Some people’s perception of telemarketing is completely different to the reality of the role; many think it is a case of sitting on a sequential dialling system, pressure selling prospects into buying whatever they are selling – Telemarketing within a lead generation business couldn’t be more different, here – we will be discussing and showing you what a day in the life of a Telemarketer looks like at Exceptional Thinking.
08:30 – Kids are sorted for school, breakfast is out of the way and you are on your 2nd jug (not mug) of coffee. Laptop on and checking through your work emails and clients emails to see if any of the prospects you messaged yesterday have come back to you; a couple have come back and said to reach out next month, but not Lyndsay the MD of a small marketing company – she is ready for business coaching and she wants it now! You email her back setting up a time to call to discus her needs and qualify her further for your business coaching client.
9am – Team meeting, joined by the rest of the Telemarketing team to discuss last night’s terrible television, any interesting dinners that were had and get briefly up to date with celebrity gossip (these meetings get slightly weirder as the day progresses – more on that later) Then it is on to the serious stuff – where are we vs our client lists targets and who will be working on what that day to make sure that we are covering all bases and all clients campaigns are being called for.
9.20 – 11.00 – Now we really get going, loading up your first clients CRM, looking through your list of hot call backs that day and formulating your plan of attack, your first calling session is on your favourite Cyber Security client, so you have a quick check of cyber security news and see what’s going on in the sector, have a listen to a couple of your previous successful calls to get you motivated and get cracking, It’s a slow start with 8 no answers in a row and a particularly blunt Gatekeeper who remembers you calling 3 months ago, on a Tuesday… at 10.34am (How do they do that??!) all of this is soon remedied by a lengthy discussion with the CISO of a £100m turnover business who is looking at his next round of penetration testing – HE WANTS AN APPOINTMENT, QUICK GET THE CLIENTS DIARY OPEN!!
11.00 – 11.15 – Quick team meeting at 11 to see where the rest of the team is with appointments, then you download the call recording of the appointment you just booked, so you can fill out your lead sheet properly, rather than try to decipher the hieroglyphs scrawled across your notepad, once done it’s a quick glance at the grammar and send it across to the Account Manager to process and quality check.
11.15 – 12.30 – You’re on a role, you stay on the Cyber Security campaign for a further half hour, it’s always best that you do this as the momentum is with you… no more appointments unfortunately but a couple of juicy call backs for next week. Next it is a client you haven’t worked on before – they are a business coach, so you spend the remainder of the morning listening to past appointments for them and reviewing all of the information that is saved in their client folder – you’re armed with a million questions for the rest of the team on the 1pm Zoom.
12.30 – 13.00 – LUNCH… Today’s question in the group chat is “Who, dead or alive – would you love to have as a dinner guest” the answers start reasonably normal – The Pope, Nelson Mandella, Princess Diana etc… someone then pipes up with Hitler “Yeh he’s evil but wouldn’t you like to question him???” is the rationale for your colleagues answer, anyway – back to your soup and a re-run of the Chase on TV.
13.00 – 15.30 – It’s been a bit of a tough afternoon and you’re not getting through to as many people as you’d like to on the campaigns you have been allocated for the day – so you look through your pipeline on other clients campaigns and see what you can bring forward to today – you’re glad you did… you didn’t manage to get an appointment over the phone but upon checking on the emails you sent out earlier this morning – there’s a prospect who has come back with his phone number, explaining he thinks it would be great to set up a conversation – he’s booked in for first thing in the morning so you can qualify their needs further, before booking in for an appointment with the client.
15.30 – 16.00 – Training time! You have training with one of the companies new clients, this time they are a software development company, it’s a really useful session… you’ve learnt that Python’s aren’t just a slimy legless reptiles and C# Isn’t just something you learnt to play on the recorder when you were 13 – these points aside, you do now feel comfortable with certain buzzwords and now you know exactly what makes a great appointment for them…you are raring to go on their campaign!
16.00 – 17.00 – This part of the day is where you typically like to carry out call backs of people you have spoken to earlier in the day, who couldn’t speak at that time but did want a call back, you also use this time to send out some of the emails you have promised to send out to potentially interested prospects, typically you will have made approximately 80 calls for the day, sent out upwards of 20 emails and also sent anywhere between 10-20 messages on behalf of your clients, via LinkedIn.
Whilst every day is different at Exceptional Thinking, one thing does remain consistent – you tend to book 1-2 qualified leads per day for your clients and your clients, in turn – tend to turn 2 out of every 3 of these appointments into business – and this is what makes it all worthwhile.
