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Retail Marketing Expert: Rick Segel

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Prepare for an increase of telephone sales calls

Q: I am expecting that my telephone sales will soon take off due to upcoming marketing strategies. How do I prepare for this increase in telephone sales volume when I have never experienced this before?

A: There are a few questions that you have to ask before you can accurately answer the questions:

Are the sales calls incoming? (I am assuming they are.)
Is the increase in telephone sales a short blip on the chart or will this be sustained over a long period of time?
How knowledgeable or trained does the salesperson have to be?

What I am trying to determine is if a use of a well–trained answering service is feasible. Many will charge on a cost–per–call basis, which can be expensive, but in relationship to having staff and not knowing what the actual results will be could be far more cost effective.

Many of these services also do fulfillment, but that's another issue. However, the reason why I bring it up is that you might want to examine fulfillment houses as a source for well–trained telephone sales people.

If subcontracting the service is not a viable alternative, then I would test, test, test. Let me explain. You first need to diagram or storyboard what an actual call will look like. Consider all of the weird, off–the–wall requests that people will have and prepare a menu of responses.

There are companies that sell phone center software, which will walk people through a sales call. The nice part about this type of software is that you can have different responses all prepared. Plus any add–on suggestions can be programmed in so that someone doesn't forget to suggest.

You'll also want to test your telephone capabilities. If fifty calls were to come in at the exact same time, what kind of message would the caller receive? How many calls can you handle at the same time? How well trained are the people receiving the calls? If not, what kind of training are you going to be giving them? Make sure that you have some of the calls placed by mystery shoppers and check for uniformity.

Lastly, there are a number of consulting firms and authors that specialize in this specific scenario. You might want to do a search for call center management or telesales. Good luck with your campaign.

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