Top 41 Tele Sales Interview Questions You Must Prepare 19.Mar.2024

Many times the customer on the end line objects to be put on hold as he fears to be kept long on hold, in such situations following tips can be helpful :

@Request the customer that it is important that he is put on hold. Make sure this is conveyed in a very polite way.

@Clear out the objective due to which the line needs to be put on hold.

@If the customer is very persistent on being on line as a co employee to retrieve the information that requires you to put the line on hold. During this be on line and keep the customer attended.

@You can also ask the customer to disconnect the line for now and that you will give him a call back.

 

According to me customers should be the priority, if they do not buy we can not sell and thus they should be the foremost priority. The whole marketing sector runs due to end consumer so it should be our responsibility to make sure we have our customers satisfied and deliver what they expect from us. This can be only achieved if every individual from a telecaller to the ceo takes up the responsibility of delivering to the customer and works on their part the right way. If this little bit is done then telemarketing can be made more effective, easy and set to the right perspective.

B2B stands for business to business which describes commercial transactions between businesses such as between a web development firm and a reseller. Such transactions are big in volume and thus b2b is flourishing today the most. 

B2C stands for business to consumer and describes transaction between business and consumer. It can be best explained by defining retail in which tangible goods are sold from stores or fixed location directly to the consumer. 

B2G stands for business to government and is a derivative of B2B and is described as transaction between business and government in which a business entity supplies services or goods to a government sector or firm and can be stated as public sector marketing.

Yes. Vermont law also imposes criminal penalties on telemarketers who call a Vermont telephone number without having first registered with the Vermont Secretary of State, unless the company is a federally-regulated financial institution (e.g. a federal bank), or is already regulated by, or registered or licensed with, one of the following Vermont governmental agencies: Secretary of State, Public Service Board, Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration, or Department of Taxes.

There are several hundred telemarketing call centers around the world., with the majority of telemarketing calls being dialed by a computer known as an auto dialer or predictive dialer. Predictive dialers can dial 3-5 numbers simultaneously and can make as many as 500,000 calls between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.

When you answer your phone, the computer connects you to a live telemarketer who tries to sell you something. If you are not home or if the computer gets your answering machine, your number will be put back in the database to be called again later.

Here are a list of problems which are associated with paying per appointment :

@Poor quality.
@Rate of conversion is low.
@Requirements for more meetings is not solved.
@High competition.
@Suppliers face a lot of problems.
@Quality is deteriorated by quantity.

For survival in the telemarketing industry it is extremely essential that one possesses or acquires the ability to effectively listen and comprehend.

Some of the effective listening strategies are as follows:

  • Understanding yourself
  • Being yourself
  • Never losing the personal touch
  • Your attitude
  • Be willing to listen
  • Setting personal goals
  • Being motivated
  • Listening actively
  • Paying attention
  • Asking questions
  • Sending appropriate feedback.

On a daily basis, we will split the data into several sections. The main section will remain as it is, but we will copy and paste things like, Appointments, Short Term Leads, Long Term Leads, Info requests, and client to deal with, into seperate sections for easy access. Normally done in Excel.

Following are the common telemarketing fraud :

@Charity purpose.
@Asking for advance payment or fee.
@Fraud by over capturing increased payments.
@Bank related frauds.
@Lottery
@False representation of office supplies.
@False verification calls.

Marketing can be broadly classified into two categories :

@B2B - business to business
@B2C - business to customer

The categories can be further classified into four categories based on the process carried out which are :

Generating lead - Process of identifying a potential customer to make sale.

Sales - Selling out products

Outbound - Calls are made to the customers.

Inbound - Calls are received from the customer.

The following techniques help you build the trust of the customer on the other end of the telephone.

  • Speak confidently
  • Take control of the situation
  • Show genuine interest
  • Go above and beyond the call of duty

To make telemarketing more efficient every call should be planned with an objective in mind. The opening statements made by the telecaller should be made interesting to grab interest. It is the contribution of each tele-caller that makes telemarketing successful and thus each tele-caller should be motivated enough to make a deal and be clear with his objective. The objection for tele callers in the sector are easy to crack and thus a response to each should be prepared in advance to cross the hurdle and make sale.

We do not use an auto dialer. To provide the highest quality program possible for our clients, we need to have solid discussions with qualified prospects not volumes of calls with mechanically read scripts. We do constantly look at technology to make sure we are using every tool possible to achieve this level of service.

