When you go into business, you go into business in order to earn a profit. That is the main reason for it, unless you are in it for charity. In order for you to sell anything, you will need to come up with good products and services that your telemarketing team can offer to other companies. Think about all the B2B leads that you can gather from customers who buy from you or sign up. The problem here arises if your products or services do not sell at all. Why is that so? There are a lot of factors to explain that, but it may be because of internal reasons.

Below are the six main reasons why sales fail:

1. Too much upgrading – as an after-sales service, sending periodic upgrades in your products and services, especially in software, can be good. That is, if you do it properly. Remember, you created a product to meet a specific market need. If you send too many updates on your product that it loses its reason for being, then what use is it for customers?
2. Be simple, period – times are different now, with prospects more aware of what they need. They do not need a product packed with features if they only need just a few. Remember the iPod? The reason it became popular was because of its simplified interface that made it easier for users to search and shuffle songs.
3. Rushing to meet deadlines – a classic example of rushed product release is Unilever’s Persil Power detergent. It was so powerful that it destroys clothes as well. Had the proper testing been done, instead of rushing to meet opening day deadlines, this flaw could have been detected. Selling a substandard product can ruin a brand’s image, and make it doubly difficult for the firm to get new sales leads.
4. Marketing is only used at the last stages – one main mistake companies make is in assuming that the marketing team is only good for releasing and promoting a product or service. Not so. In fact,  the marketing department should have the final say on what will sell or not. They, of all people, would know about that. They were trained to know what customers want.
5. Too many inputs during developments – suggestions from a committee can be good when you are developing a product, but unless you all have the same mindset, which is rare, then you are just going to end up with a confusing creation. Limit the number of inputs you need in order to stay consistent in your vision. Sometimes, the best committee is a committee of one.
6. Go straight to the point – these days, people rarely have the time to listen to some flowery speech or read long dissertations about a specific product or service. But if your aim is to get more business leads, you had better say your message straight. Your business prospects will be grateful for that.

Taking note of these mistakes will be a sure-fire way to improve your chances of making the sale, or clinching that deal.

Pete Snyder, the pioneer of social media marketing and currently CEO of Disruptor Capital, was recently awarded by Smart CEO Magazine as one of their “Leaders We Admire” in their May issue. In 1999, Snyder founded New Media Strategies because he saw a lack in the understanding of companies about the effects of online conversations about their brands. His venture eventually lead to the birth of social media marketing.

Snyder clearly saw what the internet can do to help build a bridge between brands and their consumers, or sales leads. Prior to New Media Strategies, brands didn’t pay any attention to what their sales leads said about them online, thinking these were only inconsequential opinions from a few disgruntled customers and did not have any bearing on how the rest of the public viewed them. To prove them wrong, New Media Strategies helped their film studio clients to learn more about the opinions of their sales leads by joining forums about hollywood films and by measuring and analyzing their responses.

Now, social media plays an important part in company marketing and is almost always the topic of debates and conversations. Even then, social media marketing functioned by “helping firms develop marketing strategies for social media”. Now it is known as one of the best tools for increasing and improving online presence. However, a lot of companies who now use social media marketing still fail to understand the initial purpose of this type of marketing which is online customer engagement. They still think of social media as another board on which to slap their products and services for their customers to see, while neglecting to respond to comments requesting help or clarifications.
Customer engagement and interaction should be the main reason why companies join the social media field. If customers point out any problems, these should be resolved promptly, and the solution should be visible to all who may be experiencing the same issues. If customer’s complaints or problems become too complicated to resolve through social media comments, they can be directed to a customer hotline where a professional telemarketing team is waiting to resolve their issues.

Because setting up a social media page for one’s own company requires no more than a little time investment, small and medium sized businesses tend to do this themselves. However, they usually end up being neglected because the company no longer has employees who have time to manage the page. Customer issues posted there are not read, therefore they are not heard by the company, which eventually results to dissatisfied customers. To avoid this, SMBs can hire a BPO company to manage their online presence, especially on social media. When there is someone maintaining the company’s social media page, customers are more likely to increase engagement.

This is an essential process in social media marketing. And while Pete Snyder has decided to leave New Media Strategies to found another venture (Disruptor Capital), marketers who share in his belief on social media marketing should never forget its purpose.

