Successful Outbound Telemarketing Campaigns Follow the Latest Trends

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Successful Outbound Telemarketing Campaigns Follow the Latest Trends

Outbound telemarketing remains an excellent way for B2B and B2C marketers to generate sales leads in an atmosphere where social media and other digital marketing methods seem to reign supreme. The fact that outbound telemarketing is holding its own, however, isn’t just a matter of luck. Instead, the telemarketing industry has worked hard and done an excellent job of evolving and keeping up with the times.

The best telemarketing firms, in order to remain relevant and effective, stay up-to-date on industry trends. These telemarketing firms then update the methods they use to identify prospects. They also update their scripts to reflect these trends.

These efforts ensure that a quality telemarketing firm will help make the marketing efforts of its clients as successful as possible. Equally important, data collected through each telemarketing campaign is used to make subsequent campaigns even more successful.

So what are some of the trends telemarketing firms can use to make sure they are connecting with sales leads in the most effective ways possible?

  • Industry trends: Certain times of the year are important for different industries. For example, the auto industry is buzzing when the new model year cars come out. Major trade shows and conventions will be significant for different industries, as well. By being aware of when people in particular industries will be more receptive to particular sales pitches, you can be confident that there will be more sales conversions.
  • Customer Trends: Black Friday, tax season, summer travel season, and back-to-school are all ideal times to contact consumers. Consumers who have particular products on their minds will be more responsive to hearing about those products.
  • Regional Trends: Certain holidays or historical or religious events are more relevant in different parts of states or countries. Many states have unique and significant events that can be capitalized on, as well.

When outbound lead generation is too broad, a telemarketing campaign usually ends in failure. Therefore, it is essential that precise segmentation be used. The trends listed above allow telemarketing firms to identify the most promising leads.

Outbound telemarketing by trend is especially important when you consider that, in almost all cases, a few quality leads will always trump a greater number of unqualified leads. And filling your sales funnel with unqualified leads is a waste of your sales team’s time and can negatively affect your bottom line.

Outsourcing the Key to Successful Cold Calling

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Outsourcing the Key to Successful Cold Calling

Ask any salesperson, and chances are he or she will tell you that the task they most dread is cold calling. This is unfortunate given the importance cold calling plays in filling the sales funnel.

Many salespeople will put cold calls on the bottom of their to-do list for no other reason than they want to avoid making such calls. In order for companies to reap the many benefits of cold calling, it may be time to consider outsourcing this task to a telemarketing firm.

While keeping your sales team happy is certainly one reason to outsource your cold calling, understandably there needs to be more compelling ones to make the change. Here are some of the biggest advantages:

Cost: Salespeople pay for themselves when they are closing sales. When they are cold calling and appointment setting, they are not. It is as simple as that.

Productivity: When you outsource your cold calling, you will have representatives making calls as many hours a day as you require. This ensures that your pipeline will not slow down when you don’t have staff available to make calls.

Reliability: Does your cold calling schedule depend on the availability of staff, vacations or even illness? When you outsource there are no schedules to work around.

Speed: If you need to begin a cold calling campaign for a particular product or service, outsourcing allows you to roll out this campaign quickly. That includes everything from creating a list to perfecting the script.

Data: For every call made, data is recorded and can be analyzed. This allows you to refine things like your script in real time.

Accountability: If a member of your sales staff sets up an appointment with a non-qualified lead, that is time and money wasted. When you outsource your cold calling and a non-qualified lead is identified, steps will be taken to make sure this does not happen again. Sales people are certainly not going to tell you when they are responsible for identifying non-qualified leads. They will, however, report these problems when cold calling is being outsourced.

Quality Control: Want to know how your sales people are interacting with cold prospects? That can be difficult. When you outsource, however, all calls are monitored for quality and you can even go back and listen to calls to make sure you like what you hear.

Allowing your salespeople to do what they are paid to do, and what they want to do, is a good reason to outsource your cold calling. Add in the reasons listed above and it is difficult to justify NOT outsourcing these duties.

