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Improve Sales Through Lead Generation

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Your office phone isn’t ringing as much as it used to, but that doesn’t mean that your company needs to start closing its doors. You (or your salespeople) just need to get back to prospecting and lead generation.

Getting your business and services out there to the public is more important now than ever. Thanks to the recession, people are more careful about where and when they spend their money. Waiting for your target customers to turn themselves into leads is a noble effort, but it’s largely a waste of your time.  It’s your job to let them know what you offer, because they’ll never know otherwise if they need it or not.

By prospecting for potential sales leads yourself, you have a better control of the pace of your sales process. It’s not the most enjoyable part of being in business, but it’s definitely the most crucial. There are plenty of methods you can use to help with your prospecting. You could start sending more emails, if you haven’t already. Look into joining trade shows, and even television advertising if you can afford it. If you feel like doing it the cheap and old-fashioned way, you can always grab the nearest phone book or search on Google. You can even hire professional telemarketers to do the cold-calling for you, or you might opt to go straight to a reliable telemarketing company for your telemarketing needs. All these methods have their advantages and disadvantages, but the important thing is you get your products and services noticed by the right people.

The Problem With Telemarketing Today

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customer service workstation with computer and devices on top of the table

Critics and pundits all say that this is a dying form of marketing, but still it lives. It still functions. And it still does what it does best – generate B2B leads. That is the truth, and that is the reason why telemarketing is still employed during lead generation campaigns. It is the closest that a marketer can get to a face-to-face meeting with business prospects. It is affordable, it is measurable, and it is not that cost prohibitive. So, what are the problems plaguing this marketing tool? Heaps. There are a lot of issues that telemarketers need to face. To start with, we have:

  1. Fraud – yes, fraud is a big issue, since this prevents telemarketers from getting to their prospects. It takes a lot of hard work to build up credibility, and even if you are a credible firm, there is no assurance that you will get a sale.
  2. Rejections – related to point number one. Cold calling receives a lot of rejections (for a variety of reasons) from business prospects, causing problems for appointment setting campaigns.
  3. Evolving technology – first, there are answering machines, now there are caller IDs. The way technology evolves to screen out unwanted calls compels telemarketers to look for other ways to get in touch with potential sales leads. Robocalls are of no help either (since this actually increases the rejection rate).

These are just some of the challenges faced by telemarketing firms today. Solving or addressing these concerns would be crucial in keeping this marketing tool still viable in the years to come.

How Can Telemarketing Help Social Media Marketing?

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a smartphone with social media concept on screen

The marketing landscape is constantly changing. What may seem to be a sure-fire marketing tactic may not be an appropriate method today. And the lead generation tools we scoff at in the past may be the latest aid we need for the modern market. Such is the case with social media. Nowadays, companies and marketers are touting this mediums ability to generate sales leads, as well as engage customers in meaningful conversations. But is that enough? Will social media be the answer all marketers are looking for? Can it replace the other marketing tools that are currently used today? Or will it be a marketing fad that will fade in time? There are just too many questions that has to be answered.

We must first understand what social media is all about. Social media is a marketing strategy that uses social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. The aim here is to increase the online presence of the company, encouraging more customer engagement and conversation. While this is very effective in increasing the awareness of the market, it is just that – increasing market awareness. Social media, for all the things it can do and achieve, is still not that effective in generating qualified B2B leads. Remember the Pepsi Refresh campaign? It is a major advertising campaign used by the company to hype up its social responsibility and presence to the market., and look at what it got the company into. From being second to Coke, Pepsi slid down to the third spot. What made it more painful was the new second place: Diet Coke. Considering the millions spent on this social marketing campaign, you can tell that this was a real sales disaster. This is certainly something that you do not wish to happen.

In order for social media marketing to effectively generate more sales leads, you need another marketing tool to assist. It can come in many forms, but it seems like the best methods are the most disruptive in nature. In other words, these are marketing methods that actively and aggressively get in touch with prospects and help you with the task. Among the most preferred methods employed would be telemarketing. Yes, you would probably be complaining that this is an old (if not a negative) means of engaging prospects to buy or sign up to our offer. But in terms of effectiveness, when paired with social media marketing, you will see better results in terms of appointment setting success.

