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Category: Outbound Calling

outbound calling articles

5 Tips for Improving Your Outbound Calling Strategy

Posted on by Meryl D'Sa-Wilson

Source: DepositPhotos.com - Lic#5696700 ID#27446420

As a salesperson, you know the daily struggle of getting ahold of a potential customer and then losing them quickly like sand slipping out of a fist. While it’s good to stick to the basics, sometimes it may help to switch it up a little and get on with the times. So, how can you tweak your outbound calling strategy to lead to more sales?

Reevaluate Your Outbound Calling Tactics

Businesses make outbound calls to attract and convince new customers to purchase their products or service. And so, outbound calling goes hand-in-hand with sales. A couple of different factors come into play when creating and executing strong outbound calling strategies. Let’s look at how you can refine yours and increase overall sales.

1. Set Goals and Be on the Same Page

First and foremost, everyone needs to be on the same page and working towards the same goals. Therefore, spend some time discussing what the company wants to achieve through these calls. For example, how many sales do you need to make by the end of the quarter or biannually? Are all goals sales-focused or should some work towards customer care? And so on. Deciding these goals beforehand will ensure that everyone knows what they need to be doing and can track their progress accordingly. Actions with no end goal can be overwhelming and lead to a waste of time.

2. Work Alongside Marketing

Even though making sales calls is a job for the sales team, your in-house marketing team can provide insights into how to target and attract customers. For one, marketers can use market research to help you create a list of high-potential clients. They can also identify customers that don’t fall under your ideal audience so you do not waste time contacting weak leads. Additionally, your marketing team can help you understand the motive behind some customers purchasing your product which can then influence how you present and sell it.

3. Retrain Agents

Retraining employees every couple of months is a good idea because strategies and tools change. It is, therefore, necessary to keep employees up-to-date and teach them new techniques. Consider redoing your script if it is not drawing customers as you hoped it would. You can also use call recording features to review how employees perform on a call to highlight strengths and weaknesses. United World Telecom offers Outbound Call Recording that lets you record and access 100% of all calls for up to 6 years. Understand your call center agents’ daily challenges so that you can help them do better.

4. Adopt Active Listening Techniques During Outbound Calling

This goes without saying but when dealing with customers, agents must adopt active listening and pay attention to customer doubts or concerns. If a customer thinks you are calling just to make a sale and you do not actually care about their concerns, they will automatically switch off. Part of selling is to make the sale personal for each individual you are targeting. How can this specific person benefit from our product or service?

Be mindful of their time and always ask if now is a good time to talk or if they’d prefer setting up an appointment for later. If you don’t have an answer to their question, offer to follow-up and make sure you do so. These are some ways you can make the sale about the customer and not the business.

5. Use Analytics and Metrics

Lastly, be smart. Use analytics, metrics, and call tracking to determine customer preferences. What times or days are they more likely to answer? How many follow-up calls are appropriate before giving up? Can you employ other follow-up methods such as instant messages or email reminders? Play around with the data to tweak your strategies and find one that works best for your business.

Outbound Calling with United World Telecom

Upgrade your sales techniques by choosing United World Telecom’s outbound calling service. With this service, you will have full control in-house over how calls are placed and who is targeted. You, therefore, do not have to rely externally on an outbound call center. United World Telecom’s outbound calling service comes with a customizable caller ID. That is, if you purchase a variety of local and international virtual numbers, you can display one of those numbers when calling a specific country or state. This helps your enterprise create a local presence without the need to physically relocate. Sign up or talk to an expert for more information.

Use Outbound Calling and Call Recording to Improve Customer Relations

Posted on by Meryl D'Sa-Wilson

Source: DepositPhotos.com - Lic#25189551 ID#27446420

As a business owner, you know how important it is to build and maintain customer relations. Thankfully, there are telecom solutions that can boost interactions between a business and its customers. An outbound calling service and call recording software are two such solutions. Here, we will discuss how these services can benefit your business.

Customer Relations: A Necessity

Customer relations refers to the relationship between a business and its customers. Good customer relations leads to customer satisfaction which increases retention rates. If your business fails to keep customers satisfied, then you will find them leaving your business for a competitor. So, what can you do to help your employees create strong customer relations?

Outbound Calling: Connect with More Prospects

Outbound calling is one of United World Telecom’s premium services that allows businesses to call local and international clients at reasonable calling rates. Most companies think of outbound calling as a way of generating new leads where the sales team calls potential customers and tries to sell products to them. While outbound calling does accomplish this, it also can do more.

You can also follow up with existing clients to practice customer success and help them achieve their goals. Customer success is when you work closely with consumers and clients to chart a course of action that helps them complete a goal. In this case, interaction is more long term than a customer support interaction.

How can your business improve customer relations with outbound calling? You can:

  • Welcome new customers
  • Follow-up with recent purchases or older customers
  • Generate leads
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Study different markets and customer preferences
  • Research the market
  • Set appointments
  • Make reservations
  • Track customer success efforts
  • Send reminders
  • Collect feedback, and more

Call Recording: Improve Quality and Accountability

Call recording software, also offered by United World Telecom, lets you record up to 100% of incoming and outgoing calls. You can store these recordings as MP3 files for up to 6 years within your account’s control panel.

