Telemarketing Lead Generation Blog

Government Stimulus – Steps to Shift Your Telemarketing Focus

Posted on Feb 20, 2009 by Kathy Rizzo, Vice President of Sales and Marketing

High-Tech companies that sell into the Healthcare, Education and/or Government industries may have a little more skip in their step as the stimulus efforts should give a boost to IT spending. Here are some of the funding details that I’ve read in the recent days:

• Healthcare is expected to increase IT spending. Sources have noted $3 billion in grants, loans, and other programs to help health care providers purchase health IT systems and $18 billion for financial rewards for improving patient care through the use of the technology.

• Education is expected to have additional dollars for IT Infrastructure. Sources have noted $20 billion, including $14 billion for K-12 and $6 billion for higher education, for renovation and modernization, including technology upgrades and energy efficiency improvements.

• There are also several areas of the government that should see increased IT spending such as the State Department and Social Security Administration.

Most marketers are now looking at ways to get a piece of this new funding. Whether you focus exclusively on one of the above industries or you typically approach your market horizontally, here are some things you should do with regard to your telemarketing approach:

1. Re-Ignite Past Conversations. Inevitably over the last 12 months you’ve spoken with decision-makers who have an identified pain, but had no funding to act upon. This is the time to target those in Education, Healthcare & Government again and reignite discussions. Likewise, you should also re-target any prospect who has been classified as “Information Gathering” in the past 12 months. Your telemarketing agency or manager should be able to pinpoint these prospects within your telemarketing database through a few simple queries.
2. Prioritize Your Telemarketing Queues. Simply, another thing that you should do is prioritize your telemarketing queues based on industry, bringing the above mentioned industries to the top. For those of you who already focus exclusively on these industries, you should look at prioritizing your top titles (highest decision-makers), as well as prioritize the largest organizations.
3. Tweak Telemarketing Message to be Industry Specific vs Horizontal. If your content assets (whitepapers, webinars, etc) tend to be horizontally focused, that’s OK. However, you should work with your telemarketing team in order to develop some verbal messaging that speaks directly to these industries and touches on their unique pain points. This is very important, as you’re not the only company targeting these prospects, so you need to speak their language and stand out.
4. Invest in Industry Specific List Sources. While no data source is 100% accurate, we have found several industry specific sources that yield very positive results. The industry specific sources tend to be more accurate than general horizontal sources and are worth purchasing if you do not already have lists focused on these industries.

Most importantly, be proactive and engage your telemarketing team immediately in order to work together to position your company and capitalize on this increased funding.

Tagged: lead generation economy, lead generation, lead generation telemarketing, telemarketing sales leads, telemarketing leads, veritical telemarketing

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