Choosing the right outsourced telemarketing partner is a business-critical decision. The horror stories circulating about incompetence, hardball tactics, and spammy ‘stalking’ don’t make the decision any easier. It’s the stuff of most business owner’s worst nightmares. After all, investment in outsourced telemarketing is supposed to generate results – not alienate existing clients and send new prospects running a mile. Besides results, reputation is at stake when a telemarketing company is entrusted to be what’s often a prospect’s first touchpoint with a business. Paying for the privilege of ..read more

Salespeople are too often lulled in to thinking it’s ok not to pick the phone up. Client business is trundling along. Orders are being taken. Targets are being hit. And they assume everything in the garden is rosy. They don’t see the need to pick the phone up to clients for no apparent reason. Or they don’t want to be seen as overbearing by clients. “’When is the best time to pick the phone up?’ is a question I’m frequently asked by salespeople,” says Paula Bates, Managing Director of Toucan Telemarketing. “My response is this – Isn’t it always a good time to pick the phone up to stay connect ..read more

Paula Bates, Managing Director of Toucan Telemarketing has managed outbound telemarketing campaigns for hundreds of manufacturing businesses over the years. She knows a thing or two about sector specific sales processes. And she also knows plenty about a common sales problem that many growth-hungry manufacturers share. “Most of the Sales Teams we work with in the manufacturing sector are all over inbound enquiries”, explains Paula. “But they’re not proactive, and they lack sales systems and processes.” In short, they know their stuff better than anybody else and they’re often brilliant a ..read more

Clients come and clients go in any business. Most companies have a raft of contacts who used to buy, but no longer do, lurking in the hidden depths of their databases. But surprisingly, even Sales Teams with sophisticated buying data at their fingertips are guilty of – Not noticing when a client stops using them, (unless it’s a potentially game-changing multimillion pound contract) Not knowing why a client has stopped using them In many cases, it’s the same fear factor that holds them back from picking up the phone and making cold sales calls. Now, there’s bound to be handful of lapsed and ..read more

S/he who chases wins.  It’s a sales cliché that’s become hackneyed because it’s true. But it goes unheeded by too many businesses. Team members assume a false sense of security once they’ve submitted a proposal to a prospect. They think their job is done. In fact, their job is just beginning. A proposal is no guarantee of automatic rapport with a prospect. It’s just the start of the rapport building process. So, deals don’t get closed ultimately, due to businesses overlooking the fundamental need to remain at the forefront of a prospect’s mind. It’s largely a fear of rejection that preve ..read more

When businesses think about outsourcing telemarketing, they usually think about the blanket benefits of outsourcing in any field. They think about not having to worry about things like – Cost and time to hire Holiday cover Sick leave Pension contributions Maternity leave Tax and national insurance liabilities But different times call for different measures. The motivation for outsourcing telemarketing is solely financial for some businesses. But there are other underlying reasons that can really sway business owners during turbulent times of rife skills shortages.   Great Sales Hires C ..read more

Fact: People say no and very rarely say yes when they’re faced with a closed question, particularly in a sales scenario. It’s human nature. It comes almost as naturally as scratching an itch. Imagine a browser in a shoe shop. An Assistant approaches and asks, “Do you need any help there?” The answer “No” is swiftly fired back, almost before the Assistant has got the question out. Or, an exhibition visitor. He pauses at a stand, starts leafing through a brochure, picks up, reads and pockets the salesperson’s business card. The salesperson flicks on a kilowatt smile and asks, “Hi there, can I he ..read more

When you think of telemarketing, it’s all too easy to think of large call centres filled with people reading from a script and calling as many people as they possibly can. However, successful telemarketing isn’t just a numbers game. Of course, you have to make plenty of calls but Paula Bates, managing director at Toucan Telemarketing explains the key to acquiring qualified leads is much simpler than most people realise. “Nobody wants to pick up the phone and do what they think is a cold call. But we do because we don’t think of it as a cold call or sales call – we think of it as an opportunit ..read more

As any successful entrepreneur will know, starting a business is no easy feat, but for a company to reach its 20th birthday is particularly impressive and this month, on 26th July, Toucan Telemarketing will be doing exactly that. “Our industry has changed, but we learnt to change with it and in doing so we’ve become much better and more efficient than we were 20 years ago. We’ve become much slicker and the technology we use has helped us — and our clients — to diversify,” said Paula Bates, Managing Director of Toucan Telemarketing. To commemorate the company’s 20th birthday, we spoke to Paula ..read more

The last six months have been a trying time for the majority of UK business. Congleton-based Toucan Telemarketing are no exception. The team, who use a focused telemarketing approach to secure appointments for their clients, have had to make a few changes in 2020. “We’re very proud to say that in 19 years of operation, we have never had to make anyone redundant,” says founder Paula Bates. The secret? Maintaining small teams and offering a personal approach. Paula cites examples of many larger competitors who have either made redundancies or announced profit warnings in the last few months. “Wh ..read more