Professional marketers deliver great benefits for your business. According to a post from business2community.com, professional marketers do not only bring objectivity to your marketing plans, they also help:

• remove the burden of thinking about creative ideas
• they create effective, compelling copy
• they aren’t affected by company emergencies so they can maintain deadlines
• and they are relatively cheaper compared to managing everything yourself

When you look at these benefits, you will most certainly become convinced that professional marketers are a much needed asset of your company. Having one on board is sure to improve your sales or business lead generation campaigns. But then the first question that enters your mind is “how can I find a reliable, experienced and skilled marketer?” This is of course a legitimate question when we’re talking about professional marketers. To help you find the best marketer for your business, here are a few tips that you can use to narrow down your search:

1. Self-marketing – it’s obvious that a professional marketer should be well-marketed himself. If he has a lot of clients and asks if you can wait, that’s a good sign that he has no problem finding business leads for himself. If, on the other hand, he doesn’t even show up on Google’s first few pages, then that’s a serious red flag.
2. Finished projects – he may be popular and all, but you need to make sure that he can still deliver. If he is too busy finding business leads for himself that he fails to complete projects, then you are better off with someone else.
3. Quality of projects - OK, so let’s say he does complete marketing campaigns and delivers business leads as promised. Don’t hire him yet. You still have to check the quality of his work. Are his strategies suited for your business model? Do his marketing plans appeal to you? If his strategies are too focused on a specific niche which is entirely different from yours, then he might not have the experience to do marketing for your company.
4. Professional credentials – while most great marketers are self-made, it’s still wise to check the background of your potential marketer. His references should be reputable. A solid – yet authentic – resume is always a good sign.
5. Team player - now that your potential marketer has passed the initial qualifications, you have to check if he does well with a team. While he will mostly do the marketing himself, he might still need to work with your existing email marketing team or your outsourced telemarketing team. He must be able to adapt his strategies to utilize existing resources so that the marketing process is most profitable.

By following these five tips when you look for your professional marketer, you can be sure to hire a profitable and highly effective lead generation marketer.

by: Jan Loyola

Another chapter of the browser wars has opened, this time on the smaller screen. Let’s face it, mobile browsing is a field that is yet to be conquered. Companies are already planning to send out spaceships to harvest minerals in meteorites, a high school kid has discovered a way to detect pancreatic cancer, and yet browsing the internet using your mobile phone is still excruciating slow. All that will change soon. Hopefully in the near future.

For now, businesses of all shapes and sizes are developing ways to improve their websites and optimize this for the mobile use of their clients, but what about their other sales and business leads who have yet to hear the existence of their company?

This browser issue is no problem if we are talking about your existing clients, or those business leads whom you have already contacted. They have probably already bookmarked your website’s address and no longer need to pass through a browser when they wish to view your site. For your other business leads, meanwhile, it’s an altogether different story. Those business leads that you have yet to contact who are already in need of your services will be actively searching for you. Business leads, in particular, almost have no time to sit in front of their desktop computers and view your website. These b2b leads are more likely to search for services similar to what you offer using their mobile browser. When the browser functionality is too slow and it causes your business leads to lose interest, then it means lost profits on your end.

This is the reason why the browser wars should be an important concern for businesses. Optimizing your business for search engines who do well on the desktop is not enough. A different optimization should be done to ensure that your company’s website is the first to show up on search results from the browser most preferred by mobile users. So if you top Google’s search results and show up at the third spot on Yahoo’s Axis, it’s still alright as long as the mobile version of your website shows up at the top on Axis’ mobile search results (or whichever browser is declared the conqueror of mobile). Getting the top spot on each and every search engine available can be quite a stretch, so doing this is the best strategy to make sure that your business leads know about your company.

Of course, the fastest way to show your existence to your business leads is through direct marketing, and the easiest way to communicate is through telemarketing. If your company is not equipped to house your own telemarketing team, there is always the option of outsourcing to a reliable telemarketing company.

by: Jan Loyola

The popularity of the Silicon Valley way of life is doing more than just sidelining formal business wear, it’s ruining the professional etiquette of amateur sales people. The phenomenon has become so upsetting in fact, that some business owners have begun sending their employees to business etiquette schools. Obviously, doing so is not only costly for companies, but also reduces the percentage of sales that the employees could have closed had they not been spending their time improving their manners.

