How often have you seen a face-to-face business meeting when one person reads to the other and wins them over? Or how engaged are you when watching a PowerPoint presentation where the presenter simply reads from their slides? Just because there’s a phone between the inside sales person and the prospect, it doesn’t make reading right.
Human Touch Builds Trust
For a telemarketing call to be successful, the caller must be polished and have more than enough information on the tip of his or her tongue to react quickly to whatever path the conversation takes. More than just being prepared, the caller must give the impression of being an authority on the subject so the client learns to trust him.
Reading from a script, however, gives exactly the opposite impression. A script-reader reflects uncertainty and the sense that he or she is not sufficiently informed to speak from their own knowledge. Also, a sales person needs to be able to answer a prospect’s questions or concerns promptly, but reading mindlessly from a script leaves the caller unable to improvise.
Since clients are aware that a professional does not sell a product that he or she does not understand inside out, listening to a script read verbatim justifiably leaves a prospect second-guessing the caller’s expertise.
Quality Over Quantity
Most importantly, a key trait of any successful telemarketer is personality, and confining your callers to a script may leave them feeling stifled. Each caller must have the leeway to handle lead generation in a style that best suits their disposition, so attempting to universalize your company’s message can be counterproductive. Talking points are okay. Word for word is not.
Put simply, when it comes to business to business lead generation, quality must always come before quantity. A telemarketing factory that has machine-like callers reading thoughtlessly off of a script for hours on end will simply not show results on par with an organization that appreciates the value of the personal element.
Scripts do have a role to play—they can be used to instill key talking points in your team which should be internalized before they start making calls. But at the end of the day, business-to-business lead generation calls for relationships, and true relationships blossom from conversations, not from recitations.
For more information about 3D2B, visit www.3D2B.com or call +1 718-709-0900 or +39 06 978 446 60 (EMEA).
