Telemarketing Lead Generation Blog

Effectiveness of High-end “Hooks” Combined with Telemarketing

Posted on May 19, 2008 by Kathy Rizzo, Vice President Marketing

Following Melissa Joffrion’s April 29th blog entry regarding appointment-setting techniques, I received a question from one of my industry colleagues asking if high-end hooks are truly beneficial when developing qualified appointments via telemarketing. I’ll share my answer with everyone…

Per Melissa’s blog entry, What You Should Consider Before Launching an Appointment Setting Telemarketing Campaign, a “hook” is an incentive offered during the appointment setting process to initiate dialog. Examples include mailing ear buds with an offer to provide a pre-loaded MP4 player at the time of the appointment or mailing a faux cardboard PDA to “trade-in” for the real thing at time of an appointment.

The value of using this type of hook is its ability to get above the “marketing noise” that your targeted prospects receive. With the magnitude of direct mail and email that your prospects receive, sending a dimensional mailer containing a hook is a great way to stand out and get their attention. Bottom-line, it’s memorable. Via our telemarketing follow-up, we have experienced more success in receiving assistance from the gatekeepers and ultimately more success in reaching the decision-makers when we’ve sent a memorable “hook”. With that said, relying solely on the hook is not enough – especially when targeting executives. Instead view the hook as simply a way to get attention, not as the sole vehicle to obtain a qualified appointment.

Once you have the prospect’s attention by using your hook, you have only a few seconds to turn that into action. The way to do this is to focus your message on the benefits of your service/solution and the business value associated with scheduling an appointment with one of your account executives. Craft a tailored message that addresses specific business issues that are common with their target market, job function or area of expertise.

Additionally, spend some time asking pinpointed questions in order to better understand the current business situation of your prospect to ensure they are the “right” fit and that ultimately both you and your prospect will achieve value from the appointment. At this stage, your hook should be positioned as a “thank you” versus an incentive. We typically like to position the hook in this manner: “as a token of our appreciation for your time – and to provide some additional information on our services – our account executive will provide the pre-loaded MP4 player at the time of your appointment.”

There are two important items to keep in mind when deciding if a high-end hook is right for your project:

• Level of your target market: Given that offering this type of hook is not inexpensive, it’s important to target only high-level executives for an enterprise solution or service. In other words, if you are targeting managers for a tactical product, the expense will not be cost justified.
• Relevancy of the “hook” to your market: It’s important that the hook is perceived as valuable to the prospect’s job. A pre-loaded MP4 player with a targeted business presentation is a value to the market. Conversely, a remote control for a toy car is likely not a value to your market.

Bottom-line, when used appropriately, there is a benefit in using a high-end hook – however, it’s only truly effective if used in conjunction with strong benefit statements, pain-inducing probing questions and qualification of need via telemarketing.

Tagged: telemarketing appointment setting, telemarketing qualified appointments, telemarketing sales leads, targeted lead generation

• Anabel Foucart, Program Director
• Ashlea Harris, Vice President of Program Management
• Chris Engel, Vice President Information Technology
• Dana Gill, Program Director
• Jason St Onge, Account Executive
• Jason StOnge, Account Executive
• Jon Plant, Account Executive
• Jon Plant, Program Director
• Kathy Rizzo, Vice President Marketing
• Laura Johnson, Program Director
• Melissa Joffrion, Account Executive
• Mike Usry, Account Executive
• Sharon Dahlhaus, Account Executive