Preparation is often mentioned as a key element to the success of telesales professionals in telesales and cold calling. Just like any undertaking, the degree of success you can achieve in telesales is proportional to how prepared you are to do cold calling.

Telephoning total strangers and convincing them to buy your product or service by the telephone is not an easy task. Your telesales can go either way and there are a lot of factors that come into play. In order for you to handle any situation that may arise, you need preparation and pre-planning. In the game of chess, the player who did some homework preparation is confident in making his moves because he has "seen" the position ahead and knows exactly how to respond.

On the other hand, the player who came unprepared will consume so much time looking for the best move and will eventually succumb to the pressure. Applying the same principle in cold calling, the telesales professional who is prepared has a better chance of closing the sale. So what exactly does preparation in cold calling entail? The following guidelines will give you an idea.

Be the expert that you are. When you are selling your product or service you provide the prospect the benefits and features, answer their questions and convince them why they should buy from you. All these information that you give out means that you know the details and aspects of what you are offering well enough to make your prospect well informed to make a decision. Otherwise, you will lose the credibility to do your job.

Believe in your product. Convincing a potential customer to buy your product means that you yourself are convinced with the benefits that you are going to get if you were in their place. Without this, you will not be very effective in making people buy from you.

Be aware of your product's competitors. Competition is part of the telesales world and the best way to position your product is to know where it stands in the marketplace.

Be ready with objections. A true test of how good you are as a telesales professional is your ability to handle all types of objections. In Telesales the key is to first figure out if the objection is valid or false and then turn around the true objection with rebuttals.

Source: Heinrich Churchill link