How to use telemarketing effectively

It used to be enough just to pick up the phone and engage quickly with a decision maker that we have never spoken to before, identify an opportunity and build a relationship over the phone. Nowadays, with so much competition in the market place, and decision makers being even busier due to the recession trimming the fat off businesses, it’s difficult just to get some time with senior decision makers. So how should we be using telemarketing to its best effect?

As a specialist B2B telemarketing agency, we have had to innovate and ensure we can offer great return on investment for all our clients. Here are some tips as to how you should be utilising telemarketing to its full potential.

The keys to successful telemarketing are to ensure that:

1. When you do engage with a decision maker, make the conversation relevant to that individual. If the focus of the conversation is around how you can resolve any problems they have, or help achieve their own objectives, then you’re much more likely to progress the relationship. You therefore need to gather as much information as possible before you speak to a decision maker.

2. You maximise the number of decision makers you engage and build trust with.

So how can we achieve these objectives?

It all revolves around integrating your marketing approaches. Too many companies look at their sales and marketing as separate entities.

Telemarketing can fall under the sales budget, and all other marketing falls under the marketing budget. This is fine, but marketing and sales work towards the same goal – to win clients! An integrated approach is required to maximise the ROI seen from all activities, not just telemarketing.

So let’s look first at how we can apply this principle to increase the number of decision makers we engage with.

Engaging with decision makers

The first step to engaging with decision makers is to identify your target market and then find the decision makers within those companies. This may sound obvious but you can’t market successfully until you have this information so get the basics right first.

If you are targeting Managing Directors then this may simply involve purchasing a database from a reputable company (see our other download on our website called "prospect data- the low down" for advice on this). If however your decision maker is more "role" targeted e.g. you want to speak to the person in charge of the company car fleet, then you may need to confirm who the correct decision maker is by a simple data cleansing exercise. Telemarketing is the quickest and most accurate method of ensuring you have the correct contact information and also allows you to gather personal email addresses, opt-in’s and direct lines. In addition the calls can be used to build valuable information on decision makers, their purchasing strategies, current suppliers and timescales. This helps with the second objective of improving the relevance of your conversation to the decision maker when you do reach them.

Maximising decision maker contact

So now you know who your decision makers are, there are multiple ways of engaging with them – direct mail, email, digital, social media, PR, advertising and referral mechanisms to name a few. Telemarketing should be at the hub of all these as it is the only true two-way communication medium, meaning it is the most information rich marketing approach. When selling involves understanding a decision maker’s requirement and offering a solution then how can telemarketing not be the best method of engaging with your prospects?

If, before we pick up the phone and make that first call to a decision maker, we know they have some awareness of our brand and they have shown an interest in content provided by us then they’re much more likely to take our call. Using this knowledge we can work to increase decision maker contact. If you think about it you’re much more likely to get a client to accept your call because you will already have a relationship with them. Therefore telemarketing to your clients to offer them additional services is going to be the most cost effective use of telemarketing. Assuming we’re targeting prospects and not clients, we can use other marketing methods to increase our decision maker contact rate.

Email marketing can have calls to action so you can see who has opened the email, clicked on various topics within the email and even proactively tried to contact you. This suggests interest levels are high so they’re much more likely to take a call from you and engage with you. These leads need following up and telemarketing is the only way these should be followed up for direct, personal contact to build that relationship and gain further information.

Direct mail can be used to attract the attention of decision makers – especially if it is a 3-Dimensional package, stands out and makes an impact. A package that is hand addressed, in a jiffy bag, will often be opened by the decision maker rather than the PA, and will stick in their memory (in addition to being passed round the office if it is innovative enough). If this is not followed up by telemarketing then this is a wasted opportunity as the mailer will serve as a discussion point for the call to engage and find common ground. Decision makers are more likely to take the call to talk about their experience of having received the mailer.

Making the call relevant

Imagine how powerful a call would be to a decision maker that has expressed interest in an email, received an innovative mailer and then received a call from you. On top of this, you have done your research at the data cleansing stage and know their purchasing strategies and business pains. Put yourself in the decision makers’ shoes and think what you would prefer – a cold call from someone that you know is making the same call to hundreds of others in a scattergun approach, or a call that is structured to discuss your specific issues? Guess which is more effective at winning new clients?

Think also about who you have making that call – you’ve put all that effort and money into nurturing that lead, do you really want an inexperienced "sales" person to engage with this valuable decision maker, or do you think they would rather be contacted by someone who has years of business acumen and can empathise with their problems.

Summary

So, telemarketing still plays a vital role in the sales and marketing process however we need to support it with an integrated approach to maximise the return on investment and effectiveness of it.

There are plenty more ideas that we could discuss with you, but we’ll leave that for a meeting.