Is your sales team in a slump and not making as many sales as you’d like? Do you have a strong outbound dialing campaign in place? Customer behavior and preferences change over time and so, outbound calling strategies need to evolve to meet with current standards and expectations. Let’s look at how you can create an effective outbound dialing campaign and generate more sales and customer support.
Be Clear on the Campaign Goals
The first thing that needs to be done is to decide what the goals are. Do you want to generate more sales or focus more on customer success and support? Outbound calls are generally made for two reasons:
- Increasing leads through market research and sales calls
- Providing customer care with welcome calls, follow-up calls, calls for reminders, surveys, etc.
And so, consider what your team wants to accomplish. Goals need to be clear so that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same end. Also, make other decisions such as how many calls you want to make over the span of a certain amount of time. Or, how do you want to balance out sales versus customer support calls? And so on.
Invest in a Reliable Outbound Calling Service
Before anything else, you need to get the right equipment and software. And so, a reliable outbound calling service that can support your outbound dialing campaign is necessary. One that provides good call quality and additional communication tools is even better. When picking a provider, look for the different outbound dialers available to find one that would fit better with your team. Such dialers are basically the tool usually an app or a browser extension used to dial virtual calls. Some providers offer predictive dialers that make calls using automation while others provide a more manual version.
Ultimately, choose a provider that offers you good value for a reasonable budget. Most providers will give you access to other communication tools like call forwarding options, interactive voice response (IVR) and private branch exchange (PBX) capabilities. For instance, United World Telecom (https://www.unitedworldtelecom.com/) offers call recording with their outbound calling software. And they also let you customize your outgoing caller ID so that prospects see a familiar phone number instead of an unknown, random one.
Work Alongside the Marketing Department
Ensure your marketing team and sales teams meet regularly to discuss the target audience and how to cater to them. Your sales team is the one interacting one-on-one with clients and the marketing works behind the scenes to influence customer behavior. Both these sides are necessary for ensuring that the right customers are aware of your product and purchase it. Marketing can slowly warm prospects up towards your brand through digital marketing with information, promotions, etc. Then, sales and customer support reps use their expertise to give customers the extra push to finalize a purchase.
Train and Retrain Your Agents
Prepare your agents by providing training time and again to ensure they meet the standards set by your company. Besides sales tactics, they should also be comfortable using the technology and software needed. Offer seminars, webinars, textbooks, workshops, and more. Work together to create a script that is presentable and not too complex. Make sure they understand the field and industry your company falls under so that they can answer additional queries.
Consider getting a call recording software to record and review their calls. You can use the recorded material for training purposes but also for performance analysis. Reward productive behavior and highlight interactions that may be improved. This can incentivize salespeople to do a more thorough job on their calls.
Increase Productivity and Maintain High Standards with Outbound Calling
A strong outbound dialing strategy can determine how well your salespeople do on their calls. And, by extension, it increases the number of new customers you get. A good outbound strategy can also boost your customer retention rates. Try these tips to produce better results and improve how prospects interact with your business.
Author Bio: Meryl D’Sa has contributed as a writer and editor to various publications, commercial magazines, and literary journals.