The phrase “cold calling” can strike fear into the hearts of many business people. Sadly, too many B2B prospects have been at the receiving end of pushy sales people who neither understand the needs or dynamics of their business. And, on the other side, even for experienced sales people, outbound sales or telemarketing can often be seen as a thankless and unrewarding task.
Here at Pace Digital, we are passionate, not only about helping businesses with intelligent campaigns that drive lead generation through telemarketing, but also about raising standards in the B2B outsourced sales industry as a whole.
If approached professionally and with integrity, then B2B lead generation through telemarketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. It can help your company increase your pool of prospects, maximise marketing investments and generate qualified sales leads.
We are a very collaborative bunch and so we’ve put our heads together to come up with five crucial ways telemarketing can help to drive B2B lead generation. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please feel free to drop us a line.
As we all know, B2B lead generation has changed dramatically in recent years. As more and more of the buying journey has moved online, many companies have focused their resources on inbound marketing and marketing automation systems. However, it is important to remember that effort is still needed to convert all of those inbound leads into qualified leads for your sales team.
And perhaps even more important, lead generation through telemarketing can ensure you find those customers who haven’t yet found you! Effective telemarketing can mean the difference between bidding successfully for a lucrative contract and not even being aware that the opportunity existed.
A good B2B telemarketing team will be able to identify the decision maker within your target organisations, take them through a discovery process and ask qualifying questions to establish needs and interest, before handing them over to your sales team for the first meeting.
For growing businesses, telemarketing can help you reach the next stage of growth by expanding your prospecting activity beyond your existing network. There is a whole world of prospects out there who are not aware of your product or service - yet!
Many B2B organisations invest significant budgets in growing their social media followers and connections. However, it can be a challenge to convert those followers into paying customers.
At Pace Digital we are big advocates of joined up marketing, which means connecting with your customers wherever they happen to be – and that often means a combination of LinkedIn, Twitter, email and, you guessed it, by phone!
A B2B telemarketing campaign can follow-up with your LinkedIn followers and connections to qualify contacts, develop quality relationships and ultimately hand over a warm prospect to your sales team, who will be receptive to their call.
Lead generation through a telemarketing campaign can also complement your marketing activity; we find that integrating email marketing, content campaigns and even remarketing with telemarketing can make a dramatic difference to ROI.
At some point, every organisation will need to consider whether they need an outbound telemarketing operation. Whether in-house, or outsourced, a dedicated B2B telemarketing operation can deliver warm, qualified leads to your sales team, so they can concentrate on nurturing their existing pipeline and closing deals.
Most B2B sales professionals tend to neglect cold calling to focus on their warm leads. With monthly or quarterly pressure on to close deals, it is easy to focus on quick wins and let prospecting slip. This might work well in the short term, but in the long term it will mean a shortage of pipeline with no new leads to feed the sales funnel.
An effective telemarketing operation will ensure a regular supply of warm, qualified leads to your sales team, helping to smooth out the peaks and troughs that are inevitable without a sufficient pipeline.
There are multiple ways to boost the effectiveness of your lead generation through telemarketing. If implemented correctly a telemarketing team can create personal one-to-one relationships with prospects and add value to both inbound and outbound campaigns.
For a B2B buyer there can be nothing more frustrating than requesting a consultation with a sales representative, or a product demo, only to wait days for a response. Of course, in the best case scenario, requests like these are handled immediately, but in real-life this is not always possible. By handing over inbound lead management to the telemarketing team you can ensure you hit your inbound response time KPIs every time.
This is often seen as a controversial point to make, but it really shouldn’t be. Few marketing activities are more measurable than telemarketing. Salespeople who are good at pipeline management and closing deals are in short supply and usually command a high salary.
In comparison to your top sales people, telemarketing can be a relatively cost-efficient resource, while ensuring your ace sales people have a constant flow of opportunities to convert and are free to focus on these.
Once you have made the decision to invest in telemarketing, you need to decide whether to set it up in-house or find an outsourced telemarketing company. Both routes have their pros and cons. In each case, the quality of the team is important, but just as important is the investment you are able to make in training the team and supporting them.
An effective team is one that not just knows how to build relationships, but also understands your business offering and is an effective brand advocate. At Pace Digital we can help you with either route and if you are unsure, then we would be happy to share our experience with you.
When it comes to measuring the success of your telemarketing activity, some useful metrics include, number of calls, number appointments, the call to appointment ratio, sales qualified leads and ultimately business won.
However, here at Pace we think it can be a false economy to focus on metrics such as number of appointments at the expense of overall value. It is key to know who your target is and focus on generating quality meetings. So whether you decide to go the in-house route or outsource your B2B telemarketing campaign, make sure you focus on financial outcomes alongside productivity metrics.
To find out how your business could benefit from effective lead generation through telemarketing, take a look at what our previous clients have to say about our services and the results they have generated. At Pace Digital, we offer a range of services that can help drive your B2B lead generation through telemarketing. From inbound sales to outbound sales, business development and even sales consultancy, we offer an expert service for all businesses.
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