Telenet Marketing Solutions : Blog

Key to Successful Lead Generation Telemarketing: Listen More, Talk Less!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Have you ever hung up the phone wondering if the person called you simply to hear himself or herself talk? One of the most significant lessons learned by our agents during their initial call calibration sessions is that the best callers are not necessarily the best talkers—they are the best listeners. From a personal perspective, I equate a telemarketing call to a first date – the same basic principle applies: don’t monopolize the conversation, instead listen to what your date has to say.

Let’s look at the anatomy of a phone call:

Opening & Fact Finding: Early on in a conversation, the prospect should do 90% of the talking. After gaining interest in speaking, the agent’s portion will be comprised of open-ended questions designed to understand the prospect’s situation and needs. By asking questions such as: “How is that working for you?” or “Can you tell me more?” sets the stage for the prospect to open up. Note that during the course of this portion of the call, the agent will also find the need to ask closed ended questions to verify and enhance the conversation.

Dialogue & Sharing: Now that the agent has gotten the prospect to open up and give insight into his situation, they are both contributing equally to the conversation, about 50/50. How did we get to this point? Well, at this stage the agent is relying on his/her listening skills to move the conversation into the next stage. Now is the time for the agent to mesh their product and value propositions with the prospect’s unique situation and needs. This can only be done if the agent was truly listening to the prospect.

Closing: What’s next? Whose turn is it to talk now? By now the agent is summarizing what he has learned and suggesting the next logical steps, whether it be a more in-depth call, relevant information, and/ or a call from a sales representative. Our goal here is to set the prospect’s expectations. Believe or not, the agent is now doing 90% of the talking.

Looking back at the entire conversation, overall, a good talk/ listen ratio is 30/70. If you want to make sure you have meaningful conversation then be sure to listen more, talk less!

Can Your Telemarketing Program Assist with Developing a Social Media Strategy?

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Returning from the BMA annual conference I find myself wondering about the future of demand generation. While some of the speakers were quite interesting, the conference lacked serious discussion around metrics and measurement. In fact, the phrases “lead generation”, “customer acquisition” and “return on investment” were rarely (if ever) spoken. With the economy driving marketing departments to take a more strategic and accountable role, I found these missing elements rather disappointing.

The one area that was not missing was Social Media. In fact, it was part of nearly every keynote speech, break-out session, and hallway discussion. Marketers are clearly interested in this topic and trying to navigate the right strategy. The best piece of advice that I heard from the conference was to view social media as just one more avenue to reach and communicate with your prospects. In other words, don’t stop everything else you’re doing online and offline in lieu of social media. Instead, look for ways to integrate the media with your current activities to strengthen and expand your message.

With this in mind, here are two things you can do with your existing telemarketing lead generation & lead nurturing programs to assist your social media strategy and message integration:

Find out where your customers/prospects go online. While you may be researching this now, the best way to find out is by asking your customers and prospects directly. At the close of your telemarketing calls, it is relatively easy to ask which online communities and blogs they are most actively participating in. This information can be very valuable to establishing or expanding your online presence.
Promote relevant communities, blogs and online content. When contacting your customers and prospects via outbound telemarketing, an important component is ensuring you provide them with valuable and relevant information. Therefore, components of your social media mix can be used during the close of your telemarketing call to direct prospects to useful information as a “next step”. Alternatively, it can be used as a reason to reach out to your prospects in the first place (“based on our previous conversation, I thought you would be interested in our newly launched blog on…”). The important part is to make sure you are suggesting only relevant information based on their profile and your previous conversations.

Right now measurement of social media and in particular translating it to leads, revenue and customer acquisition seems to be challenging at best. And that is likely the reason the BMA conference lacked discussion around metrics and revenue. Therefore, it’s important that when developing leads, traditional measurable components are a prominent fixture in your strategy.

Keys for Nurturing at the Account Level

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Through the process of tele-qualifying marketing responders, contacts are called to determine decision-making authority and assessment of needs. For those who are not sales ready, you can provide them relevant content via email and add them to your nurturing strategy for ongoing and relevant follow-up.

