To be successful in telemarketing, the sales person has to be disciplined, but overall cold-calling is more scary than it is difficult. But once fear has been recognised and replaced by confidence of the product or service you are offering, then there are just 5 easy tips to follow to be a successful telemarketer.

1. Before making your calls, make sure you know your product inside-out, as this will not only make you come across more confident over the phone, but will also make it easier and quicker to close a sale.

Cold-calling is an important part of any marketing campaign and does not necessary involve spending all day making calls. Even if just a couple of hours are put aside for telemarketing every week or even every month, then at least a positive step forward is being made to encourage new business.

There are a few key steps to make, though, when considering and making cold-calls, so follow these 5 small steps to successful telemarketing.

A guest post from Catherine Yaffe of Cat Creative Multimedia

As a business owner it’s imperative to keep feeding your sales pipeline. Whilst no one likes it, cold calling is an essential element. Outsourcing can be costly, but the following basic rules should help you or your staff to get past any nerves and give you the confidence to pick up the phone and start calling.

1. Do your research on the company / individual.
2. Be relaxed and enthusiastic.
3. Tone – the MOST vital characteristic of a telephone conversation, you can say it all with tone.

While we rarely cover this subject at VSL, there have to be few things in business more frustrating than the caller failing to reach you – when they want to phone an important order with your organisation for example.

So, here is a quick checklist to ensure you're not 'caught short' when it comes to people needing to reach you. Do you have voicemail set up on all your phones? If not, why not for the calle, imagine you have reached the mobile operator or phone companies automated greeting instead of your own voice (or at least a voice that tells the caller whose phone they've reached). How alienated does that make you feel? Carefully recorded voicemail shows you care a bit more

We may sometimes think that the UK market is too saturated to generate new business, but at VSL we believe that 2011 is THE year to grow. So, to help you achieve this, we have come up with our top 5 ways to bring in new business.

1. Telemarketing - An integral part of any business, telemarketing isn't about ringing as many people as possible; it's about ringing the right people. By speaking to the decision makers from a carefully selected list of potential clients/customers etc, you can help to maximise new business potential. By offering enthusiastic and straight to the point information, you can ensure those at the other end of phone understand exactly who you are and what you’re offering.

It has often been said that you cannot accurately predict results therefore it is better to predict activity. With that borne in mind, what will you commit to doing, both differently and better than you have done in the past?