahead and set a time to get going?”

“If I could guarantee you that I’ll solve that problem in half the time for the same price, then that would probably be pretty beneficial to you, wouldn’t it?”

Good questions make for good conversations. And good conversations often lead to conversions.

7.) Record Your Calls and Learn From Them

Measure, track, and improve every call. This practice goes hand-in-hand with planning thoroughly.

As you listen back on your calls, take note of tactics that do and don’t work. Figure out what phrase or sentence keeps people on the phone.

Pay attention to the tone of voice you’re using. Is it too aggressive? Too timid? Do you sound confident in what you’re saying?

Notice how customers respond to your questions. Are they giving the answers you want to hear? Perhaps you need to ask better questions.

How long are the calls lasting? What’s the ratio of how much you talked versus how much you listened?

You should constantly be seeking to improve your strategy, as you probably will never be perfect at handling every unique situation and customer. But once you find what works, dial in on that and milk it for everything it’s worth!

In Summary…

Cold calling is hard. We all know that. But it can be a whole lot easier if you implement these 7 key practices into your telemarketing strategy.

If you get nothing else from this article, please remember these key principles: Setting a goal gives you direction.

• Being human gains trust.
• Persistence beats resistance.
• Good questions create good conversations.
• Practice makes perfect!

Have you enjoyed this article? You may also be interested in our article about Direct Mail Lead Generation.