The client does. This can be bought from people like there are two main reasons for this:

a) some telemarketing companies will add a margin on top and sell you the same data.

b) The data is licensed to you and not the telemarketing company. No telemarkting company I know holds data in house of specific data.

When making a call to a customer the call should be directed in the following way:
@Greet customer politely.

@Introduce yourself to the customer.

@Make clear the objective of the call

  • Who are you calling?
  • What are you calling for?

@Give complete information of the product or business you are promoting.

@Make the customer understand how the objective of the call can be beneficial for him/her.

@Close the call with a warm end note.

In the telemarketing industry it is critical that you know how to use your voice and choose your words to project a positive image while placing or taking a call. Factors that impact image over the telephone are:

  • Vocal quality
  • Vocal tone
  • Rate of speech
  • Pitch of the tone
  • Attitude
  • Body language
  • Use of appropriate words

One working week, so we can prepare the data, brief the telemarketer and make sure everything is in place to start.

Telesales is the use of the telephone for selling and promoting products or services to a business or consumer base. 

The modern use of the word "Telemarketing" refers to anything related with the use of the telephone, including Telesales .

For example research, event confirmation or database building and cleaning.

If you answer your telephone and there's no one there, the odds are that you just "zapped" a telemarketer. After a few weeks, you'll notice that you are receiving fewer and fewer of these calls.

This can happen a lot, and it is not just a palm off, you get to recognise which are genuinely interested and which are timewasters simply by asking a few questions before you end the call, many of the products we promote are things that people will not hand a creditcard over for, theytend to be in the thousands of pounds and therefore take consideration before making a decision. Always have something you can send that will add favour to a potential client.

Telemarketing is termed deceptive when misleading information of product is conveyed to attract customers.

Deceptive telemarketing can be avoided by taking the following measures :

  1. No telemarketer should represent a product with false or misleading information.
  2. Lottery, chance and skill based offers should not be offered where :
  3. Delivery of prize is conditional and is not conveyed at begining.
  4. Information about the prize is incorrect.
  5. Offering products at no cost or less price when based on terms and conditions not specified before purchase should not be carried out.
  6. Selling products at a very high rate.

Mail shots are a cheap way of achieving few results. Usually about a 1-3% response is achieved in any area where mail shots are used. Often, mail shots are not seen by the real decision maker. Compare this to Telemarketing or mail shot that is followed with Telemarketing and which focuses on the decision maker. This ensures that a response is achieved from each call and produces positive results ranging from 15-50% in many projects, depending on the product or service. 

If these result percentages are compared financially, telemarketing achieves the best returns on investment when used to promote the right products or services.

Following are the characteristics that distinguish direct marketing :

@The customers are pre targeted.
@Customers are addressed directly.
@The response of direct marketing is scalable.
@The whole process is action driven.
@Independent of business size.

Turning a cold call into lead is not easy but it is not impossible either. If handled with the right motivation and skill a cold call can be changed into a lead. It can actually be put down as the way that cold calls are perceived by the person making the call and the fear of failure.

The key should be to back track for a moment and then offer what you have when you have completely understood what is the landscape of the situation. Always step in with a positive attitude as for this situation it is very important.

By design, Marketing Connections maintains a call center operation consisting of 75 workstations with room for controlled expansion.

Statistics show that a good mailer with a follow up call can provide great results, speak to someone like Hanne Widmer @ www.bluespiral.co.uk for your mailing needs.

When attending a client or customer on phone some basic telephone etiquettes should be followed.

Following are telephone etiquettes that should be followed by a tele caller :

@Be quick in answering the phone.

@Always make sure that the customer is greeted well.

@When putting a line on hold take permission prior to it from the customer on the other end.

@When transferring a call make sure you do it the right way and make it polite.

@At the end of a call make sure that the customer is satisfied and does not have any query or doubt in mind.

Telemarketing calls made to a number which has been listed on the federal registry for three months, or which are on a company's “Do Not Call” list, violate Vermont law.

If you get a call from a telemarketer that violates Vermont law, you have the right to sue the telemarketer for actual damages or $500 for a first violation ($1,000 for each subsequent violation), whichever is greater.

