Working from home with the telephone - Advices ?

Since one week I started a new home-based position.

I work for a company who specialized in financial services for french citizen who work in the investment banking industry in the UK.

My job is to call them at their job (I get a list of name) and book a 15 minutes appointment with one of our expert.

The meeting usually occurs at their workplace (prospect's office, meeting room or around a coffee...).

- My target is 12 appointments everyday (I get 8 hours to do that, 1 hour lunch is included).
- I usually work from 10am to 6pm. Monday to Friday.

The company don't care how I manage my time. They pay 8 hours a day and just want theit 12 appointments!

This is the first time I work from home. Yesterday was the 1st day I met my appointments target, but today I fall to 6

After 7 work days here some statisitics:

One a list of 103 Leads :

18 NO
32 APPOINTMENTS
52 LEADS UNUSABLE (Not a French citizen or don't based in UK)

I'm good at "selling" the appointments but find myself wasting a LOT of times because:

1. I don't reach people on the 1st call. Almost 4 calls out of 5 never reach the lead ("he is out of desk", "He is in a meeting" and so on...)

2. When I reach them 50% of them are unusable because they were in fact not french citizen (technically all my leads should be french citizen...) or don't live in the UK.

So you, sales pro, can understand how much time I'm loosing. Sometimes I totally fell de-motivated to keep calling again and again...

If I could reach everybody straight away I would made my 12 appointments in the morning!!!

I get already some ideas, but would like to have first some of your insight guys about how to be more efficient and maybe some phone strategy to this particular context.

This is the game! It's a tough world, seems like you're doing prety well.

Quality of your data will effect the ammount of time you spend dialing VS selling. You need to be sure you're dialing the highest quality data or you're waisting time, what is your time worth?

Also, you're going to hit, 'gate keepers' you need to find a good way arround them. Come up with several scripts, test each exclusivly, for one week. Then verify your results. Did one get through the gate keeper more quickly? Use that one. Also, what other approaches can you use. Can you call a person who is in the same company but possibly below the decision maker? Internal refferals can be very helpfull.

How is your voice mail script?

[Self-promotion removed by moderator.]

Regards,

I agree with Lance Best about data quality.

I started by calling any numbers I could find.
I then called numbers from a list i imported into excel so I could dial in an organized way.
I then called numbers from a list in excel that also had the decision makers (owners) names.

What I found is that I made 3 times as many appointments. I also found that my motivation went up considerably because I was speaking to the right people most of the time.

50% of your leads (and therefore about half of your working time) are unusable. I call lists every day and I could not recommend a better use of your time than somehow eliminating the possibility of calling these people. If you can't somehow filter these out I suggest you get them off the phone quickly.

When I call and the wrong person answer the phone I immediately say 'hi is xyz there? no. do you have a mobile/cell i can reach them on' without introducing myself, if they ask why say your name and the company and wait. the "why" question or "what is it regarding" is usually a knee jerk reaction, if you answer confidently you'll usually get a cell phone number. then I say "okay ill give them a call" and they say "okay bye" and i call them straight away.

your goal to spend as close to zero minutes in the day speaking to the WRONG people, listening for the dial tone, punching numbers, writing notes. I suggest you organise your list of leads in EXCEL in the format:

status | name | number | cell number | notes

eg.

a | john smith | xxx-xxx-xxx | xxx-xxx-xxx | appt at 3:30pm tuesday
x | bill smith | xxx-xxx-xxx | xxx-xxx-xxx | not citizen

one for each row then just go through the whole list, call cell numbers as soon as you get them. if you get stuck with one lead move on to the next one till you are done.

This is good stuff Luka, especially about how to get the mobile number.

For this job I didn't really have any gatekeeper. I only reach co-workers so it may be easy to get the info from them.

For the excel, I already do that and it really help to be focus.

I tried to leave my number to the co-worker but I never had someone called me back.

Thanxs.

Just to clarify getting the number,

I would suggest you experiment with ways to get it without wasting any time. My dialogue usually goes like this

"Hi is john there?"
"No he's out at lunch can I help you?"
"Do you have a mobile I can reach him on?"
"Whats it regarding?"
(immediately) "Xyz Finance Company"
"Okay hold on it's xxx-xxx-xxx"
"Ok ill give him a call"
"Ok bye"

Best way to handle any questions at that point is just to answer like you're in a hurry and as if you know the person. Might be sneaky but you didnt want to speak to the co-worker in the first place.

Better would be;

"Steven Burke from XYZ Finance Company, this is an urgent financial matter, so if you can provide his/her cell phone number that would save valuable time!"

However, no matter the quality of the list or how good you are or how hard you work, ultimately, you are never going to achieve 12 appointments on average per day. You may do it occasionally but not consistently, this just appears to be an unrealistic expectation by either you, your company or both.

yes, list quality, hard work and skill will make a difference ... 12 is just to many.

Good luck.

Hey Ryan thats fantastic..let me check how i can??
Regards,
Shaun

Gold Calling,

I have never actually told anyone my cold calls are urgent (although I suspect it could possibly get the cell phone number faster and more effectively).

Do you think it has any negative side effects to the sales process or would you recommend it to anyone saying it's "an urgent matter".

Eg. selling cctv "this is an urgent security matter".

Although I havent tested it for myself I am only guessing the employee could say to the prospect "hey did you get the call from Jim he said it was an urgent security matter". Or are you saying this might only be effective with financial services.

Im very interested though in hearing your opinion.

By the way I think its impressive that you can predict that a goal of 12 appts per day is unrealistic.

Working from home with the telephone - Advices ?

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