B2B Telemarketing: Generate More Leads and Close More...

B2B TelemarketingGenerate More Leads and Close More Sales

http://www.themxgroup.com/

IntroductionAs the number of tactics available to marketers has multiplied, it has become harder and harder for many to determine where they should focus their resources. Digital marketing, in particular, is becoming increasingly sophisticated and offers opportunities for highly targeted and effective campaigns.

But as B2B marketers are designing integrated programs, many overlook a tactic that has successfully generated leads and closed sales for decades: telemarketing.

Strategically deploying telemarketing to enhance engagement, nurture prospects and improve your data can make the difference between revenue that goes to your bottom line and revenue that goes out the door.

This kind of direct, one-to-one communication has a natural connection with the B2B world, a field built around relationships and tightly targeted audiences.

Many B2B marketers are underleveraging a tactic that has been successfully generating leads and closing sales for decades.

2 B2B Telemarketing: Generate More Leads and Close More SalesTheMxGroup.com | 877-504-7770 | © 2017


Of course, most B2B companies have used telemarketing in one form or another. But many of these programs have not delivered the expected results.

Common issues with telemarketing initiatives include:

• Lack of dedicated resources Rather than dedicating a team, some companies try to leverage resources such as customer service or support personnel for telemarketing. Often this means that the program takes a back seat — with only small volumes of calls made by a team that is not fully focused or highly proficient.

• Resources without B2B experience B2B marketing is more complex than B2C marketing, involving intricate sales dynamics, multiple decision-makers and specialized vocabularies. Telemarketing teams without experience in dealing with these subtleties will not be able to successfully interact with B2B customers and prospects.

• Database issues A calling program is only as good as your data. Companies that haven’t taken the time to create a comprehensive marketing database, or mine their data for high-priority targets, will have limited success with telemarketing.

• Weak technology infrastructure If you are serious about telemarketing, you need to use technologies that can support your calling programs. A list of phone numbers on an Excel spreadsheet is not the basis for a successful campaign. Your team should be using technologies that facilitate efficient calling and information updates, connecting seamlessly with your other systems.

• Lack of integration Telemarketing campaigns should not be done in a vacuum. The real of power of this tactic is unleashed when your telemarketing campaigns are integrated into your entire marketing and sales strategy. Calling initiatives should be part of comprehensive prospect journeys — along with email, direct mail, advertising, trade shows, etc.

Telemarketing Challenges



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5

Generate Leads

Qualify Leads

Improve Follow-up

Nurture Your Leads

Supplement Your Sales Team

In this e-book, we will present proven ideas to set up an effective telemarketing strategy and deliver real results across the entire sales funnel. When integrated into your overall sales and marketing program, telemarketing can help you:

5 Ways Telemarketing Can Help You Grow Your Revenue



B2B marketers consistently cite lead generation as one of their primary goals. Quality leads are, of course, the lifeblood of a marketing and sales operation. Lead generation tactics abound and good marketers are always testing new approaches.

Telemarketing can engage your customers and prospects in a one-to-one dialogue that is not possible through other tactics. There are many calling strategies that have been used successfully to generate leads, including:

• Offering a piece of content (e.g., a white paper)

• Directly asking if the prospect would be interested in your products or services

• Gathering information about the type of products and solutions the prospect has in place now

• Offering a free expert consultation

A good telemarketer will know how to connect with prospects and find leads through any of these types of calls.

1 Generate Leads TELEMARKETING

SALESFUNNEL



One of the biggest challenges in B2B lead management is qualification. Incorporating tele-qualification into your sales and marketing operation will help you fill the information gaps in your lead flow. Is the prospect truly qualified demographically (e.g., size of company, industry, systems)? Are they actively looking for solutions? Is the contact a decision-maker or key influencer? What are their biggest challenges?

Your fulfillment process is a great place to add a qualification step: Call prospects to confirm that they have received materials and find out more about their needs.

Qualification should be part of an integrated scoring process that identifies truly qualified leads to send to your sales team, ensuring that their time remains focused and productive. Deploying telemarketers to qualify leads also allows you to capture valuable intelligence that will help your sales team follow up more effectively.

Tele-qualification for Channel Marketers

Qualifying your leads before you distribute them to your channel partners will help you:

• Build credibility with your partners, which will help your product lines get more of their attention

• Ensure that your partners sell your product and not your competitors' products

• Maintain control of your data; once you’ve handed over a lead, it may be difficult to gather additional insight

Qualify Leads2



In addition to qualification, there are numerous other ways that telemarketing can be used to improve the effectiveness of your follow-up and ability to gather critical information about your prospects and your sales process.

Evaluate Sales Team Follow-upEvery marketing and sales executive wants to find out how well the sales process is working. Are reps following up in a timely manner? Are prospects getting the information they need? Telephone outreach is one of the best ways to find out what’s really happening and pinpoint ways to improve your follow-up procedures.

Post-sale Follow-upThe period immediately after a sale can be a critical moment in a customer relationship. It’s a great opportunity to demonstrate your focus on customer care. It’s also a moment when a happy customer might be receptive to upsell, and an unhappy one can change their tune if their concerns are addressed. Leverage your telemarketing team to start making these connections.

Lost SalesWhen you lose a sale, your sales team will be focused on moving on to the next deal. It’s a numbers game, after all. But there’s a wealth of potential information available from prospects who didn’t convert. What drove their decisions? What were their impressions of your offerings compared to those of the competition? Telemarketing is a cost-efficient way to gather this valuable intelligence.

