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Outbound telemarketing sales calling just can't seem to shrug off its reputation for being nothing more than a nuisance. "In the UK there are now three-and-a-half million households registered on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS)," says Michael McKinlay, managing director at call centre software company Sytel. "Outbound telemarketing needs to be properly managed, or eventually there won't be a market out there to target."

Yet clients still see outbound telemarketing as an effective selling tool. Reader's Digest, for instance, recently appointed Phonetics to call 50,000 lapsed customers over a month to prompt them into buying again on a regular basis.

So what are the secrets behind successful telesales? To start with, you need to know who not to contact. All call lists must be screened against the TPS, and from October 2004 the Financial Services Authority's new Mortgage Conduct of Business Rules come into effect (see Legal Eagle, page 13), banning unsolicited telemarketing of mortgages.

Clever use of data in a call centre will give vital clues on who you should be calling, when to call them and how to motivate them into buying your products and services. "Using data intelligently gives you far more empathy with the customer," says Maggie Evans, head of marketing at contact centre outsourcing company iSky Europe.

Some argue the best type of third party data for outbound is telemarketed lifestyle data, where customers are cold-called to complete a questionnaire and then asked if they're comfortable with further direct marketing communication.

"Lifestyle data is good because you know those customers are telephone responsive and have opted-in to being contacted again," says Richard Webster, operations director at Data Locator Group, which collects lifestyle data via the telephone.

Segmenting your database is the next step to making calls more relevant.

Dataforce has developed Artemis, a modelling tool that segments a database and builds up characteristics of successful and unsuccessful calls, such as previous calling activities, profile information on the host database and workflow management systems such as agent skillsets. "Using Artemis allows us to use 20 agents instead of 40 because you're targeting people you know are likely to be responsive," says Lionel Lincoln-Lewis, manager of outbound telemarketing services at Dataforce. "So you ring less people to get the same results."

Data analysis also ensures the customer is called at the right time.

"You need to make sure the time of day you call a customer matches their profile," advises Rachel Robinson, business development director at outsourced contact centre provider MM Group. "So, if you know who your older customers are, it's probably best to call them during the day, and if they're younger, you should probably call them in the evening."

The perfect match

Matching the right agent to the right campaign is also crucial to outbound success. "For a telesales campaign, I would look for someone who has a high level of achieving goals, someone who has business awareness, is an able communicator and has a good degree of customer focus," says Lincoln-Lewis.

Chorus Direct, an arm of the Data Locator Group, has a training programme called Graduation Bay where agents become students for at least three weeks. Agents practise dummy calls accompanied by another agent, and in the final week make real calls themselves. "It's so important that the agent gets a good grounding in the first three weeks," says Jon Bartman, sales director at Chorus Direct. "This is why they train within a one to five team leader ratio during those weeks instead of a one to 10 ratio."

Agents are advised on what they should say, and how long they have in which to say it. If their call centre is a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), for example, they are obliged to inform the customer that calls may be monitored or recorded to ensure they are comfortable to continue. With this agreed, it's important in telesales to secure the consumer's interest. "Within 30 seconds you must overcome objections and get the customer interested," says Robinson. "We work with agents on their opening sentences. The customer needs to understand exactly why you're phoning and why they should be interested."

This training is particularly useful when MM Group's agents sell products such as insurance for clients including Capital One and Royal Bank of Scotland. The agent needs to communicate the benefits of a complicated insurance product within two to three minutes. To trigger a response, agents are taught to avoid closed questions and learn to overcome customer objections. "So, if a customer says 'sorry, I've already got an insurance product', then the agent could advise the customer that our specific product can work alongside their existing insurance product, which is actually the case with Capital One," explains Robinson.

Understanding customer disposition is another part of training. While certain outbound calls do require a script, such as legal, qualification or updating information-type campaigns, some call centres have done away with scripts to encourage agents to inject more personality into conversations and avoid being tripped up by unexpected reactions.

Caroline Worboys, managing director of Broadsystem, explains: "An agent may say, for instance, 'would you like double glazing?' and even if the customer says, 'I've already had them done thanks', the agent may say, 'that's great, so when do you want us to do your windows then?' because they're reading from a script instead of listening to the customer. The call must be less scripted to allow the agent to take the lead and move the conversation in a different direction."

The nuisance factor

Technology can be a help and a hindrance to successful outbound. Predictive dialling, typically used for larger B2C outbound campaigns, has had bad publicity because of its ability to generate silent and abandoned calls.

These occur when the operator spends longer than anticipated on a call, so when the next number is dialled and the call is answered, there is no agent at the other end or the dialler hangs up, creating an abandoned call.

Yet predictive dialling is undeniably productive. If the number is engaged, there's no reply, or the answering machine takes the call, the dialler will automatically hang up. "Our brand advocates are only ever presented with live calls," says Lincoln-Lewis, "and this ups productivity by about 60 per cent compared to manual dialling."

In January 2000 the DMA published its Code of Practice for Automated Dialling Equipment and is now considering how to strengthen it. "Currently, if a company calls a customer, we are not allowing them redial that same number within a 72-hour period," says Robert Dirskovski, head of interactive media at the DMA.

Other forms of communication, such as direct mail and pre-calling, can precede the call to make it warmer. Dataforce usually hits the phones first to establish contact and make sure its agents are speaking to the right people. Which, after all, is the perfect telesales scenario.

CASE STUDY: LITTLEWOODS

When retailer Littlewoods took the decision last year to target existing customers who had moved house within the past three months, it chose outbound telemarketing as the way to communicate with them.

"We wanted to use the skill of the agent to build rapport with customers and identify their requirements," says Andrew Roscoe, Littlewoods' marketing customer implementation manager. "We discovered that if the message is relevant, they don't mind receiving the call and it's fairly easy to stimulate conversation."

As well as handling calls internally, Littlewoods outsourced calls to MM Group. Agents were given a floorplan of a house and a Littlewoods catalogue containing various offers and deals.

According to Roscoe, conversations aren't scripted. "We want agents to use their own life experiences and we encourage active listening skills," he says.

A conversation might start: "I know how difficult it is when you move house, I've just moved myself. Have you had time to decorate your lounge yet?" or, "have you managed to buy new furniture?".

Agents would draw attention to the range of products available for each room, and would sometimes offer a discount to prompt the customer into buying.

Roscoe says response rates have exceeded expectations and average order value has been significantly boosted.

Littlewoods is now looking at ways to make calls even more relevant with 'killer' offers.