As you acquire and develop ready-to-be nurtured contacts from your marketing responder programs, naturally you are going to see some overlap at the account level. Therefore, it’s important to leverage all of the data captured from various contacts (in different departments and/or decision-making roles) across the account. Here are some general account level data points/areas that you should capture throughout your conversations, which will enable your calling agents to better utilize their time and efforts during the nurturing process.

Overview of Account(products/services offered, industries served, etc)
Main contacts at account (key decision makers and cooresponding areas of responsibility)
Sales reps/team members they are engaged with or assigned
Existing environmental information (products/services, vendors, length of relationship, strength of relationship
Budget/spend by
Key account initiatives

In terms of logistics, this “Account Profile” table should be readily available to your marketing and sales teams and built into your CRM system, so that it can be fully leveraged by everyone involved.

Getting The Most Bang From Web Responders

Fri, 22 May 2009 04:00:00 GMT

We have seen some fabulous results come out of responder or presales campaigns over the years. Given the expense of in-person events and the increase in the web as a method for contacts to gather information prior to a purchase, it’s no surpirse that responder initiatives are becoming a very popular method of generating lists for telemarketing or sales follow-up. There are a few key factors to consider when lauching a web response campaign, particularly surrounding the data you gather on a response form:

Ask the right questions when collecting contact data. For example, if you’re hoping to email people, you’ll need to make sure to collect their email address. If you want to do telemarketing follow-up, ask for their phone number and, if possible, capture their preferred method of contact.
Only ask for what you’re going to use. Keep it short. We’re all a bit lazy by nature. If it looks like too much to fill out just to download a brochure, people are inclined to skip it altogether. Limit the number of questions you ask as much as possible. If you’re not going to mail them something, don’t ask for a mailing address. Also, keep in mind that if a question is considered too personal, people aren’t going to answer it.
Use what you get. While you should keep it short, there are definitely some great bits of information you can get at this stage. Make sure you’re making the most of what people provide. If you’ve asked for the company’s industry, for example, use that knowledge in your follow-up.
Don’t force people to lie! Often times my clients compare the answers people provide on these registration forms with the actual results of calling and are disappointed to learn that people who said they were going to purchase in 6 months don’t actually have a plan to purchase. Closer examination reveals that “no plans to purchase” wasn’t an option on the form, so the contact had to select something just to be able download the material (or view the webcast, etc). This works the same way for things like budget, decision-making role, even industry.
Realize that people will lie! Given the anonmyity of the Internet, and the fact that users know how the system works, people find ways of getting around the system. You probably wouldn’t believe how much time “John Doe” or “Mikey Mouse” spends downloading white papers. Or how many prospects share the phone number “555-555-5555.” This underscores the importance of using lead qualification prior to sending data to sales. Inadvertantly sending bogus data to sales can undermine the credibility of your campaign. Instead, qualify responder data to ensure that only qualified, sales ready leads are going to sales.

While responder campaigns are a great way to uncover strong prospects, they can be costly. Using these tips can help to ensure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Finally, remember to periodically do a reality check to make sure that your campaigns are meeting your expectations. If they are falling short in some area, start looking for ways to tweak your process and make adjustmetns so you continue to realize strong ROI over time.

Examining Cost & Historical Stats to Estimate Realistic Results & Maximize Investments

Tue, 19 May 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Reviewing recent campaign metrics for an outbound lead generation campaign aimed at 1,000 prospects that downloaded a whitepaper, I found some interesting cost statistics, which are worth sharing.

In this particular campaign, the telemarketing targeted approximately 1,000 “responders” for the purpose of qualifying and identifying “sales-ready” leads. The results were as follows:

31% unusable data
57% completion rate of the usable data (completion = successfully identified and reached correct decision-maker for meaningful interview/discussion)
16% lead rate (leads / completed interviews)
6.4% list conversion rate (leads / total list)

Statistically speaking the telemarketing was successful. The completion rate fell within the expected range and the lead rate was higher than the traditional 10-12%. The list conversion rate was also higher than historical averages.

However, the Cost Per Lead for the entire campaign was astronomical. Why? As it turns out, to get the 1,000 responders, more than $150K was spent on content creation and media placement. Telemarketing added only $25K to the effort. Nevertheless, the overall CPL was $2.7K.

