The gatekeeper is employed to screen calls and help the company president decide which calls are worthy of his or her time. If you follow these basic procedures your success rate of reaching decision makers will be dramatically improved.

You won’t always get through
Some screeners that don’t budge, even if you make every compelling argument. Don’t get discouraged and don’t waster your time. Sometimes it’s best to move on to the next call.

Only Give Information as Needed
Many sales people have a tendency to just pitch the secretary assuming that she will love the product and instantly put them through to the company President. NOTHING is further from the truth. The screener will usually take your information and pass it on, only with less enthusiasm and with no selling skills. If she asks your name, politely give it to her and ask again to speak with the buyer. If she responds by asking for your company name again you politely give it to her and ask again to speak with the buyer. You’ll be surprised at how often this is effective.

Use Your Main Selling Point
In the event that you have a relentless screener that requires you to give a full disclosure about your reason for calling you should refer back to your “main selling point”. Tell the gatekeeper what her boss has to gain by talking with you. At this point she will either patch you through or tell you that the owner is not interested.

Ask For The Decision Maker by First Name
Unless it’s a Doctor or Pastor always ask for the owner by their first name only. When you ask for Mr. ______ it screams salesman. It says you don’t know this person and your not worthy of the boss’s time. On a very rare occasion a prospect will be offended that you don’t refer to them as Mr. or Mrs., and to that I say “so what”, those people are hard to please and you don’t need to waste your time trying to sell people that are probably extremely demanding of your time and energy and yet appreciates neither. I don’t do it and neither should you. Just thank them for their time and move on.

Treat The Screener With Respect
Always remember, even when the screener goes overboard that they are just doing their job. Treat them with respect and you’ll get a lot further. Beat them up and treat them with disrespect and all you’ll do is put a lock on the door you’re trying to enter.

Call at Different Hours
Sometimes there is no pleasing a screener and you’ll never get past her, but wait there’s still hope. Maybe she doesn’t come in until 9:00am so make your call at 8:45, or call on her lunch break or just after she leaves for the day. Bottom line is she can’t be by the phone 24/7. Work around her schedule.

It’s important to remember that if the Gatekeeper can be your friend or your worst enemy. The above procedures have been tested time and time and they are extremely effective. Remember, it doesn’t really matter how great of a salesman someone is if they can’t get to the decision maker in the first place.

Sometimes it cannot be helped that there would be some people who would think negatively when it comes to talking about telemarketing company. There are many reasons why this has been happening. One reason is that most of these telemarketers would do a process called “cold calling” wherein these representatives would contact their prospects in such a manner that many find quite vexing. The logic behind this is that the prospects that have been receiving cold calls may have been interrupted.

However, this does not mean that all the processes of a telemarketing company undertake should be thought of negatively. For instance, a business owner can take advantage of their services in order to acquire more sales income or even just to gather specific information about their prospects.

Knowing this, let us take a deeper outlook towards some myths about a telemarketing company and their processes.

Myth #1: Telemarketers have no regard as to what their prospect’s time

Telephone marketing representatives think highly of a prospect’s time. If in case that these prospects have been interrupted, then these representatives would respectfully apologize to their contacts and ask for a better time to call them back. However, if the prospect would take some time to listen to what these telephone marketing call center agents have to say then these representatives would thank their prospects for their time and effort in listening to them.

Myth #2: These telemarketing companies are unable to contact high-end clients

Telemarketing companies have been around for many, many years and they have already gained a substantial amount of contact information in their databases. Using their databases, they can readily contact clients from the different levels within the business enterprise. This means that they can contact clients from the low, middle, and most especially high-end prospects.

Myth #3: A telephone marketing company’s only goal is to acquire more sales income

It is true that one of the goals of a telemarketing company is the acquisition of more sales from business transactions. However, it is not their only goal for their company. One such goal that they highly take into account is to give each and every prospect and client a guaranteed sense of customer satisfaction. Doing so can help these representatives be a bit more closer to their prospects and clients hence the foundation of trust would truly be strong between them.

Myth #4: Telephone marketing agents fail to grasp their prospect’s needs all the time

There are times that these agents would not know their prospects needs. However, this is not entirely a hundred percent true. Always remember that a person cannot please just about anybody on the face of the earth. Each individual has his or her own needs and wants. Hence when a representative would contact some of their prospects, they would turn down the offer as these possible clients would not need any of the wares the agent is offering them for the time being.

Again, if this happens, the telephone marketing representative would thank their prospects for the time and effort in answering the telephone.

Myth #5: These telephone marketing representatives only care about making a sale

Leaning towards the third myth, it is not true that these representatives only care about making a sale from their prospects and leads. What they care about is the well-being of their prospects that is why they are suggesting their products and services. Even at the start of the call, these agents would already have a pleasing and professional tone so that the tension between these call center agents and their representatives would have been much lightened.

Cold calling mainly refers to the first telephone call made to a prospect. Telemarketing is a vital stage in the selling method. The ability to master cold calling can help in numerous aspects of business and give good end to end results.

Regardless of how you see it, telemarketing is merely a numbers game, exactly where the telemarketers calls are similar to junk mail. As is true with other forms of direct marketing, somebody will very likely eventually reply.

Below are some verified recommendations and strategies that will each assist your telemarketing efforts be far more productive and wipe out any concern that you could properly have about cold calling.

Relax

Everyone knows how aggressive some telemarketers can be. Your prospects are probably getting calls every day. A lot of times, your prospects can not tell salespeople apart because to them, they all sound alike. Distinguish yourself and focus on the client and what is crucial to them.

Tear Down the Wall

Make your prospect feel comfortable. Think about an invisible wall between you and also the prospect as you open the call. Your initial objective of that call should be to eradicate the invisible wall to ensure that they will share data with you.

How?

You begin by displaying an excellent deal of respect for his time. Let him know that if he feels the discussion is actually a waste of their time, you’ll happily end the call. The prospect probably anticipates that you will be a talking brochure for your company. Rather, make the prospect certainly feel like they control the call. Say the opposite of what is expected.

Ask Questions

Ask your prospect questions to show that you are interested in finding ways you can help. An important caveat is to remember to not sound like you are asking twenty questions or interrogating him. Ask smart questions, and you will get smart answers.

When properly executed, you’ll find these tactics will help you and your business generate more sales. By building rapport and setting yourself apart, even your prospects who decline will keep you in mind should a need arise.