Why is it that more and more people have started to believe that telemarketing services carry the highest potential to reach out to prospects and customers? It is actually quite true and not just a coincidence or myth.
How often do we end up choosing something over another that we may like better? You would be quite surprised that it does happen quite a bit if we end up liking the person offering the lesser liked thing over the person offering the thing we like better. In effect humans are all about personal connections and karmic connect. Thus, success lies in making a good first impression where you appear to be selfless and right minded. Telemarketing has the power to build an instant connection with people on behalf of your business. This ensures that more and more people are being introduced to your brand on a minute to minute basis via a personal conversation rather than a faceless email or non-responsive bill board. When a telemarketing agent is able to break through barriers and reach the right decision makers on your behalf, the true potential of telemarketing is unlocked. This golden window is where someone is effectively communicating the potential and advantages of your firm to a third party and opening up limitless opportunities of growth and revenue for your company. All it needs is a few seconds of effective communication where you will find more and more receptive doors opening up and leading to your company’s success. How often are you faced with a situation where you meet with someone and form an impression about that person in the first few seconds of interaction? The same happens over a phone call made by a telemarketing agent. If the first impression is right then the prospect is willing to engage and wants to know more about your product and service just because he or she is impressed with the telemarketing agent. This is the power of telemarketing services and its potential to maximize outreach for you. The agents may be thousands and thousands of miles away from the prospect but still manage to create the right impression by using their skills of communication. But the actual impression is being created for your business as the interested person on the other end of the line although hooked on the telemarketing agents voice is sub consciously being made to feel a connection with your intended message and idea. Can you think of any other marketing medium on this planet that gives you the potential to make this kind of human to human connection on an ongoing basis day in and day out? Your company gets truly put out there without the need to be in front of the prospect in a physical form. There is a counter argument that digital marketing also gets the message across effectively which may be true to an extent. But when you compare results you will find that a phone conversation softens up the prospect to the extent that the sale is within reach. The prospect has the undivided attention of the telemarketing agent at that point in time which ensures a quality pitch. Does digital marketing have that luxury when you look at the clutter of information out there. What are the chances of your prospect filtering through all the digital marketing that he or she is being bombarded with on an ongoing basis and connecting with your message to the maximum degree possible? The answer is simple, not to the extent and regularity which is possible only by the use of telemarketing services effectively. True business is all about the right introduction and right communication where the buyer feels the need to engage into the relationship further as he sees potential for growth and savings. This makes the initial engagement extremely important as it sets the base of how important your business is going to be perceived by the potential customer. There can be no debate. Telemarketing is the most effective and potent medium to maximize outreach for your business and unlocking the true potential for growth.
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Many companies opt for telemarketing outsourcing but fail to get the desired results. They end up getting incorrect type of leads and give up on this marketing exercise. Telemarketing can be a pretty potent sales generator if done correctly.
Make sure that your telemarketing company understands the objective of the campaign before embarking on the project. The kind of data that they will use to make calls is also very important. As a customer you need to be aware that the objective is not for them to simply make calls on your behalf. The desired outcome is to get appointments with highly interested customers who have a genuine need for your products and services. Don’t be tricked by firms that only report a high number or calls that they have made on your behalf as they could mean nothing if no positive impact has been made on your business. You are paying them to reach out to potential customers and engaging them into a meaningful conversation that results in an appointment or a sale. If a firm is unwilling to be judged on performance and insists on being judged on the number of calls they have made then they should not be considered as an extension to your marketing efforts. If this kind of arrangement means that your budget needs to go up then do not shy away from that. If a telemarketing company is willing to charge on the basis of per successful appointment or sale then they are definitely worth considering since their income is directly linked to a growth in your sales. The game of telemarketing outsourcing has all sorts of players and not all are performers. Be sure that the appointments being made on your behalf are genuine and not just a glossed up list of prospects. After all a genuine appointment is worth its weight in gold since it gives you a great chance of making a sale. If the lead is not genuine then not only is the telemarketing company not performing it also means that you would have wasted a lot of energy and resources into chasing a dead end whereas you could have worked towards something productive in that amount of time. But the onus of ensuring that you have worked out the correct arrangement with the agency is completely in your hands. However do not go overboard by trying to set unrealistic targets for the agency since this will only have a detrimental effect on their performance and more importantly end up harming your marketing drive. It is also important to plan your marketing strategy for the long haul. Do not expect quick results or lose hope if things don’t go to plan initially. It will take some time for the agency to get into the thick of things and get a grip on your industry and the psyche of the prospects. However if you have planned for a longer horizon then it gives you a better chance of success as quitting the game mid-way would mean that all the investments that you have made so far are flushed down the drain instantly. Be patient and it will pay off in the long run. Telemarketing outsourcing is the best way to start but it would be advisable to start working towards building your own in house telemarketing team as well. Marketing is one of the key functions of any business and while it does not harm to outsource, a certain portion of the same should also be something that is managed in house. This will stand you in good stead in the long run as you will not be running from pillar to post if a contingency arises at the agencies end. Once you have been able to build a good in house team you can start scaling down your spends on outsourcing. Digital marketing methods have become quite popular; however, telemarketing continues to be relevant than ever. According to various studies, this marketing method is a vital component of the marketing mix for various businesses. It is not only beneficial but also cost-effective and provides a great way of reaching prospects.