This is a case in which the cost outweighs the possible return. The campaign driver estimated that if 1,000 prospects downloaded whitepaper, 30-40% would become sales-ready leads. But that assumption doesn’t match historical results. Statistically and historically speaking, a 6.4% conversion of list to lead – as obtained in this campaign – is actually quite reasonable.

What can we take away from this?

Use Historical Statistics To Estimate Your Return – If you don’t have historical data, check with others on your team, contact your tele-qualification team or vendor and/or even post a question in a Linkedin group of your peers. Most importantly, make sure that the end result makes your investment cost effective.

Augment with Proactive Cold-Calling to Drive Additional Leads – Getting your prospects to raise their hand and then qualify via telemarketing should not be the only way to obtain leads using your assets. Additionally, you can proactively contact prospects in your database via telemarketing in order to relay your message and probe for opportunities while using the assets you’ve already invested in creating. Taking the above scenario, if another $30K was spent on telemarketing to a cool list, the quantity of leads would have increased by 40 to 50, driving down the CPL by nearly 40%.

Nurture Your Non-leads To Maximize Investment – Nurturing the prospects you’ve spent money in identifying will benefit your organization in the long-run and will allow you to maximize the investment you’ve already made.

Event Marketing: Timing is Still Everything

Thu, 14 May 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Market behavior is becoming less and less predictable – not only are we worrying about how customers will react to the market, but we too must act in a responsible manner with spending habits. With this being said, there is no surprise that face-to-face events are suffering. Travel budgets are being cut, conferences are being canceled/postponed, exhibitors are backing out and of course there are poor attendance numbers.

However…There is a silverlining. While the events have become smaller and fewer, the quality of the attendee is improving. Let’s face it, in the past, events in Vegas, Orlando and New York were serving as more of a vacation for attendees than anything else. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Those in attendance now are key decision makers or influencers who actually have a need. No longer is the entire IT department spending a week in Florida trying to get a tan. Now, we are seeing serious senior managers and even executives in attendance. Pre-Event marketing is a huge part of ensuring that you get these key players to come see you in person. In Laura Johnson’s blog Timing is Everything: Making the Most of Pre-Event Telemarketing, she talks of the importance of timing leading up to an event.

In addition to pre-event, post event follow-up is also very critical. Proper planning can make all the difference, so consider these tips:

Plan Your Messaging: Don’t wait until after the event to plan your follow-up messaging. Instead, as soon as you have your event agenda set in stone, work with your lead generation team to create solid messaging for post-event follow up.

Iron out Lead Routing: You now have your marketing lead generation team armed with all the information they need regarding the event. They’re ready to start making calls to prospects, fired up to uncover new opportunities for sales…but wait! Who is going to close the deals that marketing delivers? Make sure to finalize your lead routing process before your event takes place. This is especially important when you are teamed up with one of your partners at an event. Leads may not follow your “standard” process if a partner is also involved. There should to be very little, if any, delay when passing leads from marketing over to sales. This delay can often be the reason for hot leads to cool off and fall into the sales black hole.

Start Immediately: The most important piece is when you start the post event calling. Ideally, post-event calling should begin one week following the completion of the event. This allows the prospects to travel back to their hometowns, get caught up on email, get settled in and review information gathered at the show.

Not only can these planning tips be used for in-person events, this same strategy can be applied to webinars, white papers and mailers. Timing is the key with any type of marketing follow-up.

Working with Sales to Maximize Your Telemarketing Leads

Thu, 07 May 2009 04:00:00 GMT

You are committed to running a successful lead generation program.

You have invested your time and money to select the best partner, develop the best program, and provide the best training. You have gotten buy-in and input from key players across departments. You are preparing to launch the perfect program.

Ultimately, the success of your program is being measured by the number of qualified leads that make it into and through the pipeline.

Despite all your program preparation, there is a crucial variable for every program that dramatically impacts the results…the sales individuals that will be working the leads. As you know, this is a difficult variable to control. Your sales team may have varying levels of experience with lead generation or varying opinions and expectations for the program.