What does it tell you about social media and lead generation? For one, it tells you that social media, as a marketing tactic, cannot bring sales leads on its own. You can spend a lot of money in your social media campaign, but just like the case with Pepsi, it might not be a bright idea. In order for it to be effective, you need to combine it with other marketing tools, like professional telemarketing services. Whether done in-house or through outsourcing, it will give you the right results.

How To Build Credibility In Telemarketing

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young business people discussing

In lead generation, particularly where telemarketing is involved, credibility is everything. Without it, you will never be able to get the trust of your business prospects, making it even harder for you to generate qualified sales leads. Remember, you need to build your credibility from the very start. This is the key to making your appointment setting process easier to do. So, how will you do that?

  1. Say your name – one of the biggest mistakes made by marketers is not saying their name clearly. How will prospects know you are a credible person if they never got your name at the very start?
  2. You improvise – do you know what business prospects hate the most from telemarketers? The latter follows a sales script. Using one as a guide is good, but if you depend on it (without adjusting to what the prospects say, do, or need) then you fail to prove your concern.
  3. Stay true – pretending, padding, or excusing your way to your business prospects may work at the start, but once they put you at closer scrutiny, then the lies will unfold and you can say to your B2B leads good-bye.
  4. Listen to your prospects – if all you do is talk on the phone, without letting your prospect a chance to express themselves, then you will end up making them reject you.
  5. Be ready – that means you study everything about your product, the market, as well as the business of your prospects. This will add to your credibility, as well as encourage confidence in your from your prospects.

Keep these tips, plus a lot more you might learn along the way, and you can build up your credibility in telemarketing.

Why Outsource Your Telemarketing Campaign?

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An illustration of a man sitting while using laptop

Advertising about your company is one thing, but converting that interest into actually sales leads is something that you should consider as well. That is why you need to use some effective marketing tools to support your campaign. Now, lead generation is a task that should not be taken lightly when it comes to advertising and marketing. Successfully negotiating a deal with a business prospects requires a lot of telesales experience, not to mention communication skills. In case you are lacking in those two points, it might be a better idea to outsource to a professional appointment setting firm do the job for you, just to make your job more convenient.

While it is understandable that you want to personally handle the task of generating B2B leads, you have to admit that this is a task that may be beyond your skills. Besides, given the other things you have to attend to (market planning, product development, management of production floor, etc.) you just cannot afford waste your time and effort in finding business prospects, creating interest, nurturing that interest, and then converting them into actual sales leads. The overhead costs and the initial outlay to conduct your own telemarketing campaign might be beyond your capacity. You really need to get others to do the work for you.

Yes, you will hear a lot of critics saying that outsourcing is not a good idea, that it will drain your company’s resources, that the business leads produced are not good, that you might get conned by fraudulent firms, among other things. But these happen if you are not careful enough. If you are, then your telemarketing campaign would be in a better spot.

Telemarketing Troubles? This Is How You Solve It

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an asian telemarketer

Yes, there will be times (it will not be surprising how often it might be) that you get a bad day when generating sales leads. You  may get a lot of rejections, curses, fails, losses, in a single day. But that is all right. Everyone gets that once in a while. And it can have a negative impact on your lead generation productivity. Now that is something no one would want to get in the long run. You will need to solve that, and to solve that fast. So here is how you do it:

  1. For bad calls – instead of taking a break after a particularly nasty call, why not take a deep breath and go straight to the next appointment setting call. Believe it or not, you will forget about that bad call, allowing you to concentrate better in your current calls.
  2. Telemarketing is an art – yes, there are graphs and numbers that you should consider, but when the going gets tough, generating B2B leads is dependent on your communication skills. And mind you, communicating is an art that you have to master.
  3. Remember that no one is perfect – everyone makes a mistake. What matters is how you handle it, how you rise up to the challenge (or maybe save your skin). Sharing your experiences with others might help, as well as learning from others.

Keep these tips in mind, and you will be able to handle your telemarketing troubles. It is that simple, you know.

Will Social Media Replace Telemarketing?