What is B2B (business to business) telemarketing? B2B is a form of telemarketing in which one company sells to another company. Calls are not made to the final customer but to decision makers in another company. Compared to the B2C or business to consumer market, there are less consumers in the B2B market. Since the market is smaller, the possibility of finding new customers is lower. Closing a deal or a client means long term benefits for a business because value for each transaction is quite high. If handled in the right manner, telemarketing as a marketing tool can offer good returns on investment. B2B telemarketing has become a very popular method marketing in almost all business sectors, be it engineering, IT, legal or even sports). There are several ways in which telemarketing can be used for supporting a company’s B2B marketing strategy. •It not only helps in getting quality leads but also in creating awareness. This awareness helps in engaging potential prospects and also in up-selling new products and services to existing clients. •By integrating telemarketing in the marketing strategy, businesses can create dialogs. Through telemarketing, it becomes easy to build relationships and interact with prospects in a way that is not possible with other marketing techniques. Prospects can ask questions over the phone and telemarketers can easily gauge their reactions and hear feedback. Since there is a two-way dialog, telemarketing becomes a powerful marketing channel. •Through telemarketing, businesses get ‘warmer’ leads as the initial prospecting is done via the telephone and then the warmer leads are chosen and handed over to the sales team for the next stage. Compared to leaving this task to sales executives, telemarketing is more cost-effective. •With the right telemarketing strategies, businesses can nurture existing relationships. Some of the methods through which telemarketing can help foster relationships include, brand reinforcement, up-selling and market research. With effective B2B telesales and telemarketing, you can take your business message further and also uncover new business leads. Here are some of the strategies that you can consider for being successful at B2B telemarketing: It is very important that your business has hired expert telemarketing agents. They should have the experience and the expertise to encourage prospects to talk. They should not only listen carefully and be patient but also be honest on call. Key metrics to consider At times, business organisations find themselves in a situation where their telemarketing efforts don’t produce the desired results. Whether they have outsourced B2B telemarketing services to a third party or handling it in-house, there are several key metrics that they need to evaluate in order to understand whether or not telemarketing has been successful. For instance, in order to identify whether or not the database you have is right for your offering, you need to measure the response rate from different companies. In B2B telemarketing, many a times agents make a call to people who aren’t the decision makers. By eliminating these gatekeepers, your business can improve the existing data and also enhance the productivity of the agents. Second key metric is related to sales and ROI. Sales is the key performance metric if the business is generating leads through phone calls. It is also important to evaluate the marketing return on investment and learn whether or not telemarketing is costing your business more than what you are making. A list of all costs related to telemarketing needs to be prepared against the number of sales your business has made. Once done, you need to assess if the ROI warrants the investment. Third metric is related to conversion rate. Success of telemarketing is defined by the number of calls that are converting into leads. However, this is a tricky process because telemarketing doesn’t always generate leads. Some leads also come from interactive platforms and websites. To know if you have had successful telemarketing months, you need to use monthly or weekly call records including conversion rate as a benchmark. When compared to regular telemarketing, B2B telemarketing is more focused. This is because at the heart of B2B is a generated targeted contact list. In this context, there is a carefully thought-out and well-generated list of companies. This list consists of businesses that will have use with the products and services that your business has to offer. The focus in regular telemarketing is on selling and closing the deal successfully. Whereas B2B isn’t focused on selling. The main objective behind it is to generate leads. Leads are of great importance in B2B businesses and telemarketing is one of the best ways to generate those leads. This is the reason why many businesses hire B2B lead generation companies and invest in telemarketing. There are many companies that don’t have the necessary resources to conduct successful telemarketing campaigns. So in order to ensure a steady stream of qualified leads in their sales pipeline, they prefer hiring a telemarketing agency. If you are also planning to do the same, then make sure that you are doing some research and comparison. Shortlist at