Certain calls are not covered by the federal registration law, including calls from political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors, and companies from which you have bought something or received a delivery in the past 18 months.

If you do not want to get calls from companies that fall into any of these groups, tell the company or charity to put your phone number on their own “Do Not Call” list. Every company and charity is obliged to keep such a list.

The TeleZapper uses the technology of telemarketers' automatic dialing equipment against them. When you or your answering machine picks up a call, the TeleZapper emits a special tone that "fools" the computer into thinking your number is disconnected.

Instead of connecting you to a salesperson, the computer stores your number as diconnected in it's database. Over time, as your number is removed from more and more databases, you'll see a dramatic decrease in the number of annoying telemarketing calls you receive.

Depending on experience we will put out best telemarketer on every job, and they will stay on it until the campaign finish's or a decision is made to move another person on to it depending on level of success both good and bad.

There are a few disclosures which are must before a person engages in telemarketing. Listed below are a list of things that need to be disclosed.

@Disclosure of identity on behalf of which the call is made at the starting of the call in a polite and fair manner.

@There should be a proper description of the product or business being put forward.

@The price and terms and conditions related to the product should be made very clear.

@Any other information related to the product prescribed should be conveyed.

Cold calling : Cold calling is the process in which customers are called for business interaction who have not been expecting so.

Spamming : Random bulk messages used for telemarketing purposes are called spam and the process is termed as spamming

Auto dialer : Telemarketing industries generally use an electronic device or a software to automatically dial phone numbers. These devices and softwares are called autodialers.

Unwanted marketing is a crime by the law but one can opt out of it by filing a petition or a request in court. Only some firms are exempted from this law. To avoid unwanted marketing one can file a request in the court to be in the list of numbers which are not to be called by telemarketing firms.

I personally think that one should not barge into somebody’s private space causing any form of inconvenience to the end user. Telemarketing should be handled more responsibly to avoid such situations and maintain standards of marketing and not degrade them.

You can get on telemarketing lists in many ways:

  1. By having a listed telephone number.
  2. Through a reverse phone book organized by neighborhood.
  3. When you dial an 800 number that uses an Automatic Number Identification system (ANI) to record your number
  4. Via credit information services, such as Equifax, etc.
  5. By ordering products or services from direct marketers or catalogs, whether you order through the mail, from web sites, or via 800 numbers.
  6. By printing or including your telephone number on your personal checks.
  7. Even by simply paying your monthly bills.

After some initial consultation with the client we will come up with a script. The reason for this is synergy! This way the client knows what we are saying and they are happy with the anthesis we are putting onto certain areas of the conversation, that the qualification questions we are asking are correct, and through calling we will make minor changes depending on what response we are recieving.

I would suggest 20 days, although we do do 10 days as a minimum, this gives us the opportunity to not only get leads from those on the phone there and then but also deal with call backs and further info requests that may take time to convert, any less than this and you wil not be giving yourself the opportunity for it to succeed.

Following tips can help in make a call successful :

@Make sure the first impression of the call is good as it is very important for the rest of the call.

@Be professional yet courteous.

@It is very important to be a dedicated to a call, the opposite can be sensed very easily on a call.

@Clear the objective of the call before you make one.

@At times it is important not to sell over the phone instead connect with the customer and make the deal in the business place.

Before a single call is made everything must be agreed by both parties, from qualification process to what is being said, communication throughout the campaign is paramount, if things are not going to plan you have to choices, 

a) moan about it and blame the telemarketing company your working with. 

b) work with them to find out what is going wrong, is it a bad time of year, is it that people do not really understand the product//service. There is always an answer for any campaign going wrong, you just need to find the right angle.

The TeleZapper is the only product that emits a signal that "tells" predictive dialer computers your number is disconnected. Unlike answering machines or caller ID, once the TeleZapper's tone is emitted, your number is removed from the computer's call list. So, as time passes, you'll receive fewer and fewer annoying telemarketing calls. If the computer gets your answering machine, your number is put back into the database to be called again and again … and again.

Most telemarketing calls show up on Caller ID as "out of area" or "private". But since many callers are identified in these ways, it's difficult to know who's calling and whether or not you want to pick up the phone. The TeleZapper really is a better solution to keep telemarketers out!

A good telemarketer will make between 100 and 115 calls a day, depending on the level of decision maker you can Expect between 20 and 45 decision maker contacts a day.