If you only want to make one call….make it to me!
I’m Liz Honer and I established Alex Merlin Consultancy Ltd back in 2008- after eight years working in the heady corporate world of Recruitment in the City of London. What I enjoyed most about the role was building rapport with clients – especially working over the telephone (before emails & the internet really got going!) I naturally find talking to people the very best way to make a connection rapidly, discover their pain points and where they are finding things difficult and helping to solve those problems.
‘Liz is a rare breed – intelligent, articulate and actually loves spending all day on the phone!’
When I set up the business I took the part of my previous job I enjoyed the most – the cold calling and canvassing! My skill in being able to condense a lot of information down into a call -getting across the salient points and providing sufficient detail for the prospect to make an educated decision about whether a meeting or further information would be useful to investigate.
I see my role as: Opening a Door for Someone Else to Step Through!
As one client put it: Liz has a real knack of connecting with people and building relationships. Her personable approach gains her results others can only dream of
Making connections and establishing links with other businesses gives me a real sense of achievement and no matter what the sector – the benefit of genuine human connection can’t be underestimated. We all live in a more and more separate world- whether due to working from home more, checking our emails and scrolling through smartphones continually or losing those skills of engaging with each other on a call. Talking to people over the phone is always something I have enjoyed as a way to connect and the power of it to develop leads and build sales pipelines should be part of your marketing strategy.
‘Liz is an extremely affable person who has the uncanny knack of making direct contact with decision makers. Her enthusiasm for the task is matched only by her professionalism and the results she achieves.’
Simply put- I LOVE cold calling!
Bringing warmth, good humour and rapport building skills to every call I’m able to quickly establish connections with prospects on your behalf and work to find leads and opportunities – passing these back to you to work on beyond the calling day. That way you can focus purely on the warmer leads and appointments.
The bulk of my work is repeat business and some companies have worked with me for over fifteen years. I’m happy to look at all types of projects but work best when I can build rapport over a series of calls to investigate fully and find out all sorts of other essential information about who makes the decisions, who they use now and why, what would make them change providers and best times to approach them to discuss it- now or in the future. That way you can start to build up a pipeline of business radiating from a few initial calls.
My professional but easy-going manner combined with being a smiley, friendly person leads to very detailed calls and people sharing lots of information with me – and all the calls are made as if I’m part of your business for the day.
‘It is a big decision to outsource customer-facing work such as this, but I have absolutely no concerns in entrusting the representation of our company to Liz - in fact, I'm positive that her friendly, approachable and professional manner only enhances our reputation.’
Telemarketing Training – practice what you preach!
Alongside my calling days I also offer training in Telemarketing - usually on a one or two day basis- so if you have identified someone already in your business who could take on the role but would need training or even a team already inhouse who may need a refocus on the process or best practice then give me a call to talk it through.
‘We commissioned Liz to work with one of our most long-standing clients, looking at the telesales skills and approaches of one of their key account teams. The team had previously done very little reviewing of the styles used, and almost no training, so the session with Liz was an important step.
Liz provided them with a very practical and effective checklist, as well as setting standards for performance and monitoring. Importantly, she shared practical strategies, bringing the theory to life with examples and demonstrations. It's one of Liz's strengths that she practices what she teaches, so there's real credibility in her delivery.’