Telesales is a very difficult skill to do well. Here are a few brief suggestions to help sales staff to improve their telesales skills.

Use the same words that you would use if you were talking to a friend. There is no need to start using different words just because you are on a phone to someone you have met in real life.

Listen to how the person at the other end of the phone line is talking and acting and try and reflect this in you own speech and attitude - it will help them to feel more comfortable with you.

Do not be too enthusiastic at the beginning of the phone call. If the person you are talking to becomes enthusiastic then you can start to increase your enthusiasm levels, but if they are not enthusiastic, then your enthusiasm will put them off even more.

Do not worry if you make mistakes or stammer when talking on the phone - it happens when you are talking on the phone, and there is no shame in it, it will help you to seem more approachable and likable as a person, which will help you to build rapport and ultimately get the sale.

We have talked about team building and how to approach improving the strengths of a team, but something that has not yet been discussed is what a team should and shouldn’t provide.

• A team should help to improve confidence throughout the whole team.
• Members of a team should provide support to each other.
• A team should help its members to feel that they are not alone with their work.
• A team will help to increase productivity and creativity.
• A team does not have to be a family.
• A team does not even have to like each other that much or spend time together out of work.
• A team should know what their goals and objectives are and should help each other to achieve them.

No two teams are the same, and sometimes teams do not act like you would expect a team to. This does not mean that they are not a team, rather that they just function in a different way than normal. There is no right way for a team to act, and as long as they are achieving their goals, then there is little need to try and change a team to work in a more conventional way.

Interpersonal skills are a funny thing. You don’t notice the people who have good interpersonal skills, but the ones who are poor at them are very noticeable. The better that people are at interacting with other people, the better they will be at their jobs. there are very few jobs that require no interaction with other people, so it is important that everyone has at least half decent interpersonal skills. Training interpersonal skills can be very hard, as people who have not developed them naturally will have not done so for a reason. Whether it is that they do not like to be around other people, or that they are very shy, or naturally a recluse, they need to be able to get on with and communicate with other people within their team and the company.

The trick to helping people to improve their interpersonal skills is to get them to relate to the people they are talking to and dealing with. If they can relate to them, then it becomes a lot easier to interact with them. The relating can be both mentally and emotionally, as relating to other people happens on many different levels.

Being able to influence people is an important skill that we have talked about before. However, it is important that people are trained in how to influence people, and that they understand the difference between influencing people and manipulating them. Someone who is good at influencing people can get them to go in a direction that they may not of otherwise gone. It is not forcing or tricking them to do what you want, but is a way of getting people to see your point of view, and to get them to agree with it. This is a very tricky thing to do, and is not something that can be taught in ten minutes. Instead, influence training should really be part of the normal training program, so that people can understand how it applies to many different situations and areas of work. this would be a very good area to look at using actors in role plays,a s it would allow for some great demonstrations of influencing in action.

Remember influencing people is not tricking them, but changing what they think and how they think about a certain topic of issue.