Why I like receiving telesales calls…

I used to get really annoyed by unsolicited phone calls. They always rang at some inconvenient time. Having disturbed me they then proceeded to try and extract money from me with a well rehearsed, power sales pitch. Over the last few days, my whole attitude to these calls has changed and here’s why…If you’ve been reading some of my other posts recently, you’ll know that I’ve been venturing into marketing recently in order to promote myself as a wedding and portrait photographer. I’ve been really pleased with the results so far with a huge number of  impressions and lots clicks in the last week. These can all be improved upon but the subject of this post is the next step: converting these leads into clients.

So, where do I begin? Coming from an R&D background, I’ve been in customer facing roles before but never one where I’ve actually needed to close a sales deal. So, big challenge ahead. I need to acquire these skills and fast too. I now have people phoning and emailing me, most of whom are potential clients. I say “most” because I’ve also started getting calls from people wishing to sell me advertising space on the internet. The first two or three of these were just very annoying. I wasn’t interested in spending any money with them and just viewed them as wasting my time.

But then I started to think and had a flash of inspiration. These calls were genuine sales people trying to close a deal with me. They were doing exactly what I need to do to make my business successful: trying to convert a lead into a client. So I thought to myself, “I can learn from these people. They aren’t annoying, they’re training!” Let me explain.

A few years ago I had some management training where instead of the traditional role playing they employed actors to run specific simulations. This was significantly better than any role playing activity I had been through before. It was total immersion training and very, very realistic. I now view the telesales calls I get as simulations like these with me playing the part of the actor thereby having a front row seat to observe the reactions of the caller.

So there you have it:

Telesalse calls aren’t annoying, they’re training.

Best of all, its free!!