Glossary of Sales Terms

C

Call Centre

Communications technology has advanced rapidly over the last 50 years.  The use of the telephone as a means of communicating with prospects and customers has increased dramatically since the 1950s.  Combining many people in a building to answer or make calls has become known as a 'Call Centre'.  The 'Call Centre' industry has expanded globally with centres springing up on most continents.  In terms of the telemarketing industry, call centres are generally considered to be at the lower to middle end of the quality spectrum.  'Call Centre' staff are often poorly trained and rarely offer professional services such as highly skilled Consultative Telemarketing services.  Many 'Call Centres' offer telemarketing as B2C and some have gained notoriety for hiring people with a poor grasp of English, weak selling skills and lack of interpersonal skills.

Call Email Call

A Telemarketing term used by ' Consultative Telemarketing' people.  'Call Email Call' describes the progressive steps for a prospect to buy in to the idea of a meeting a sales representative or to purchase a product..  Formerly known as 'Call Mail Call', due to the expansion of the Internet, the vast majority of 'Consultative Telemarketing' now uses email instead of hard copy post (snailmail).

Call 2 Action

Selling uses a set of procedures in sequence that will start with an introduction and end up with banking the payment made on a sale.  In order to make sure that an introduction can eventually become a sale it is necessary to maintain a 'Call 2 Action'.  Like a series of stepping-stones to cross a river, in sales it is necessary to keep moving from one stone to the next - each time that one is ready to move to the next stone, a 'Call 2 Action' should be made to maintain momentum.

Cold Call

Also known as 'Cold Calling', a 'Cold Call' describes a visit or telephone call to someone who was not expecting to be contacted.  This term is most often applied to sales people visiting or making telephone calls.  In the telemarketing industry, the vast majority of calls made are 'Cold Calls'.

Cold List

When building a list of prospective customers (prospects), a 'Cold List' might be used.  A 'Cold List' is one where the prospective customers to be targeted may have no prior knowledge of the seller, their product or service.  Such lists may then be used for email marketing, direct mail or telemarketing.

Consultative Telemarketing

'Consultative Telemarketing' can be defined as he professional end of the telemarketing spectrum.  Telemarketing covers a broad spectrum of skills and roles.  At the lower end are relatively poorly trained staff at Call Centres, whilst at the most skilled end of the spectrum are those that use 'Consultative Telemarketing'.  Call Centres often work around the fact that they employ poorly skilled operators by providing them with scripts on a computer monitor - but the message often sounds false - when faced with objections, a poorly skilled call centre person may resort to lies, stupidity or rudeness - hence why they often aim at the consumer market (B2C).  Consultative telemarketing, on the other hand, is generally aimed at high-level B2B prospects with titles like CEO, MD, FD - as the skilled consultative telemarketing person speaks intelligently at their level.

CRM

'CRM' or Customer Relationship Management, is all about how an organisation applies processes to handle customer data and communications.  In the 21st Century, the term 'CRM' is often applied to a computer system from a set of spreadsheets through to some form of database system, providing the ability for all departments within an organisation to access relevant data.  For sales and marketing, the 'C' or Customer aspect of 'CRM' is extended to prospects as well as customers, to build a pipeline of prospects as well as accounts held with customers.

Cross Selling

'Cross Selling' is all about utilising a customer's buying history to help sell further products to them.  For example, a customer who recently bought a pair of shoes may wish to buy a spare pair of shoelaces, some shoe polish, etc.


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Tel. 0870 042 1263
Email: stephen@sl-freelance.co.uk
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