In order to make the most out of your program, you must be sure to thoroughly educate the sales team on the program. You can do this by providing a clear description of the program objectives, call messaging, lead distribution process, etc.

Beyond sharing the program details, listed below are 5 additional tips you should share with the sales team to help them more effectively convert leads into opportunities that will stick to the pipeline:

How quickly should a lead be called on by Sales?

Unless an appointment has been scheduled or the contact provides a specific time/date for a call back, we find that being aggressive with lead follow-up works well for people that show an interest. In fact, the contact is more likely to remember the initial call and your company if they are called in a timely manner.

An approach that is effective for all leads, but particularly for longer-term leads, is an “introduction” call. Many sales professionals we work with will call a contact immediately upon receiving a lead just to introduce themselves to the contact. The goal is to make a personal connection and get into their decision making process as soon as possible. When you contact a lead right away, it’s also important to acknowledge that you know their project is 6-months away, but you thought it would be beneficial to introduce yourself now in case they have any preliminary questions, requirements, etc.

How many times should a lead be attempted by Sales?

In order to generate a qualified contact from a cold list, which is the objective of most lead generation programs, your vendor will likely have to attempt a contact 5 or more times (most likely more). If that is the level of time and effort invested in a cold contact, don’t you think the level of effort invested in a qualified contact should be equal or greater?

What doesn’t work? – Calling them once or twice, leaving a message and expecting a call back.

What works? – Being aggressive. Calling the contact numerous times. Varying the times of the day and days of the week (in case they are out of the office or happen to have meetings when you call). Leaving a message which specifically details when you will be calling them again. Sending them an email to confirm a time.

Be aware that the contact was not actively pursuing your business. The lead is the result of from a cold call. It not unusual for even the most interested and qualified of prospects to miss a scheduled call and become difficult to reach. This does not indicate that the lead is “bad”. It does indicate the contact is very busy and you may not be the top priority right now. Remember, it is you that are pursuing them. You know they are qualified, so be aggressive.

How does Sales reference the vendor?

Think of your vendor as an extension of your sales team. In most cases, your vendor is making the call “from” or “on behalf of” your organization, so reference them us as such. Simply stating that he/she recently spoke to one of your “team members” or “colleagues” from your marketing department is a great way to connect the past conversation with your follow-up call.

How can Sales best use the information contained on the lead?

Leveraging the information from the lead generation call can help you be more prepared and help build credibility. Use the provided call notes and environmental information from the lead report to prepare the appropriate follow up questions for the contact as well as to specifically address their situation. This approach makes the call more productive for you and more relevant for them. It will also help them remember the previous call. Also, pay specific attention to the next steps provided in the call notes, this ensures that you are meeting the contact’s expectations for the call or appointment.

How can Sales help improve the leads?

Your feedback is critical to the success of the program. If you discover a trend as you follow up with the leads (positive or negative), inform the team so the appropriate adjustments can be made. The beauty of telemarketing is that adjustments can be made on the fly (i.e. changes to messaging, the addition of key probing question, etc) to make an immediate impact on lead quality.

In addition to improving quality, closing the loop on the leads provided is also important. Understanding which leads made the pipeline and/or led to closed business as well as which leads did not make pipeline and why, can help to optimize the program.

Keep in mind, most lead generation programs are designed to positively impact pipelines and assist the sales team, which can be extremely difficult without the appropriate support and feedback.

Contact Acquisition Strategy

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Does your company have a strategy for contact acquisition? Is it something you ponder? Could you track it? We all focus on demand generation targeting our current customers & prospects, but how much emphasis is put on adding new contacts and accounts to your database?

In order to continue to grow business, adding new contacts and accounts to your database is an important part of the process. Each marketing campaign can contribute a portion of the overall desired additions. There are several ways that they can contribute. First is the obvious method of referrals to build contacts and at times even add accounts. Another technique to build data is responder mechanisms. However, acquisition of new lists from outside sources must also be included in the plan. All of these activities should be centered on demand generation efforts as it would be ill advised to load a purchased list or responders directly into your master database without first running a telemarketing campaign to segment the good targets from the not so good targets.

Even with all of this activity, you still have to identify which data is new vs what was a duplication/update of a record already housed in your database. If you are not taking the extra step to identify the new data, you won’t know if you are reaching your goals for contact acquisition.