Business to business companies should do well to train their sales people, these employees who represent them on business appointments, to ensure that not only are they presentable but also professionally tact.
How can you train your sales people in proper business etiquette without having to send them to business reform schools?

1. Establish A Dress Code – sweatshirts and jeans may be acceptable in the Silicon Valley, but for the rest of the business world, business casual is the least formal attire recommended. As for your sales people, since they are relied upon to meet with business leads and close deals, they should be accustomed to wearing formal business attire. This is especially important if your salesperson is constantly flying around the state, or internationally. Nevertheless, the best attire to wear to impress clients and make a good first impression is always the formal business attire.
2. Regulate Mobile Telecommunications. When your sales people are attending appointments, they must remember to turn off their phones or put it in silent mode. Answering phone calls during business meetings is not only rude, but also implies to your business leads that they are not that important. If your sales people are the same employees who are doing the cold calling, they must resist the urge to check if the call is from another business lead. To make sure that calls from business leads are not neglected while your sales people are in meetings, you can hire a telemarketing company who offers appointment setting services.
3. Social Media Use. Unless your employees are in the marketing department and tasked with social media marketing, they must be banned from using any form of social media while at work. If you allow your employees unregulated access to social networks, they would certainly log-in every few minutes, instead of spending their time being profitable assets to your company.
4. Respectable Character And Professional Attitude. This is very hard to cultivate using only company rules and policies. The best way to ensure that your company is run and represented by upstanding professional businessmen and women is by making this an important criteria for hiring. If they fail in this criteria, then no amount of skills and experience will make them assets for your company.

Another casualty that occurred with much help from the Silicon Valley is diminishing face-to-face interpersonal skills. While emails and text messages are quick and easy ways to communicate, you should train your new hires to participate in more face-to-face interaction so that they are prepared when the time comes to meet with important business leads.

by: Jan Loyola

Small businesses are becoming more popular as the well-known brands start falling one by one. Eastman Kodak, Best Buy, Hostess Brands Inc. (maker of yummy Twinkies), Barnes & Noble and slew of other supposedly established brands. Even tech giants like Sony, Yahoo, RIMM, and AOL are facing continuously low-profit quarters. On the other hand, small businesses and startup companies are thriving. Pinterest and Instagram’s valuation of $1.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively, prove that smaller companies are starting to take the lead.

Nevertheless, no matter how small a business is, its brand perception is still very much important. If you want to make sure that your small or medium-sized company’s brand is recognized, you have to do a bit more than just online marketing. Sure, the main reason why people resort to online lead generation is because it’s cheap compared to traditional methods, but offline marketing strategies will always remain relevant. Why? Because we are people. Your company is made up of people who communicate and do business with other companies who are likewise made up of people. If all your lead generation campaigns are done online, no matter how many followers you have, they will still feel disconnected and brand loyalty will suffer. That is the reason why business appointments are still held face to face, as much as possible, even if there are video conferencing softwares available.

How can you use offline marketing strategies to find quality business leads for your company? Here are a few simple tips:

• Attend or plan conventions and seminars relevant to your business niche. Sometimes, it may even be beneficial to go meet people outside your niche market. You never know when that guy you just met knows someone who knows someone who owns a company that needs your services.
• Take the initiative to strike up a conversation, don’t just wait for people to come to you and ask about your company. In all likelihood, they won’t, more so if a high profile company executive is present.
• Do talk about your business, but don’t sell it yet. You’re here to network, and though all those people fit the characteristics of your target business leads, they might not be qualified….yet. You don’t want to risk losing the chance of doing business with them.
• Start by building relationships before they even make a single purchase. When you have established a good relationship with your business leads, then the next time they or someone they know needs the services that you provide, it will most certainly become your profit.
• Don’t overdo it. When you go to meet with people in these events, don’t act like you are on a quota, hopping from one conversation to the next. Spend time really getting to know your business leads. Remember, two or three qualified leads are better than 50 “maybe’s”.

