Why Social Media Won’t Replace Telemarketing

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Why Social Media Won’t Replace Telemarketing

In this age of social media, it might seem like the art of live conversation is no longer necessary. And while technology seems to be taking over every facet of marketing, studies show that telemarketing continues to offer an outstanding return on investment.

Telemarketing is an excellent way to find leads and convert those leads into sales. Telemarketing is similar to other forms of marketing in that campaigns must be designed to meet the needs of its target audience. The best telemarketers also realize that their job goes way beyond making sales – although this is the end game. Lead generation, relationship building, and lead nurturing are the hallmarks of any successful telemarketing campaign. Experts will tell you that nurtured leads spend more money – over a longer period of time – than customers who were won over with a quick sales pitch.

Telemarketers need to work hard not just to make sales but to capture vital information and find new opportunities. In this way, telemarketing is anything but behind the times. Telemarketing allows companies to compile a great deal of data that will allow for pinpointed marketing campaigns.

While telemarketing continues to outpace most other forms of marketing – including social media – there are certain components that are necessary for a telemarketing campaign to be successful. These include:

Repetition: The most successful telemarketing campaigns are anything but one and done. In order to forge the type of relationships that lead to long-term customer relationships you should expect to make several calls to prospects. Remember, it’s all about relationship building.

Well-Defined Goals: Getting a prospect on the phone is just the beginning of the process, not the end. Make sure your script is clear, concise, and delivered with confidence. There is a very short window of time to engage your prospect. Make sure you make the most of it.

Relevancy: Make sure the product or service you are calling about is relevant to the prospect. In today’s data-driven marketing world, there is no excuse for poorly targeted prospects.

Telemarketing continues to outpace other forms of marketing because of its high success rate. No matter what you are trying to achieve – sales, lead generation, customer retention, market research, etc. – telemarketing will continue to be important for one simple reason: it works.

Improving Your B2B Marketing Efforts

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Improving Your B2B Marketing Efforts

Marketing experts will tell you that B2B telemarketing is an extremely effective tool for promoting your company’s goods and services. Unfortunately, if a business is seeing good results from their B2B telemarketing efforts there is a tendency to rest on their laurels.

In order to keep ahead of the competition and continue to reach new sales heights, it is important that you constantly seek to improve your telemarketing efforts. What follows are a list of ways you can do just that:

  1. Make sure that your data lists are meticulous. Up-to-date, targeted data needs to be tailored for each specific calling campaign.
  2. Clearly outline your goals. Are you looking to make a sale? Make an appointment? Whatever you are looking to do, make sure that your telemarketers know what is expected of them. Remember, too, that some goals will take more than a single call to accomplish and this needs to be communicated to your telemarketing team.
  3. Use an integrative approach. Telemarketing campaigns work best when they are part of an overall strategy that uses a multi-channel approach.
  4. Consider outsourcing. Studies show that in-house sales teams follow up only about 20 percent of leads. When you outsource your telemarketing efforts, you help to ensure that leads aren’t being lost because your sales team is too busy to follow up on those leads.
  5. Allow telemarketers to go off script. While scripts are important, it also is important that your telemarketers feel free to develop a rapport with prospects, which may mean going off script a bit. That’s not to say that they neglect valuable talking points in their pitch, but the conversation should never seem scripted. Remember, authentic personal touches are what relationship building is all about.
  6. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Telemarketers should have information about each prospect they are calling in front of them before they make a call. They also should be well-versed on the particular campaign they are promoting or the product or service they are selling. There is never an excuse for not being prepared so always make sure that your B2B marketing information is complete and up-to-date.
  7. Be a little unpredictable. Most people don’t work just 9 to 5. When you call early in the morning or in the evening, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding the gatekeeper and talking to the decision maker.

No matter how successful your B2B telemarketing efforts are, they can always improve. By continually assessing your telemarketing efforts you can be sure that you are always on top of your game!

Why Your CRM Needs to Go Mobile

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Why Your CRM Needs to Go Mobile

Gone are the days when sales reps spent most of their time chained to their desks making cold calls. In fact, in today’s sales environment many sales reps don’t even come into the office. Instead they are on the road or working from home.

No matter where your sales reps are at any given time, customer relationship management (CRM) is vital to their success. And statistics show that when salespeople use mobile CRM their sales increase by 29 percent, their productivity by 35 percent, and their forecast accuracy by 40 percent.

In light of these numbers, it is easy to see why you need to make sure your company’s CRM is as mobile as your sales team. After all, Americans spend more time today on their mobile phones than they do on their computers – and this statistic is even higher for those in the sales industry.

If you are still wondering whether your company needs mobile CRM, here are some facts to consider:

  • Mobile CRM is cloud-based so sales reps can use their device of choice. This leads to greater productivity because when sales reps don’t have to waste time accessing an unfamiliar operating system they can better focus on closing sales.
  • Mobile CRM is easily customizable so your company is able to keep pace with constantly changing technology.
  • Mobile CRM provides faster service. Requiring sales reps to come back to the office to submit or change orders is a huge waste of time. And time is money. Customers today don’t like to wait, either. Mobile CRM means anything a customer wants or needs can be taken care of wherever a sales rep is at any given moment.
  • Mobile CRM helps companies keep ahead of the competition. Companies that adopt mobile CRM technology report that their sales teams are better able to give more accurate information and presentations. This allows them to stay ahead of the competition because they can close lucrative deals faster.
  • Mobile CRM means everyone in the company can access the information they need in real time. Plus, information such as lead generation is organized in a clear manner that is easy to access and decipher.

Mobile devices play an important role in the success of your sales team. When you marry CRM with smartphones and other mobile devices such as tablets, the advantages of both of these powerful tools can positively affect your bottom line.

Appointment Setting Skills Help Keep the Sales Funnel Full

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Appointment Setting Skills Help Keep the Sales Funnel Full

Appointment setting probably isn’t on your list of favorite things to do as a salesperson. Unfortunately, it is an important part of the sales process and necessary to keep the sales funnel full.

When approaching appointment setting calls, remember that time is money. While appointment setting can be an arduous task, if you succeed at getting an appointment set, a large part of your selling work is done. That’s because prospects who make appointments are more likely to buy what you are selling.

In a perfect world, you could outsource your appointment duties. Since this is not always possible, here is some advice to help make the process go more smoothly:

Don’t waste your time trying to get a hold of just one person. Large companies usually have more than one decision maker so you can cast your net wider and attempt to track down more than one person at a time. Keep in mind, however, that although there is usually more than one decision maker in a company, all of those decision makers are likely to be high up in the organization.

Persistence is the name of the game. It may take an average of 10 attempts to get the opportunity to ask just one prospect to meet with you, but it could take even more. The only thing you know for sure is that you never know how long it will take to connect with a potential appointment. The key is to remain determined, even if it takes longer than you expected.

You are trying to set an appointment, not make a quick sale. While it is human nature to want to try to sell your product or service as soon as you get a prospect on the phone, this is never a good idea. Since the prospect wasn’t expecting your call, he or she is unlikely to be wiling – or able – to make a decision on the spot. Don’t squander the opportunity to meet with a prospect by launching into a hurried sales pitch that will in most cases be rejected.

No-shows aren’t always the end of the road. It is easy to get discouraged when an appointment is a no-show, however, this is an expected part of the appointment setting process. It may help to know that 50 percent of no-shows can be rescheduled. Further, the professional manner in which you react to a no-show can actually improve your prospect’s opinion of you and increase the likelihood that the prospect will show up the next time around.