Building a cold calling sales team is a lot easier than you may think. However, it can be very costly and incredibly frustrating if you do not follow certain guidelines.

1. You must have a semi-relevant list of contacts for you telesales team to call. It is pointless saving money on cheap leads or data which are outside your target audience when you will lose a far greater amount of money through wasted man power, phone bills and eventually recruitment fees from the loss of unhappy staff.

2. If possible, headsets are far better than handsets for any telesales team that will be on the phone for more than a few hours each day. This avoids the phone being held between the shoulder and the chin and keeps the voice clear at all times.

3. A basic CRM system is massively beneficial in order to track the sales conversion rate. CRM stands for Client Relationship Management, and it is a piece of software that will manage the leads that you distribute to your telesales team. These can be expensive, but if you are buying quality data, then they do pay for themselves as less leads are likely to be wasted.

4. You must have a training programme in place. I have seen so many companies not worry too much about training their telesales staff because they look upon the role as elementary or straight forward. Because of this they ignore ongoing training or just implement a brief induction course.

5. Always have at least one sales meeting a week, preferably every morning or before the cold calling session begins. Cold calling is a mind numbly dull job and a meeting before each session gives your staff a chance to air issues and concerns. These meetings also build a telesales team bond.

6. Have a telesales team leader in place to take charge and make sure that you are getting the most out of your telesales team. If you cannot justify paying an additional salary, then just the kudos of becoming a telesales team leader will sometimes be enough to get a half decent telesales team leader on your side.

7. A proven telesales script is essential in order to maximize you staffs input. The script must have at least have the following 3 point structure.

8. Introduction: The introduction must tell the client who your representative is, why your representative is calling, and most importantly why is in it for the client. i.e why the client should give your representative some of their valuable time.

9. Fact Find: You will need to ask some pertinent questions in order to ascertain whether this suspect has the correct qualities or desires in order to become a prospect.

10. Close: The end of the call must lead into or at least create an opportunity for a follow up call from your telesales team. This follow up must be welcomed by the prospect. With this in mind it is essential that the fact find section of your telesales cold call pitch is executed successfully.

I hope these help you on your way to build a cold calling telesales team.

Source: Julian Blee