Improve Follow-up3 Inquiry

Fulfillment

Follow-up



Smart B2B marketers have robust nurturing programs in place, continuously engaging their prospects with content and tools until they are sales-ready. Nurturing journeys are part of the core promise of marketing automation platforms. For many marketers, however, nurturing involves little more than a series of emails. A more effective approach encompasses a wide range of channels, especially telemarketing.

Here are some ways you can incorporate telemarketing into prospect journeys:

• Don’t just email your new white paper to your prospects — call them. Ask if they are

facing the issues covered by your paper and if they’d like to you to send it to them.

• Do a phone survey to find out if your prospects are in the market for new products.

• If you’ve built a tool that allows your leads to configure solutions or calculate ROI,

follow up with phone calls offering additional information or the opportunity to talk to

an expert for more information.

• Invite your prospects to a webinar — and call to follow up.

Properly trained telemarketers will uncover real opportunities in these discussions and elevate them to your sales team. Interactions through these types of phone calls should be integrated with your wider marketing automation and nurturing programs, including lead-scoring models.

If you haven’t mapped telemarketing into your lead nurturing journeys, you’re missing out on a tactic that has significant potential to move many of your leads further down the sales pipeline.

Nurture Your Leads4

NEW CUSTOMER

Engagement withcontent & tools

Database

Targeted emails



It’s a fact. Your sales reps can’t or won’t work every account. Some are simply too small or too remote. It doesn’t make sense for them because the commissions are too low to justify the work involved. And it doesn’t make sense for your company either; you need your sales team focused on the bigger accounts.

A virtual selling or inside sales initiative is the perfect solution. Let a group of telemarketers serve as an extension of your sales team, calling these smaller accounts, providing quotes, answering questions and closing sales. You can set up a team in-house or work with a partner. The benefits of working with an outside firm is that you don’t need to support the overhead of an inside sales staff.

Many companies have decided that prospects with lower margins or potential aren’t worth the trouble and have simply walked away from them. A virtual sales program will allow you to capture the revenue from these accounts without distracting your sales resources.

Supplement Your Sales Team5



You’re anxious to get started. You’re ready to hit the phones so you can generate some leads, connect with customers and gather vital information. But a successful program requires a strong strategic foundation.

Know Your AudienceHow well do you know your target audience? Have you mapped the addressable market? Do you know who your highest-priority prospects are? This process is critical to maximizing your resources because it ensures that you are contacting the right people with the right messages.

You should also make sure that you develop a real understanding of the decision-makers and influencers in your audience. What challenges are they facing and how do your products and services fit in? What are the hurdles to the purchase decision? How do they view your company and your competitors?

This type of intelligence should inform any marketing effort that you do. Luckily, one of the things telemarketing is perfect for is uncovering these insights.

Leveraging scientific market research and direct contact with your prospects and customers will help you identify critical information that will allow you to engage them effectively.

Develop an Integrated PlanOnce you have mapped your market and developed a solid understanding of your prospective customers, you’ll need to map how your telemarketing program fits into the overall prospect-to-customer lifecycle. Calling programs can encompass cold leads, warm leads, current customers, old customers, etc. Additionally, you should clearly identify how your calling campaigns fit in with your other marketing and sales efforts, including lead nurturing programs and sales prospecting. Telemarketing should complement your marketing and sales plans, leveraging your sales and content assets, while playing a well-defined role in moving your prospects through the sales funnel.

Getting Started



The key to an effective telemarketing program is targeting the right audience. Calling everyone in your market will rarely result in a strong ROI.

Focus Your Efforts

You’ll have the greatest impact if you focus your programs on the most promising

accounts and contacts. That means you’ll need to start with some solid metrics

identifying your best prospects. The 80 / 20 rule applies here — focus 80 percent of your

efforts on the 20 percent of your market most likely to result in meaningful sales.

Acquire Good Data A successful telephone lead generation program starts with a quality list. Make sure

that the list you’re using has accurate data and includes qualified companies and

contacts with real purchase authority or influence in your space. If you don’t have

a strong or well-targeted list, work with a skilled data-sourcing partner to assemble

one. (Be careful — there are a lot of disreputable services who will sell untargeted,

inaccurate data.)

Measure Your Results

As with any marketing tactic, you should be measuring the ROI on your telemarketing

programs. Review your metrics on a regular basis and make adjustments. There is

always room for improvements, even in a highly successful campaign. You should

always be testing new approaches.

It's All About Targeting



ConclusionWe’ve covered a few of the powerful and wide-ranging ways that telemarketing can deliver impact across your sales cycle. If you’re not fully leveraging the potential of telemarketing, you are missing out on one of the best ways to deliver impact across your sales cycle — from gathering information to engaging your market to moving your leads all the way through the sale pipeline.

Stop leaving money on the table! Start putting together a plan to integrate telemarketing into your marketing and sales program.

If you'd like to discuss your marketing challenges with one of our B2B telemarketing experts, call The Mx Group at 877-504-7770.



The Mx Group is a demand generation and digital agency that

empowers companies with the competitive edge of modern B2B

marketing. We integrate strategy, technology, marketing operations

and sales optimization services to help companies attract, convert and

retain customers. For more than 25 years, clients have trusted us to

help turn their marketing investments into measurable revenue.

For more information, contact The Mx Group

at 877-504-7770 or [email protected]


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B2B Telemarketing: Generate More Leads and Close More...

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