least two to three service provider names, compare their charges and services and make a final choice. Telemarketing continues to be an effective medium for businesses; however, it cannot stand alone. It needs to be used in conjunction with other nurturing campaigns. It is a part of the marketing mix that is used for qualifying, educating as well as nurturing prospects. So if you want telemarketing to bring you results, then make sure it is being conducted with a highly defined set of rules and procedures. You need to have an expert telemarketing team working for you. Have you been investing a lot of money on marketing your products and services? Are you frustrated that the investment isn’t yielding the desired results? If the answer to these questions is yes, then telemarketing services are just what you need. At times, business owners confuse telemarketing services with telesales. Even though these services are somewhat similar, telemarketing covers a wider range of the marketing spectrum compared to telesales. It is more research based and handled with a more professional approach as compared to telesales in which random calls are made to prospects.
Many companies choose to outsource this task to a third party because it helps them save time as well as money. Wondering how? For instance, if call centre services aren’t a part of the core offerings of your business, then setting it up in-house can burn a hole in your pocket. You would surely want to hire experienced telesales experts in the team which means, the burden of initial hiring will be too much on your budget. This is the main reason why many businesses choose to let telemarketing and telesales companies handle these tasks. Outsourcing helps them improve profits to a great extent. Why invest in telemarketing? Here are some of the reasons why investment in telemarketing services can benefit your company: •Telemarketing helps in direct marketing. It becomes easy to reach out to the prospects and get in touch with them personally. Telemarketing professionals not only connect with the prospects but also covert enquiries into leads. •Telemarketing helps businesses in revenue generation. If experienced telemarketers are making calls to the prospects and solving their specific problems, then it will help increase the sales prospects to a great extent. •Business expansion also becomes easier with telemarketing. This service isn’t just effective when you have a startup. It can also fetch great results if you have an established business and looking to expand your business reach into new markets. •As a business owner, you can meet your marketing goals with ease if you are running a successful telemarketing campaign. •It gives your business a chance to interact with the customers. Huge revenues can be driven from referral sales that are achieved through brand evangelists. In order to achieve a good number of brand evangelists, your business needs to interact more with existing customer and also keep them happy. How can a telemarketing company help your business? Businesses work on the mathematics of offering better services in order to achieve better returns. To ensure a strong presence in the market, they need to keep improving their ability to retain and acquire customers dramatically. This objective can be achieved only when new sales opportunities are being discovered in the current market segment. By doing this, the company can increase the overall performance and also boost closing rates of its sales force. To send the right messages to existing as well as potential customers, regular scheduling of appointments becomes necessary. This is needed so that the business can rightly pitch the offerings to prospects who are interested. To make all this happen, a business can hire a reliable telemarketing company as it will work as a catalyst in improving the enterprise profitability. A good telemarketing agency will offer the business outbound as well as inbound telemarketing services. In inbound, they will be responding to customer queries and resolving them on time. This will be generally rendered through toll free numbers. Whereas in outbound, executives will be making direct calls to the prospect in an attempt to sell their client’s offerings. Outsourcing to telemarketing agencies helps businesses save time as well as money. Since a dedicated third party handles this service, there is no need for them to invest in hiring telemarketers and training or retaining them. The need to invest in tools, technologies and infrastructure also gets eliminated. This saves businesses a lot of money and time that can be focused on other vital business functions. Businesses get access to the expertise and experience of telemarketing agencies with outsourcing. They don’t have to worry about results because they know the agency has a team of expert telemarketers. Reputed telemarketing firms also use the latest technology, tools to deliver results to their clients. Things to know when outsourcing telemarketing Before you start looking for agencies, it is very important to determine who your target audience is. You need to know what your products and services are and whom they are aimed at. Also, find out who is more likely to buy and