LEAD GENERATION TOOLS

A GUIDE TO
TELEMARKETING
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ing
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 Introduction
£11
=
£1
The Direct Marketing Association published figures to
demonstrate how every £1 spent on Business to Business
telemarketing leveraged £11 of value. For B2B companies, the
message is clear; telemarketing must still form an underpinning
element of any effective sales marketing strategy.
B2B telemarketing, when it is employed correctly, is a vital tool
for all companies who are serious about sales conversions. If your
business strategy requires you to convert prospects to committed
sales, then the power of a well-timed phone call at the correct
point of the sales funnel is undeniable.
In this guide, we will assess the value of this activity as a lead
generation tool, and consider how outsourcing can benefit this
critical element of your marketing mix.
Why use B2B telemarketing?
In an increasingly digital age, it’s easy to dismiss business to business
telemarketing. However, this tried and tested activity offers a number
of key benefits. For example:
1 Direct client contact and the chance to have a real two-way conversation
with the right person, live and ‘in person’.
Immediate feedback - allowing you to adjust your messaging and
2 responses in real time and really deliver what your customers need.
3 Lower operational costs, as it is naturally a low-cost communication
method by contact. It simply needs a list and data set to begin contact.
4 and competence required to have meaningful and authoritative conversations
A direct means of gaining or retaining business, with an excellent ROI.
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The importance of data
Of course, as with any sales & marketing activity,
your conversions, sales & results will only be as
effective as the data you use to deliver it. Don’t
waste time using poor information. Remember,
as in the IT world, ‘GIGO’ - or Garbage In -
Garbage Out - definitely applies.
By investing in a sound CRM system, setting
strong management processes around its use
and updating and training your agents fully in its
use, you can create highly useful data sets which
give your team the insights that they need to
make effective calls.
B2B Telemarketing Best Practices
1. Check your sources
Make sure your data is both clean and rich in value. Dedupe data and ensure that
it is up to date and with the correct contact details to ensure a high connection
rate.
2. Score and prioritise
Score your leads according to your sales objectives and then prioritise your
activity accordingly.
3. Profile
Profile your data to ensure that the key decision makers are identified for rapid
contact. Don’t let your agents waste their time hunting down contacts needlessly.
4. Don’t stick to a script!
Scripted calls sound scripted! There is nothing worse for a busy professional
than what is clearly a monotonous, scripted sales call. Make sure your telesales
team can carry out highly professional calls with structured conversations that
help them to convert. Your agents will need to use open questions, have the
techniques needed to get prospects talking about themselves and their pain
points, and then be able to tailor their pitch accordingly.
To do this, ensure that they truly understand the business, can use the language
and understand the lead’s needs. They must have in-depth product knowledge
with business prospects.
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 B2B Telemarketing Best Practices continued...
5. Think
Where you have strategic or potentially higher level calls to make, ensure
these are being allocated to your best agents. It’s all too easy to let a system
allocate workflow without analysing who is doing what. Remember, every agent
conversation represents an experience of your business brand. Get that impression
wrong and your brand will suffer. Get it right, and you have the opportunity to build
brand awareness, to convert and to encourage those all-important onward referrals
amongst your prospects’ business networks.
6. Integrate
Modern marketing and sales strategies need to be integrated. With this in mind,
have a means of integrating telemarketing calls with other channels such as email
or social media (LinkedIn being the best for Business to Business lead generation).
Some business people simply prefer not to take calls - but they may read a well-
composed email or LinkedIn message. Work with your marketing colleagues to
craft key messages that can form the foundation of these written contacts.
The importance of training
Agents should be well trained and constantly refreshing their
knowledge and skills. Regular refresher sessions and activities
such as role play within your team catch-ups will help tackle
specific problems without needing to wait for the next training
programme. Train your agents and train them well. Reserve the
most important calls for the most experienced agents.
Alongside this formal training, a buddy or mentor can be very useful
for newer or less experienced sales agents too, offering practical
advice and support. Similarly, ensure that your newer agents have
the opportunity to listen to more experienced staff as they make
their calls to let them understand the shape of the conversations
and what works in various situations.

Using B2B telemarketing and phone engagement

It’s worth knowing here that:
B2B telemarketing can be used for a wide variety of purposes:

1. Appointment setting
3
2
Speed up the sale process by getting in front your prospect for a face-to-face
discussion. A call can be used to secure that date in the diary with the key

74% decision maker.

2. Online demos
Link up your tech so that you can talk your prospect through your sales pitch
Telemarketing It’s the third most Additionally, where effective content whilst offering an online demo of your product or service.
is ranked as the important channel marketing has been used to nurture
second most for lead volumes the buyer, leads are 74% more likely to 3. Webinar registrations
important channel (email marketing convert into customers telemarketing Ensure that your prospects sign up to your webinar by calling them to make that
for lead quality. being no.1). is added to the sales funnel. vital registration. They will appreciate the personal touch.
Source: Direct Marketing Association
4. Event promotion
Emails can get ignored - especially when there are so many B2B events on offer.
The takeaway - integrate telemarketing and other Make sure you secure that commitment to attend your event by making the all-
important telephone contact.
outbound marketing channels for maximum results.
Remember too that post-event conversions can be delivered via targeted calls.
Schedule in the contact whilst the event is still fresh in the prospect’s mind and
call them to secure the intended outcome.

04 05
Continued...

5. A friendly call
Don’t underestimate the power of a well-timed phone-call simply to stay in touch
with an interesting prospect and help to remind them of your offer and brand. By
calling with information that shows you remember them and their needs, and that
you have insight into these - as well as a ready solution, you may well just make
contact at the right time and encourage that progression towards a conversion.
There is no doubt that the best telemarketing teams are intensively
resourced and extremely well managed. They can be resource heavy
in terms of salary costs for the best sales staff, and they also require
investment in the best CRM systems to retain competitive advantage
through data mining and insight gathering. There is also recruitment
costs, management time, holidays, sickness, staff turnover and
absence costs to allocate which makes keeping it in-house a more
expensive and riskier option.

For this reason, many B2B businesses will choose to outsource

their activity to a specialist provider who can deliver it on a flexible
basis according to their unique needs. Outsourced providers offer
the highest results without any of the need for management and
administration. The right level of support is simply bought in and
can be flexed up or down according to needs (such as for seasonal
campaigns or events).

Outsourcing ultimately offers the results and ROI without the

overheads and management time, allowing your in-house team
to focus on other key marketing and sales activity.

Ready to plan ahead?

PLANNING So while you plan your sales
and marketing activity for the
year ahead, remember to keep
B2B telemarketing activity in
Why outsource?
there as a priority and give it
the focus that it deserves! With
This vital sales activity requires a well-resourced team with
the right planning, resourcing
excellent skillsets, rich product knowledge, advanced sales
and management you will
expertise and the ability to constantly monitor their lists / data,
see a strong ROI which may
flex their approaches to win conversions and the motivation and
well exceed your other sales
hunger to see real results from their work.
and marketing activities
and channels, and certainly
At the same time, the function must be managed by experts
complement those tactics for
in the field who are able to motivate their agents, ensure that
a successful integrated year of
they are performing and that targets are being met; training,
B2B customer campaigns.
coaching, administering and motivating sales agents to ensure this
consistent level of high-performance and results delivery.

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 Call the specialists:
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e: info@theleadgenerationcompany.co.uk
w: www.theleadgenerationcompany.co.uk

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