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A smartphone screen hand with social media icons

Social media is the rage, there is no doubt about it. With the Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and pictures all catching the attention of a huge number of people, it does have a lot of potentials for a professional lead generation campaign. It is new, it attracts a lot of prospects, and it can certainly help you engage them in a conversation. Surely, this is the best way to attract more B2B leads. It could very well replace telemarketing, right? Well, some marketers might disagree. Before you start saying that those who beg to differ are relics of the past, we must first identify the reasons why social media could not replace telemarketers in generating qualified sales leads.

For one, social media is just that, social. It is merely a platform in which to engage prospects in a conversation, probably about things in common and interests. While it is good to talk to business prospects, the problem here is that some marketers are tempted to replace their entire campaign process with social media – which is a very bad move. Social media is meant to communicate with prospects. Other methods like telemarketing is meant to convert prospects into qualified sales leads. Believe it or not, calling people on the phone is a much needed medium for inside sales people.

Another point to consider are the required steps in qualifying business leads. Social media will help you find prospects, yes, but it is not that efficient in qualifying the prospects. Indeed, there will be some details that will not be clear through this medium. If you want to be sure that your prospects will indeed become viable leads, then you need to perform a more in-depth check on them. And you can only do that by talking directly to them. Even if you cannot do it in person, at least you can use the phone for the job. A skilled lead generation specialist will be able to wring out the true details when the call.

Of course, there is no reason to look at social media as below telemarketing. Indeed, both should be working side by side. You can only say so much on the phone without the prospect losing you. In case you need to say a few more details, social media services can provide that. You have to admit that these can be very powerful tools for inside sales. There are a lot of opportunities that can be found this way. And there are other tools available, like email and blogging. These can help you bring more customers to your business. Which will be all good for you.

Basically speaking, the aim here is to make talking to prospects easier to make. Sure, cold calling may have its detractors, but this is where social media can help. While talking to prospects in blog posts and tweets, you can create there an opportunity, an opening in which you can directly communicate with them on the phone. That will help you get the job done better.

What To Look For In A Telemarketing Team

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What To Look For In A Telemarketing Team

Recruiting a good telemarketing team is crucial for a successful lead generation campaign. For one, they are the people who will stand on the frontlines, getting in touch with business prospects and turning them into qualified B2B leads. The problem here, so far, is the actual recruitment of your telemarketers. While it might sound easy, putting things in motion can be quite complicated. You can interview them on the phone, or maybe do a demonstration, but these pale in comparison to more intangible qualities that truly differentiate excellent telemarketers.

  1. A positive attitude – generating sales leads is no joke, with stress and rejections rates on the phone pretty high. If you can find a telemarketer with a natural sense of humor, or lives with a positive attitude, you should give them a second look.
  2. Enthusiasm – the work can be draining, especially if this is a long-term campaign. Excellent telemarketing representatives are buoyed with an enthusiastic outlook, keeping them going despite the drudgery.
  3. They worked hard, and they have something to show for – this is where past job experiences come in. No matter how promising a potential hire is, if they have shown a lackluster performance, this might make you think twice. It is your call to hire them or not.
  4. Self-motivated – you cannot give your team pep talk every day. You have a lot of things on your plate. It would be a great help for you if you simply hire someone that can motivate themselves, and get things done.
  5. They have a clear and friendly voice on the phone – in telemarketing, voice quality is important. You need someone who has this quality if you want to be effective in appointment setting tasks.
  6. Willing to go on an incentives scheme – a commission-based payment system can be a win-win arrangement. If your agent does not perform well, you minimize your losses. If they exceed expectations, they earn a larger paycheck. It is a risk, but the rewards are worth it.
  7. Can work with a team – lone wolves may be good, depending on the account, but you will need team players in a campaign that can might go through several stages before getting qualified as business leads.
  8. Confident – these people are sure of themselves and their capacity to excel in their work. Such people are rarely the type to sulk or get depressed after a bad day. Hire them astelemarketers and you will save yourself from performance headaches later.
  9. Empathetic – someone who can put himself on another man’s shoes is someone will be able to build rapport with prospects. And in lead generation terms, rapport is a big deal.
  10. Persistent – not taking ‘no’ for an answer is a quality that defines an effective marketer. They will keep on going until they finally get what they want.