Regarding goals, decisions should be made up front about the percentages of new data desired in each activity. Goals should be set based on current coverage of the marketplace vs desired coverage. You may also want to consider starting with a particular industry or segment of the market and work your way into other areas from there.

Regardless of the specific goals you set, telemarketing is a vital part of making sure the data you add is current and accurate.

Be Involved with Telemarketing Agent Training & Development

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

Whether using an outside telemarketing vendor or an internal team, marketers should be directly involved with the initial training and ongoing development of the agents who support their programs. In our recent Best in Class (BIC) analysis, forty percent of our BIC marketers ranked Agent Training & Skill Level as the single most important element for success.

Here are some steps to take:

Know that training is not a one-time event. Engage in quarterly training sessions with your telemarketing team to update them on new products, benefits, market changes, etc. Keep the team informed of your go-to-market strategy and your marketing goals.
Utilize certification programs that you already have in place. If you require your sales team and/or reseller channel to engage in online training certification programs, then extend the program to your strategic telemarketing agents (especially those supporting your nurturing activities!)
Open lines of communication between sales & telemarketing. One of the best ways to develop telemarketing agents is to provide feedback directly from the sales team. A way to achieve this is by having monthly conference calls with your sales managers and/or select sales reps or channel partners. Having a clear agenda for each meeting will ensure they are smooth and meaningful.

Four Steps for A Successful Lead Generation Dialogue

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

For telemarketing of which the primary goal is finding new prospective clients, it is important to engage a contact in a way that makes them willing to participate in the call. The most important thing to consider in script development for such calls is the fact that your contact (if you are speaking to the right person) is a decision maker. The approach that will most likely appeal to them will be one that allows them to make decisions. In the context of this phone call, the first and most important decision they will make is whether or not to participate. So, what we are working for here is getting our contact to arrive at the desired decision on his, or her, own free will. What are some strategies we can employ?

Choose your questions wisely. Asking questions that will interest prospects right from the start is invaluable. Often, telemarketing calls are scripted. These scripts are often constructed with the goal of obtaining as much information as WE would ideally like to know. Sticking with just those kinds of questions will not always lead to the ultimate objective of the call, which is a qualified lead. While a contact might have all of this information to provide, jumping into it with a “picking his brain” approach could alienate him, and cause him to decide that talking to you is not to his or her benefit. Asking questions that allow contacts to share information that is important to them is more likely to sway them to make the decision we want them to make: participation.
Listen to what they are saying. This may seem painfully obvious. What I mean to encourage with this tip is not simply remaining quiet while your contact talks to you. Listening and processing the information they are divulging allows you to sustain the conversation. If you hear what they tell you, the next logical question will occur to you, and the flow of the call remains relaxed and less likely to be cut short. Thus, your contact decides to continue the call. What’s more, in keeping your contact talking, you are increasing the chance that they will share information with you that could result in a lead.
Recognize potential for opportunities when you hear it. Listening to prospects really is key here. We focus on this aspect of the call once we have passively persuaded our prospect to decide to speak with us. Once they are engaged, and are actively sharing information with you, you can focus on the matter at hand—lead generation. All kinds of opportunities present themselves when you get someone talking about what’s important to them. And really, what’s the point of getting them talking in the first place? Why have we even made this call? It was not simply to practice our conversation skills, that’s for sure. We want to generate business. The best way to do this is by sharing information that benefits the person to whom we are speaking. If we don’t hear the opportunities that are shared with us on these calls, then we have not done our job. The telemarketing agent should always have two questions in mind: 1) Where are the opportunities for my organization? and 2) How can I keep this contact engaged long enough to discover what those opportunities are?
Share the benefits. Once you recognize that a potential opportunity exists, jump on it. If you have listened to what your contact has shared, you should have a firm grasp of the nature of their situation. The natural flow of conversation allows you to now take the lead and share information. Tailoring your message so that it applies to his specific situation is the most effective way to close the lead. Your level of knowledge regarding the product about which you are calling will have an impact on you ability to tailor your message, so make sure you are well versed in its benefits.