Follow-Up Calls Can Help Improve Direct Mail Results

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Follow-Up Calls Can Help Improve Direct Mail Results

Direct mail is an outstanding marketing tool for companies of all sizes. Unfortunately, many direct mail campaigns fail to yield the desired results because no follow-up occurs.

One of the simplest, and most effective, ways to improve the return on investment of any direct mail campaign is to pick up the phone and call your prospects after they have received your direct mail piece. That’s because even if a prospect did not respond to your call to action, that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in your product or service.

Many individuals, especially business owners, simply put things off because they are so busy. They may even have planned on responding to the direct mail piece but have not had the time.

While follow-up calls may seem intimidating because they feel like the dreaded cold call, they are not cold calls because you have already made a connection with the prospect. Therefore, you already have a purpose for your call-finding out if your direct mail piece was received.

Once you have determined that the prospect has received your mailing, you can ask them the following questions:

  • Do you have any questions regarding the letter, promotion or offer?
  • Do you currently use the referenced product or service?
  • If so, who provides you with that product or service?
  • Would you be willing to sit down and talk about how we can better serve you with our product or service?

Follow-up calls are an excellent way to personalize and reinforce your brand. After all, nothing helps to build trust like speaking one-on-one with a prospect. And when trust is developed, the chances of closing a deal are greatly increased.

Marketing experts will tell you that the more personalized your direct mail piece, the better response rate you can expert. It makes sense then that a personalized follow-up call also will increase response rates. It is important, however, that not too much time lapses between when the direct mail piece was received by the prospect and when the follow-up call is made.

Unfortunately, many businesses do not have the time or resources to make these follow-up calls in a timely manner. This is especially true if a large number of direct mail pieces were sent. In such cases, it makes sense to outsource these tasks to a telemarketing firm that specializes in business to business telemarketing services.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Outbound Lead Generation Telemarketing Campaigns

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Avoiding the Pitfalls of Outbound Lead Generation Telemarketing Campaigns

In a perfect world, inbound lead generation would always keep your company’s sales funnel full. However, there are times when outbound calling is necessary to drive leads and identify new prospects.

A successful outbound telemarketing campaign is no easy endeavor and many companies simply don’t have the time, resources or expertise to undertake such a campaign. If you have attempted an outbound telemarketing campaign in the past and it wasn’t successful, or if you plan to execute one in the near future, you need to be aware of the many pitfalls of outbound telemarketing campaigns (listed below) and how to overcome them.

  • Absence of a realistic goal. If you aren’t completely sure what you are looking to accomplish with your outbound lead generation campaign you can be sure you won’t achieve it, either.
  • Improper training. It is important that anyone working on your telemarketing campaign knows exactly what they need to be doing, why they need to do it, and how to do it correctly.
  • Failure to understand your target audience. The right list is imperative so that you reach a decision maker. To get that list right, you will need to have clear lead criteria and scoring in place.
  • Failure to test your messaging. It is imperative that you test your message before you go wide so that you can be sure that your message connects with its intended targets.
  • Using price as the only criteria of a successful campaign. If you are looking to get your campaign launched by spending the least amount of time and money, you are practically guaranteed to fail.
  • Poor data quality. If you are not capturing the data you uncover in each and every call, you are forfeiting valuable information that could be entered into your sales database.
  • Inability to go off script when necessary. If you rely solely on scripting for every call, you are going to lose a substantial number of leads through the inability to respond to unexpected questions or comments. Anyone making cold calls must be able to respond to unique objections or you will lose those leads.
  • Disregarding the outcome. Even if you are pleased with the results of your telemarketing campaign, if you fail to analyze conversion rates and the return on investment, you will be leaving a lot of precious information behind.

Of course, overcoming these pitfalls can be practically impossible if you have limited resources or expertise. That is why many companies choose to contract with a business to business telemarketing services firm. By doing so you will get the results and data you need!