Telesales

What it involves

Telesales does what it says on the tin – you’ll be using your expert telephone manner and communication skills to sell services and products over the phone. After a general realisation that cold-calling is rarely successful, there has been a shift towards ‘warm calling’, where the customer has already expressed some interest through a response to an advert, letter or visit to a website.

Telesales roles can be found in a range of businesses. It is often a generic term for a sales job that is predominantly telephone-based – it doesn’t mean that you won’t have responsibility or the scope to build and develop relationships with key clients and contacts.

The work may involve:

• working from a company database of contacts
• using the information on-screen
• following a script to sell directly
• arranging visits for qualified sales professionals
• talking to people from all levels of an organisation
• selling a range of products, from security alarms to mobile phones.

What’s required

You’ll need to have boundless enthusiasm, confidence and energy to talk to dozens of people in a day, as well as the listening skills to effectively recognise the needs of your clients. A degree of persistence and tenacity is also needed to make the most of every call and generate leads that you or others can follow up at a later date.

You’ll be comfortable working to targets and deadlines under pressure, and happy with a salary that is heavily commission-based. Telesales positions can be a useful source of cash during holidays and at the end of your degree, and are valuable if you want to get a career in another area of sales, for example media sales or recruitment. If you’re successful in the role there’s also a chance of promotion to a supervisory position.

Telesales vacancies can be found here on targetjobs.co.uk, and also in your local paper and in high street recruitment agencies.