A FOUNDATION COURSE COVERING ALL ASPECTS OF ‘OUTBOUND’ CALLING
How quickly can you spot an unsolicited caller trying to sell you something?
Generally it takes only seconds. The awful clichés they use in their wasted effort to endear us to them. Their disingenuous tone of voice which tells us immediately they are reading from a script. The whole experience smacks of insincerity.
These standards have set the benchmark for what Phonesmith coaching isn’t.
The problem
Making successful unsolicited calls, whether for 'Appointment Generation', 'Directly Selling' or just for 'Gathering Information', is not an inborn skill. Without the facility of ‘body language’, we immediately lose over half our natural communication skills!
To make matters worse most people are pretty street smart these days when it comes to receiving unsolicited calls – they have very sensitive mental firewalls in place and an unskilled called will be bounced in a couple of seconds.
Most callers, without the benefit of coaching, adopt a ‘phone persona’ which bears no relation to their true personality. This dissonance simply doesn’t “ring true” and immediately triggers a defensive impulse in the listener – “this person is trying to sell me and I don’t like it!” They shut down and that’s the end of it – the caller fell at the first fence, without even getting close to their intended prospect.
So it’s not simply a case of picking up the phone and off you go!
The solution
We offer three tiers of coaching. However, we strongly recommend that all candidates, irrespective of their experience, attend the ‘Level One’ coaching program, as more advanced coaching builds on the skills and techniques learned during these sessions.
Level One
Courses are designed to accommodate six candidates, (at most seven) and are held over two days.
Day one – Introduces the candidates to every aspect of making unsolicited calls;
- Identifying the key decision maker (fixing the target)
- The ‘Rules & Tools’ needed to maximise the chances of reaching the target
- Uncovering the most effective message to deliver when you get through
- Understanding the inherent confines of communicating by phone…
- ...then learning how these can be most effectively overcome.
- Coaching each candidate individually as to how they can use their own personality to achieve pronounced results.
Day 2 – This consists of ‘One-2-One’ sessions, time being divided equally amongst each candidate. Candidates bring a list of 20-25 ‘live’ prospects to call during their session and, having established that they are comfortable with their new technique, they begin making ‘live’ calls under the close supervision of their coach. After completion, each call is objectively critiqued to identify areas for improvement.
Level Two
Like Day 2 of the ‘Level One’ course, this coaching is all held in a One-2-One environment. Each candidate receives up to 2 hours of individual coaching designed to help them hone and improve the skills they acquired in during ‘Level One’. (Maximum of 4 x candidates in one day)
'Golden Hour'
This course is designed to give far large groups (up to 20 candidates) a basic grounding in effective use of the phone. The morning and early afternoon sessions are given over to basic 'Rules & Techniques' of being effective on the phone and 'Creating Instant Empathy' when the 'target' answers the call.
They then disperse to do 1/2 hour of research and 1 hour of making live 'Appointment Generation' calls. Following this they then reassemble to share results and to experiences.
“I don’t believe I’m saying this, but I now actually enjoy calling prospects over the phone!”