See? If you can find someone who embodies most of these qualities, then your telemarketing campaign will be successful. What more if you can find one who has them all, right?

Where To Get Quality Business Leads For Your Telemarketing Campaign

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Your telemarketing campaign may be adequate right now, but to get the best possible results from your campaigns, you need to have all the factors that comprise a great business to business telemarketing campaign. Securing a good telemarketing script for lead generation and hiring reliable, experienced b2b telemarketers need one more thing to complete the process: a highly targeted telemarketing business list.

You can either generate your own business leads by scouring the internet and phone books, purchase a business list from a lead generation company, or you can outsource to professional lead generation service providers to look for specifically qualified b2b sales leads using your criteria.

An important thing to remember when buying pre-defined business lists from another company is to make sure that the list hasn’t already been sold to a competitor in your industry. This is often the problem with pre-qualified business lists because the buyer (in this case, you) will never know how many competitors in the same market, or even the same micro niche, have already gained access to that list of qualified business leads. Imagine if you were to buy a list that usually costs several hundred dollars; you’d expect your b2b telemarketers to be able to convert or get business appointments with these businesses because they are high quality leads. However, if your competitors have also purchased the same list, then your chances of converting these leads will be drastically reduced no matter how much they fit your criteria. Not only did you waste critical funds, but you’ve also wasted the time and effort of your employees.

The best way to ensure that your telemarketing campaign cold callers only contact qualified leads that you can actually convert and haven’t been purchased by your competitors yet is to outsource your lead generation to a professional b2b lead generation service provider. These leads you get from these companies are freshly sourced. Meaning, you get the first opportunity to offer a solution to their problem. And because the business list was generated specifically for the use of your telemarketers, you can be assured that no other competitor will present another offer to your business leads as you close the deal. All that’s left is for your telemarketers to set the business appointments and your sales representatives to close the deal.

Having an exclusive business list of qualified b2b sales leads, professionally trained and experienced b2b telemarketers, and an engaging telemarketing script are the most important factors to secure if you want to have the best telemarketing lead generation campaign for your business.

How NOT To Manage Your Telemarketers

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There are plenty of avoidable mistakes that business managers make when managing their telemarketing teams. The allure of gaining new clients or customers and achieving high revenues can lead business owners to disregard proper management practices that eventually add to the negative image of professional telemarketing. To get better results from this direct marketing channel, here are six suggestions on how NOT to manage your telemarketers:

  1. Hiring telemarketers en masse – hiring a large number of telemarketing people within a short period of time means you spend less time evaluating the skills of each person. This will only jeopardize your business and require you to pay people for work that they are not qualified to perform effectively.
  2. Giving them a calling list that includes…just about everyone – your telemarketers receive the full force of rejection and anger from irate sales leads everyday, strive to reach quotas and yet still manage to assume a happy disposition for every call. The least you can do to help your professional telemarketers do their job properly is to arm them with a well-targeted list to give your telemarketers a better chance of reaching their quotas and limit the number of unrelated, irate calls, effectively reducing stressors.
  3. Setting unrealistic goals – setting impossibly high quotas that your telemarketers could never reach will cause a huge blow on their morale. Eventually, they’ll just stop trying to get even one successful sales lead because they feel all efforts towards reaching your absurdly high quotas are useless . On the other hand, giving them realistic goals will encourage them to strive harder and even surpass the limits you’ve set, which means more sales leads and higher revenue for your company.
  4. Undermining a telemarketer’s free will – give your telemarketers some space to actually use their own God-given skills to solve problems. Hawking over them to monitor every little detail of their work will only increase their stress levels, which means they are not in optimal shape to qualify leads, handle technical support issues or even sell products and services.
  5. Eagerly promoting top performers to management – do you really expect your sales leads to soar by removing your best telemarketers from the production floor? Unless you are confident that your top performers have the skills to become great managers, you might want to keep them burning the phone lines a little longer.
  6. Scrimping on additional training – experience beats training, you might argue. But keeping your frontliners regularly updated with current trends in telemarketing best practices will help improve their overall work performance in the long run.