use the offerings. Once you have a clear idea of who your target audience is, you need to ensure that your marketing list is reliable and updated. This will help you in focusing on the target audiences and also in ensuring that the list is complying with the rules and regulations. It is important to include people or organisations that have opted out of receiving marketing and sales calls. It is very important to ensure that the contacts on that list have consented to receive that type of communication from you. Then comes the process of identifying your key personnel at target businesses. This is important because only when you speak to the right person, the chance of making a sale increases. If businesses aren’t hiring a telemarketing agency, they need to have a good script in place. A telemarketing campaign can be successful only when telemarketers are working with a good script. The script needs to be professional and good enough to sell and respond to customer queries. You will also need experienced telemarketers who can work with the script and make changes to it as per the conversation. The scripting needs to be done in an expert manner. It should be interesting enough to attract the attention of the prospects. So if you also plan on hiring a telemarketing agency for your business, then make sure you are doing some research and comparing few service providers before making a final choice. Life is full of vagaries and not everyone or everything is built the same. This stands true for telemarketing UK campaigns as well. The general perception is that a campaign is a simple task that entails calling people and talking about a product or service. The truth couldn’t be further away from this. Many campaigns fail due to various reasons.
The first challenge is to source the right kind of data as it is one of the key aspects for running an effective campaign and ensuring its success. Therefore it is vital that the data is pre-vetted to ensure that it contains the right kind of companies that would be likely to show an interest in the product or service that you have to offer. It is also important to ensure that the campaign highlights the unique selling points of your product or service effectively. The key is to catch the attention of the prospective customer quickly and keep him or her engaged throughout the call duration. The industry of Telemarketing UK offers good prospects for people interested in the telemarketing profession. The telemarketer plays an important role in the success of the campaign. The age or educational qualification of the telemarketer is not as important as his or her skill to engage the target audience in a meaningful conversation and generate a good sales lead. However if the campaign involves a specialized or technical product then it helps if the telemarketer has in depth knowledge of the same. Keeping the client abreast with the status of the campaign is a good strategy to convey to them that you are willing to be transparent at all times. Clients need to have the mental satisfaction that their campaign is in safe hands. Some clients prefer to receive daily reports whilst some prefer weekly reporting. However it is important to note that campaigns will take some to gather steam and one needs to be patient at the beginning. There are also various factors which can slow down performance like invalid numbers in the data, TPS registered numbers, non-availability of the concerned person, etc.. Reaching the right contact can take time and one needs to be patient as it can be easy to be frustrated with the slow process. A positive attitude ensures that when you do connect with a decision maker you are in the right spirit and do not sound dull and uninterested. All clients have varied needs as some are looking for scheduled calls, some want face to face meetings, others want webinar’s to be setup. Thus, each of these require different persuasion skills as the prospect may not be comfortable with the desired contact medium. A good Telemarketing UK company would also like to provide value added information to their clients. This is done by gaining extra insight about companies over the call like their current suppliers, buying patterns, range of products they offer, billing and payment cycles, etc… A client would certainly appreciate the extra effort and may find good use for this added information. Effective reporting helps gain client trust and reports must be configured based on client’s desire. These reports give detailed insights to clients on the effectiveness of the campaign and motivate them to continue spends. However some of the information may not be self-explanatory and may need some clarity. Reports need not contain only information on success but can also have nuggets of important information from calls where no interest was shown. These aspects need to be explained so that the client understands the effort that has been made on their behalf. A client would always appreciate this effort as it helps them plan spends going forward. Telemarketing UK campaigns can be great successes if these key aspects are adhered to. |
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December 2021
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