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Are You Giving Up Too Soon? Telemarketing Stats You Need to Know

Posted on Jul 15, 2009 by Kathy Rizzo, Vice President Marketing

If you’re not getting strong results from your telemarketing lists, take a look at your attempt strategy.

When I started in the business-to-business telemarketing industry fifteen years ago, the general rule of thought was that attempting a prospect more than three (3) times resulted in diminishing returns. However, as the business landscape has changed, voice mail has become much more prevalent. The traditional “desk job” has diminished, as decision-makers are more mobile than ever before. And now with the recent economic downturn, companies are doing more with fewer resources, forcing employees to handle multiple roles and expanded responsibilities. All of these factors have changed the rules for business-to-business telemarketing.

Examining 1,046,725 B2B telemarketing calls placed over the last year, the average number of attempts required for a completed conversation to take place is now 5.07. Furthermore, the average number of telemarketing attempts for the daily production rate to drop (point of diminishing returns) has increased to 7.2 attempts.

These statistics are from lead generation calls mainly targeting IT decision-makers. If your target market is comprised of c-level executives, the statistics are nearly double.

Thus, if you are using the “old school” method of stopping after 3-attempts, you are not maximizing the potential from your telemarketing lists.

Marketing Directors have many budget constraints. Often, these constraints mean targeting prospects with minimal telemarketing attempts. However, our stats show that this strategy is not an effective approach. Instead, define your “sweet spot,” focus your target list and employ a higher telemarketing attempt rate for optimal results.

Tagged: lead generation, telemarketing b2b, telemarketing b2b stats, telemarketing lead generation attempts

Comments

Jeff Ogden said:

Interesting post, Kathy. It confirms what I thought. Patience and diligence in telemarketing are critical. 14 touches to speak to an exec? That's quite remarkable, but true.

Mark Bryant said:

Kind of like the sales model of 87% of sales go to the 13% who have not given up calling/contacting...

Keith said:

Have you looked at how these stats change if you add a follow-up email to your VM. With BlackBerries and mobile workers depending more on email and text do you see the number of calls needed dropping below 5.07?

Kathy Rizzo said:

Great question, Keith. I agree with you that a voice mail & email combination is important and does yield results (in fact, 5% of our conversations are initiated by scheduling a call via email). However, I do caution on using email during cold-calling if you have not previously gained opt-in consent. Depending on the privacy regulations of our clients, email is sometimes restricted until email preference is obtained.

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