Teleblather

We've heard it from our donors, we've heard it from our friends, we've heard it at marketing conferences... people HATE telemarketing. BUT there are spread sheets and experiences that show us that telemarketing works.
I have just had two traumatic tele-moments. A sales guy had me paged out of a meeting to give me a cold sales call. Paged -- the owner of a company! What was he thinking? First of all, he thought that if he could get me on the phone he could use his suave sales skills to convince me to buy his product or service. But what he did was tick me off. Then he told me this great opportunity for a product that we already were purchasing and actually had a unique customer service person that we dealt with directly. I offered to buy him a copy of Microsoft Access so he could do a bit better job at sorting out his customer list.
Second traumatic moment. I got a cold call from an obvious paid telemarketer who wanted me to participate at her trade show. She launched into her speech -- without a breath -- for more than 3 minutes. Then she told me to open my computer to check out the site -- she hadn't asked whether I was the right person, nor had she asked if I wanted to come to her conference, nor did she ask whether her conference delegates would be a fit for my company. She just read her script.
These people are breaking into my day, giving me a pitch I don't want and not even bothering to figure out who I am. And they are making it much more difficult for others to use the telephone to do business.
Now you and I know that telemarketing can effectively increase donations and build better relationships with our donors.
So what can we learn?
1. Train your phone people to be people first and telemarketers not-at-all. While basing their conversations on a script is critical, they should be well trained to answer off-the-cuff questions and to deviate from the script if the the conversation moves that way. They should understand the core goal of the phone call, but lead the conversation instead of simply reading the script.
2. Script writers -- practice your script with real people. Your donors are happy to speak to you if they really believe you called them to talk to them not to read your pre-written script. Writing a telemarketing script is a unique and specialized skill that encourages conversation. Three minutes without a breath is just silly. You have to write the script to leave room for actual conversation.
3. Invest in donor management software that is web based so that all of the people who phone for you have the same data. Imagine phoning a donor and remembering their grandchild's name or remembering that they gave a special gift 18 months ago. These personal details increase your credibility. It's not enough to label your donor relationship people -- create a climate that creates relationships.
4. Don't interrupt people without permission. Even if that means asking them up front if they have a moment to talk to you. If they say no, perhaps there is a better time to call. But give them the choice. When they have said yes to your call, they will be much more willing to listen to what you have to say.
5. Don't make assumptions on the phone. Both of my most recent calls assumed they knew me (yes, they had my name on a list). If you don't know them, don't act like you do, but open the door to get to know them. Don't talk faster when you are making vague assumptions of the person -- allow them to tell you what they think. You may learn a lot from them (although be careful not to take one person's comment as a trend, you may have hit a bad day).
We recently had a little mailing personalization glitch that required explanation to the donors. Basically the donors received the right personal information -- but the name attached was not theirs. We phoned each of them personally and engaged in a conversation about their donations and the recent mailing they had received. We phoned more than 200 people in a two day period. The calls were amazing. The donors were glad to hear from the organization they invested in and were very happy that we had taken the trouble to call them and make sure they understood the slightly confusing mailing. Our client reports that the donations from this mailing is actually causing problems in their mail team -- too many responses are coming in and they are hard to process!
Cold donation calls are difficult to make, but upgrades and updates are welcomed by donors if they feel that you are phoning them personally. Don't be afraid of using the phone -- but talk to people as if they are people! Engage them and care for them -- the next time someone explodes about a tele-fund raiser they'll share their experience of the lovely call they got from their favourite charity!