Business owners often have multiple ways of selling their products. A common one is telemarketing. Whether you are calling businesses or the residential market, telemarketing is a great way to get connect to potential clients, start a dialogue with new leads and close the deal with interested parties. Business owners utilize this system frequently, but using these 5 tips will improve the entire telemarketing experience.

1.      Remember you placed the call. Use good manners. When you dial up a residential leads, such as homeowners, new movers, etc. be sure to ask if they have a few minutes to talk. There’s nothing worse than dealing with a sales person who assumes you have nothing else going on. If your target is busy, ask him or her for a better time to call back. Give them some control and they will likely reciprocate good manners.

2.      Teach your telemarketing team to talk like they are NOT reading from a script. Business owners need to understand their customers are not robots, nor are their sales teams. They shouldn’t sound automated or scripted. Conversations should ebb and flow. Though telemarketing scripts are sometimes necessary, teach your sales team to ask questions, listen and note the responses; establish a dialogue with their lead and know enough about the product to go off script when necessary. Business owners should give telemarketing staff constant up-training, reference tools and on-going development opportunities to ensure they are confident and capable of going off script when necessary.

3.      With any type of sales lead, remember to utilize your best sales executive when a big opportunity presents itself on the call. Your experienced sales executive knows how to close the sale. Use this as teaching time for newer employees. Have a newer sales executive shadow your best sales executive to learn how to nurture leads without being to promotional. Reach out to warm leads to build/maintain relationships and close on sales without being rude, too aggressive or presumptuous.

4.      When telemarketing, never get off a call without asking for referrals, up-selling and asking if there’s anything else you can do for your prospect. If you don’t ask, you will never know. By accepting the single sale and not requesting referrals, you’re leaving money on the table with each phone call. Business owners should monitor their telemarketers to ensure each call contains requests for referrals, up-selling and offers to do more.

5.      Listen to your customer. If they buy from you, you likely sold them “yourself” and not your product. Consumers buy from people they enjoy, trust and respect. Telemarketers will close more deals if they listen to the customer and sell them what they need and want rather than pushing the item that’s for sale. Turn the call into a “How can I help you?” instead of a “Here is my product and this is why it is so good.”

The more you can invest in your salespeople, the more sales they will close. There are a number of Sales Leads companies out there. Just typing business leads, residential leads, telemarketing leads in Google will bring up all kinds of sales leads companies. The best leads companies are those that implement the 5 points above.