Recording business calls gives your business the opportunity to go back in time and review important interactions. As a result, you can determine areas of improvement and sales tactics that worked. Additionally, recordings can be studied to find better ways to communicate with clients and learn what it is that they prefer or appreciate. With call recording, you get a better understanding of your target audience and learn how to serve them better.

How can call recording help your business maintain customer relations? You can:

  • Study recordings to identify strengths and weaknesses
  • Use recordings to train new employees
  • Collect and track customer information
  • Conduct performance evaluations
  • Maintain compliance with regulations
  • Keep customer information safe
  • Gather feedback
  • Protect against liabilities, and more

Customer Success and Customer Relations

As a business owner, you must strive to provide your employees with the right tools that can support their jobs. An outbound calling service can help them connect with a wider range of potential customers. This will, in turn, bring a more diversified customer base for the company. On the other hand, call recording will help them learn from their mistakes and accomplishments. You can further incentivize appropriate behavior by rewarding employees who do well in the recordings.

When employees are given the right tools, they are able to focus more on customer interaction and customer relations. Services and software that are easy to use will ensure that less time is spent working the systems and more time is spent on winning customers over.

Win Customers Over and Grow Your Business

United World Telecom strives to give you top-notch features and tools that can support your business’ communication needs. We want to help you expand your reach and increase customer retention rates. Outbound calling and call recording are two popular services we offer for this reason. To learn more about how these services can benefit you, call us at 1 (877) 898 8646.

Making Professional Outbound Calls from a Virtual Phone Number

Posted on by Magaly Fuentes

Source: Stockphoto.com O#100005523906 ID#100200144052

Making Professional Outbound Calls from a Virtual Phone Number

Have you wondered about making professional outbound calls from a virtual phone number? It’s simple. You can make calls from your cell phone, home landline, or any number of your choosing. In doing so, your virtual phone number will appear as the number on the receiver’s caller ID. 

Businesses Need the Right Tools for Professional Communication

Life is busy; entrepreneurs are always on the go. Imagine being able to use your cell phone to call clients, but have your business line (a virtual phone number you own) show up on their caller ID when you call them. This is more professional and allows for many other features to work alongside the virtual phone number.

Outbound Calling Keeps Your Business Image Aligned

When it comes to business, time is money. Being reliable and returning calls in a timely manner should be a top priority. Making professional outbound calls from a virtual phone number helps you prioritize your customers. The flexibility in using virtual phone numbers for business is unsurpassed, and there are many other additional benefits they include.

Here are just a few:

Keeping Work and Personal Phone Numbers Separate

When you purchase a virtual phone number for business, you can still use the mobile phone and/ or landline phone you already own. However, you also get a business number with many features and your personal phone number still remains private. You’ll always know when calls are made to your business number, and a customized ring can be used for those calls.

Virtual Phone Numbers Help You Boost Professionalism

If you know a business-related call is coming in, you can prepare for the call with the way you answer the phone. Whether it is your actual greeting when you answer or your tone, these details matter. Being able to receive a business call wherever you are, allows you to get things done out of the office while keeping you in touch with your market. Adding features to partner up with the virtual phone number can also help your business to appear larger and more established. Adding features such as extensions can help to get calls routed to the correct department or person more quickly. This can help to increase customer satisfaction, which can impact overall business success.

Making Professional Outbound Calls
Source: Stockphoto.com O#100005523906 ID#100200144052

Never Miss a Call

Missing a call can mean missing a sale or a client altogether. The flexibility that is offered by virtual phone numbers allows for you to make and receive business calls and texts from anywhere, take multiple calls at a time by routing them to another person or team within the organization, or allow the caller to leave a message in a customized voicemail message inbox.

Get Set Up Easily and in Minutes

Set up of virtual phone numbers is easy and quick. There is no hardware that needs to be installed. Everything is cloud-based, including the control panel, and providers such as United World Telecom make everything seamless. They keep it super simple with a walkthrough of setup and a customer service team that is available around the clock to answer any questions.

Making professional outbound calls from a virtual phone number beats making outbound calls from a personal mobile phone number or landline. Establishing a rapport with your market that is professional is key to staying power. Your customers and clients need to see you as reliable, trustworthy, and robust, so they feel comfortable investing in your business. Using virtual phone numbers is an easy way to build upon all of these things.

Get Outbound Calling Virtual Numbers from United World Telecom

Purchasing a virtual phone number from United World Telecom allows you to have a local, international, or toll free phone number for your business. You can use it to make outbound calls and you can receive inbound calls through it. Virtual numbers allow you to expand your business to international markets while keeping overhead costs down. With over 20 years in the business of offering telecommunication solutions for businesses all over the world, United World Telecom understands how important it is for customers to be able to reach you and for you to be able to get in touch with those customers as well.