Just because online marketing is cheaper and easier doesn’t mean you have to rely on it 100%. Go beyond the digital plane and meet real people.

by: Jan Loyola

General Motors (GM) has announced that they are pulling all their ads on Facebook because the social media giant (and social media in general) didn’t prove to be of much help for the company. At least that’s what GM claims. But according to Ford: “It’s all about the execution. Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content and innovation”. This message was a tweet sent by Ford right after GM’s announcement.

GM is a company who relies much on traditional marketing, but because of this, their profit for 2012 has yet to see significant improvements. Although there is nothing wrong with using traditional marketing for their generation of sales leads, GM needs to realize the fact that a large percentage of their market spend large amounts of their time online, specifically browsing through social media sites. GM is not new to social media use, but the problem lies with their apparent inability to grasp the concept of social engagement. Since they joined Facebook, GM’s official fan page has garnered less than 400,000 (381,140) likes, a rather sad statistic for a brand recognized worldwide. This author is admittedly not a follower of GM, so I would not be able to comment about their social media campaigns. However, considering the limited number of likes (compared to those of other international car manufacturing companies: Ford-1,508,597; Toyota-966, 119; Honda-2,067,482; Hyundai-2,443,293; Nissan-880,676), the statement about social media not helping with profits, and the affinity for traditional marketing strategies, it’s safe to say that GM has not been making genuine efforts to connect with their sales leads online. GM seems to have a hard time realizing that customers of recent years are vastly different from those of years ago. If they really want to improve their profits, then they should provide something of value that would attract their sales leads.

For b2b companies who are also contemplating which marketing strategy to implement, GM’s marketing issues should be a lesson. Traditional marketing by itself can no longer sustain a company. Various communication channels must be utilized when marketing products and services to remain relevant, visible and valuable. Traditional marketing such as emails, TV spots, newspaper ads and telemarketing should be augmented with online strategies including search engine marketing, content marketing and social media marketing. All these channels must be utilized to achieve the best results in completing the sales process, from generating business leads, successfully setting business appointments, to closing sales.

by: Jan Loyola

It’s common knowledge that telemarketers, whether outbound cold callers or inbound technical support and customer service teams, are all expected to complete their phone conversations within a limited time frame. Apparently, this is believed to increase productivity on the side of the company.

It’s understandable that outbound telemarketing calls be limited, as there is no point in prolonging a call with prospective business leads who do not wish to do business with your company. For this type of call, it is much better to simply thank the business leads and end the call as soon as possible.

For customer service and technical support teams, however, implementing a limited timeframe to find a solution for a client’s problem will only constrain the agent’s ability to help the client. Instead of focusing on finding an effective solution for the problem, your agent will instead focus on the amount of time he has left. If he is able to provide a solution, this is usually only temporary, and will require the client to make another customer service call. Telemarketing companies may argue that placing a limit on their customer service agent’s call time helps reduce the time spent by callers on hold, this is actually counter productive. Because as pointed out above, the temporary solution provided by the harried agent will only cause clients to call again, adding more calls to the queue that are waiting to be assisted.

Why is customer service so important? It is no secret that an awful customer service experience can drive a client to stop doing business with your company. The quality of your customer service is like the heart of your entire business. If the heart (customer service team) is not able to pump oxygenated blood (satisfied customers) out to the body’s (your company) systems, then the rest of the body will not function properly and will eventually fail. Furthermore, bad customer service experiences are often told by clients to their friends and other connections. If your company becomes well known for your terrible customer service, then no matter how great your lead generation marketing campaigns are, your company’s name will always be preceded by a bad reputation that can easily put off your business leads from doing any business with you.

Great telemarketing companies have customers service agents who are allowed to use as much time as they need to solve a client’s problem, which means clients are always given the best solutions and the clients are always satisfied.

by: Jan Loyola

Do you ever wonder why there are salespeople who are really good at selling and then there are those who are essentially grasping at straws just to reach their sales quotas? Being a great salesman is not just about being able to relate and converse well with your business leads, it also entails giving them what they need. Setting business appointments with your leads is a difficult job, so you might as make sure that every chance you get to sell your products or services is worth it.

