eMarket2 Blogs

Reasons to be cheerful about outsourcing your sales lead generation – part 2

Why outsource your call-centre operation? The business case.

 “Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”  

George Carlin.

If the success of your business depends on customer acquisition, retention, loyalty and continuous development then telemarketing will almost certainly play a major role in your marketing mix.

Some businesses expect their field sales people to do their own telemarketing and set their own appointments, in the mistaken belief that it will save them money. But asking a sales person to crunch numbers on the phone for half of every day is failing to make cost-effective use of your resources.

It’s an old-fashioned case of horses for courses. Freeing your sales people to concentrate on your core business while having telemarketers generating high quality leads is proven to be more cost-effective than lumping the responsibility onto external sales.

Telemarketers are rarely the highly charged sales animals that thrive in the cut-throat world of field sales. In general, they’re less outgoing. However, this doesn’t mean they aren’t good communicators. In fact, very often they perform better on the telephone than their field sales counterparts, who by their nature rely heavily on their outgoing personalities and assertive body language to make a sale (both of which are denied to them on the telephone).  Allow your external sales people to do what they do best, which is closing sales. Leave the lead generation to the telemarketers (while making sure that both functions work in close co-operation).   

Not so long ago it was common for businesses to maintain call centres internally. But in recent years the expense of running a profitable in-house B2B call centre has become increasingly prohibitive.  On top of this there’s the ever-increasing burden of government legislation and staff management. To add to the problem, in most parts of the UK call centre jobs simply aren’t valued. It takes time and money to attract, hire and train high quality staff, and even then there’s no guarantee that they’ll stay: high attrition and absenteeism are endemic in the UK call-centre industry. Then there is the issue of inconsistent performance.

I’m going to be blunt. It’s a fact that the vast majority of telemarketing people will do anything they can to avoid picking up a telephone and making a cold call. Given the opportunity, for every 20 minutes they spend on the phone for your business they’ll spend another 40 minutes surfing the net.  It’s sad but true.

This isn’t intended as a jibe upon the individual telemarketer; it’s simply human nature. When confronted with an ‘unpleasant’ task our first impulse always is to put it off until later. For this reason, hiring and running an effective telemarketing team requires a highly specialised form of management. 

Without constant monitoring, measuring and supervision, an internal telemarketing person will not produce results. They may start out strongly, but very quickly they will go into cruise control mode.

The worst thing you can do is to force members of your team to make phone calls if they don’t enjoy it. Telemarketing takes a certain kind of person. Some love it, some hate it.  If they don’t enjoy it, you can be certain it will come out in every word they say and their results will be abysmal.

But there is another way. To remain effective in the face of aggressive competition it requires looking at the problem through fresh eyes.

The benefits of outsourcing your B2B call-centre operations

• Free your sales team to concentrate on your core business
• Increase competitiveness by reducing costs and enhancing service levels
• Grow profit margins by reaching a wider audience
• Take care of your entire telecoms operation with a one-stop solution
• Save money on fixed staff overheads and people management
• Your clients and prospects get to speak to people who offer courteous and efficient service, provided by highly trained and incentivised staff
• Take orders and manage transactions in multiple languages and currencies
• Tap into extensive operational and industry expertise

Take full advantage of business to business telemarketing

I’ve put together a list of the many different ways in which B2B marketers can get the best out of the telephone:

Market research

The internet has become the leading medium for surveys and focus-group research, but the phone still has its place. The telephone allows a more flexible, proactive approach, allowing the kind of probing which can gain insights into the prospect’s needs and motivations.

Enquiry qualification

The telephone is historically the main medium for assessing the quality of enquiries. Email is now an alternative, but a combination of email marketing and b2b telemarketing is the best approach.

Lead nurturing

A combination of different tools can be used to keep prospects warm until they’re ready for a sales visit. Combine the telephone with other marketing tools: email, events, webinars and e-newsletters.

Telemarketing

Generate leads and close orders using outbound calls. Certain products in the B2B world respond particularly well to call centre telemarketing:

• IT products and services
• Financial products and services
• Training products
• Engineering/scientific
• Computer software
• Consumable supplies
• Seminars and conferences
• Educational products
• Business products

Inside sales

Sales account management can be very effective over the phone. Compared with onsite sales visits, supporting accounts by phone is extremely efficient in terms of time and cost. Many companies assign field-based sales people to cover the largest accounts, and internal telephone sales people to cover the mid-sized accounts, while supporting smaller accounts by email.

Telesales

Order-taking and sales contact via phone is an excellent way to sell low-value, high-volume products.

Inside account support

Team a field-based sales person with an internally based telesales person to manage a set of accounts more efficiently.

Setting up appointments

The telephone is the perfect appointment-setting tool, because it’s the only medium that supports the sophisticated level of interaction needed to qualify a prospect and set up a meeting.

Director-level relationship management

Use highly skilled and experienced phone-based professionals (often retired senior managers) to conduct quality conversations with senior prospects.

Clean up data

The telephone is ideal for contacting key contacts to confirm job titles, email addresses, etc, to probe and to identify opportunities.

Testing of offers

B2B email databases tend to be small which limits traditional split testing, so carry out a pre-test using the telephone.

Campaign enhancement

Telephone follow-up of email campaigns works well in the B2B arena.

Cross-selling using modelling

The telephone is the ideal tool for developing cross-selling offers when used in conjunction with database modelling. Produce “reason to call” lists for your telemarketers, using modelling to identify cross-selling opportunities.

Internet phone-back

It’s helpful to offer a live call-back service for visitors to your website, giving the visitor the chance to strike while the iron is hot.

Welcome new customers

 A simple phone call to welcome new customers can really help customer retention. Customers will be amazed and appreciative at the interest that your company is taking. The telephone can help convert a customer into a fan and recommender.

Win back customers

Contact dormant customers by telephone to identify the problem and avoid defection.

A good outsourced provider will develop a detailed service level agreement that will meet your business goals within a pre-defined budget.  They’ll also provide regular daily reports detailing the number of calls made on your behalf, together with a breakdown of results. This will include contact and conversion rates, customer and caller feedback, and any recommendations that will strengthen your campaign.

And finally, the secret to a long life

One day late in life Sir Malcolm Sargent was asked: “To what do you attribute your advanced age?” “Well,” he replied, “I suppose I must attribute it to the fact that I haven’t yet died.”

Thanks for reading. As ever, your comments and ideas are very welcome. 

And always to a higher response!

Norman

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