“Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”
Lily Tomlin’s famous sketches of the telephone lady Ernestine are classic. But those skits bring home in an odd way the importance of one of the most powerful communications tools ever invented: the telephone. Sure, today there is email, texting, and even telephone with video (Zoom or Skype™), but like radio, a voice on the telephone still holds a kind of love-hate relationship that connects person-to-person.
And person-to-person is what marketing is all about! Talking. The telephone uses a person’s imagination, one of the most powerful marketing tools available. And the key to phone marketing isn’t talking; it’s listening! In fact, the key to selling your services is listening to what your customers and prospects want. The phone is one of the ways you can do that very effectively.
It’s not the kind of telemarketing phone calls you receive in the evening or the political calls that begin with a recorded message from some important Congressman or woman. That’s not marketing! Instead, it is the ability to connect with another human being, using your voice, your personality, you. It’s the ability to use words, tone, rhythm to your advantage in connecting with a customer or prospect and move closer to a sale. Yes, the “sale” word. Because selling is really what the service business is all about. If you are in a service business, the phone can be one of the most powerful tools you have to sales success.