Let’s take a look at this example: For the launch of Apple’s iPod, Steve Jobs presented the audience with a slide that shows a comparative table about the music storage devices currently available that time and their respective prices. In the presentation, Jobs spent considerable time explaining the pricing differences with CDs, flash drives, MP3 CDs and a hard drive. It should be noted that the slide never stated the name of Apple or its new product. After a very persuasive demonstration of how the hard drive trumps other storage devices in terms of pricing and number of songs it can carry, Jobs held up the iPod for all to see. Being the only device of its time to have a hard drive, the iPod easily provided the best solution for the audience. What happened after that is portable music history.

In a similar way to how Steve Jobs marketed his iPod, sales people should sell solutions to their business leads instead of praising their company’s creations in front of these important people. Your sales people should understand that these business leads are continuously bombarded by other companies with their own services. They have basically heard all the positive adjectives that a company can attach to their offerings: “amazing”, “innovative”, “technologically-advanced”, “unbelievable”, etc. To your business leads, all these services – no matter what brand name they possess – are the same: they are all ploys to get them to open their wallets. What your company should do instead is to focus on the problems that are present in the organization of your business leads. Tell them HOW your services affect their organization, HOW it solves their problems. Don’t concentrate on WHY they should avail of your service and WHY it’s the best. The “best products” are usually the most expensive, and if you’re dealing with a small or medium-sized company, chances are they’re looking for a relatively cheap solution that actually does the job properly.

If you’ve hired a telemarketing company for your b2b lead generation campaign, remember this tip when writing your telemarketing scripts: “Your products and services do not set you apart from your competitors, rather, it is the way you provide solutions to the problems of your sales leads that attract them to you.”

by: Marlon Julius Mata

Is branding important? Yes, it is important. It will define the image of your company. It will determine whether business prospects will remember you or not. Branding is very important when introducing your business to others. This can have an important impact when you are conducting a lead generation campaign for new sales leads. But, how sure are you that you are not committing any branding blunders? You ought to know these, since these mistakes can be costly, not to mention a sure-fire way to lose what could have been profitable B2B leads. Below are just some of the biggest branding blunders that companies have made, courtesy of Geoffrey James from Inc.com:

9. Xerox – when we hear the name of this venerable brand, we always think of photocopying. Not for the company. They tried expanding the name to even include computing and business automation. The result? No change, Xerox still means photocopying. And the company did not bank on it.

8. Esurance – have you heard of the name? If not, then you can blame it to them killing their wildly popular animated mascot, Erin Esurance. When people began to use the character in more “racy” caricatures, the company freaked out and pulled the plug. End result? Less visibility.

7. Colgate – never, ever do what Colgate did. They posted the logo on packaged meals, thinking that this will increase sales. Turns out, customers avoided the “toothpaste-tasting” meals.

6. Burger King – perhaps none of the executives imagined that their “quirky” commercial of Burger King greeting people in bed would creep viewers out so much that they avoided the burger chain entirely. That’s why they slipped a notch lower to number three.

5. Gap – when they changed their logo for a more” modern” look, spending millions of dollars in the process, their customers were not happy. So they were forced to go back to their old logo, and spent millions more in the process. What a waste.

4. Disney – look, it may be true that Hannah Montana became popular, but using the brand to sell practically everything borders on the insane. Really, who wants to eat Hannah Montana’s Red Cherries? That was written on the package, I swear.

3. Group Bull – yes, this may be a venerable business computing giant in France, but using the same name (Bull) in the US would surely imply less “respectable” meanings. It did not even help that they named the US subsidiary as Bull Worldwide Information Systems (Bull WIS). Go figure.

2. Chevrolet – will it not alienate customers if instead of the more affectionate “Chevy” nickname, the more business-like “Chevrolet” brand is used? Marketing VP Jim Campbell thought otherwise. You do not need to be told what happened next to the company.

1. Panasonic – this company really tops the list. When they got permission to use the Woody Woodpecker character as their mascot, they started calling their PC units “The Woody”, their touch screen units “Touch Woody”, and their web browsing feature “The Internet Pecker”. You can imagine what went through the minds of buyers.

You surely do not want to be part of that list, right? So, better watch it.