Sales calls are annoying, the cold calls, the PPI calls, the automated calls or even the offer of some fantastic new double-glazed windows – all of them a nuisance.
Why do they still exist? Can there really be that many people in the country that just happen to have had a car crash recently and haven’t already sorted out their claim and are overjoyed that an automated voice has called at the perfect, convenient time to tell them “where there’s blame there’s a claim”?
Now what if I told you there really is a way for your business to never have to pick up the phone again, full of confidence, full of anticipation at a potential new client only to be disappointed and angered by a crackly, distant, foreign voice asking if they are please speaking to the owner of the business.
Corporate Telephone Preference Service
The most popular way that you can try and stop sales calls sneaking through to your business is by registering for free with the Corporate Telephone Preference Service or CTPS, it’s pretty much the same as the residential TPS. It’s great, enter you details at http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/number_type.html, it takes 28 days for the registration to become effective and then from that point on your number is registered on the CPTS- brilliant! Only it doesn’t work. You and I both know it doesn’t, my landline at home is TPS registered and I still get 4 or 5 calls a day, usually automated but sometimes I get a real human being from somewhere on the planet telling me that my claim has been successful (what claim?) or I’m owed PPI or I can save 50% if I order new windows right now!
TPS doesn’t work. There are two main reasons that it doesn’t work, the first is the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) can impose fines of up to £500,000 but it doesn’t matter as the monies cold calling companies can make are huge as well. Also because of the devious nature of many cold calling companies, even if they do get caught, even if they do get fined then… voluntary liquidation, disappear into the night and set up shop somewhere else under a new guise. And that brings us onto the other big reason TPS doesn’t work, what if the company calling you isn’t even under the remit of the ICO as it’s in another country?
“Ah, but the title of this article is how to never answer another sales call not how to register for a telephone preference service that doesn’t work” I hear you say, well…”
Your business never needs to answer another sales call again
Are you ready for it, ready for the big reveal?
It’s simple; outsource all your business calls to a telephone answering service like Connect. Seems a pretty radical and over the top suggestion just to get rid of a few sales calls a day but how much more work could you get done if you knew, without doubt, you weren’t going to be disturbed by something trivial?
Genuine enquiries and genuine clients will still have their calls answered professionally and quickly, important calls can even be transferred through to you but sales calls simply disappear. The beauty with Connect’s pricing is that as only messages and transfers count toward you monthly tariff, sales calls are free; as far you are concerned they really do simply disappear.