Telenet Marketing Solutions : Blog

Telemarketing Lead Generation: Beyond Statistical Measurability

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

In today’s climate of marketing accountability, the measurability of telemarketing makes it an attractive component for any lead generation program. Marketers are effectively using front-end (i.e. cost per lead, cost per appointment, cost per attendee) and back-end (i.e. cost per opportunity, cost per sale, ROI) statistics to measure, evaluate and compare programs. While the level of marketing analytics in place varies from firm to firm, marketers are looking at real numbers when it comes to telemarketing.

That said, there are a number of benefits that can be generated from telemarketing programs that do not show up in the performance statistics. I think Michelle Palmer, President of Leading Edge, articulates these benefits effectively in her MarketingProfs article, Four Overlooked Benefits of Telemarketing

Her article outlines the following telemarketing benefits that can help you generate more value from your lead generation programs:

Get in on the ground floor with a new customer
Generate key customer and marketplace data
Build brand awareness
Test your materials and your message

Make sure you are leveraging every aspect of your telemarketing programs to maximize the value of your investment. Even though it won’t show up in the metrics, be sure to communicate it.

The Five Most Read Lead Generation Tips & Best Practices

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’d like to take a moment to thank our readers for subscribing to our telemarketing best practice blog. Our subscription base has more than doubled over the last two months! We are thrilled that you take a few minutes out of each week to read our tips and suggestions and hope you’ve found the information helpful. Since we have so many new subscribers, I thought it would be beneficial to point you to our 5 most read entries since we launched our blog in early 2008.

How Lead Nurturing Affects Your Lead Metrics & ROI (posted 2/12/08)
Bridging the Gap between Marketing & Sales to Ensure Telemarketing Lead Generation Success (posted 3/5/08)
Tips for Hands-On Sales Lead Management (posted 2/25/08)
How to Develop a Telemarketing Critical Business Issue (CBI) Voice Mail Strategy (posted 5/7/08)
The Human Touch of Lead Nurturing (posted 6/17/08)

We need to hear from you! Please provide comments on what topics you’d like to see more of as we continue our blog into 2009. You can post a comment on our blog (below) or send me an email directly at: krizzo@telenetmarketing.com

How to Position Your Company Beyond the "Right Now"

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Kathy’s comments about the role of Teleservices during economic struggle last week got me to thinking about how our calls have changed as a result of recent uncertainty. Specifically, we’ve needed to pay additional attention to the ways in which our contacts raise objections and what that means for our clients.

The most common objections we hear from prospects center on right now —“we’re good right now,” “we don’t have a budget right now,” “we aren’t making any purchases right now.” I’m constantly telling my reps that they need to get their contacts to define “right now.” Is it this year? This quarter? This month? More often than not, we find that contacts mean—quite literally—in the timeframe of the call.

This is kind of a silly assumption on the contact’s part, right? Our agents are not sitting there with pen poised to take down credit card information, just hoping they’ll dial someone who needs to make a huge purchase right away. We’re looking to uncover business pains and challenges and to help prospects develop long-term strategies to address those issues. These are not problems with a “right now” kind of solution.

The “right now” objection actually serves to open up the conversation—if you’re looking at it the right light. There are a whole host of follow-up questions that can help you gather crucial information to solidify your relationship with the prospect and outline future steps. For example, What would you be doing right now, if you did have the budget? Is there something you wish you were doing, or need to be doing, but can’t because of budget restrictions? Are multiple projects competing for limited budget resources? Was this a budget that was previously established and got pulled? How disruptive is this budgeting issue to your business or your department? What are you doing about maintenance?

Success lies in getting the prospect to understand that you’re not in it for the right now—you’re in it for the long haul, as a committed business partner, dedicated to establishing and growing a relationship that is beneficial for them. Hence the need for a strategic nurturing initiative.

A nurturing program will allow you to develop ongoing relationships with prospects so when right now eventually arrives your company is top of mind.

Using Telemarketing to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

The economy is on everyone’s mind, both personally and professionally. I’ve had several clients ask about the role of Teleservices during this period of economic struggle. Last week, I provided some suggestions for how to focus your telemarketing dollars. Additionally one of my June postings, reported that B2B marketers were estimating a 60% increase in the length of buy cycle because of the down economy. At that time, I pointed out three ways that telemarketing can help to shorten the sales cycle and improve your messaging. I think they are worth repeating now…

Real-time Market Feedback: The advantage companies have when they engage their prospects in conversations is the ability to ask pinpointed questions in order to better understand the market’s pain points, critical business issues and situations. If you are conducting a telemarketing campaign, ensure that you are asking your market questions way beyond “do you have a purchase planned?”. Focus questions on their critical business issues and pain points in order to learn what keeps them up at night. You may find that what you think your market is worried about and what they really are worried about are two entirely different things. This intelligence allows you to finetune your marketing and sales efforts, moving prospects into your sales funnel more quickly.
Message Testing: When you launch a telemarketing lead generation program, you don’t have to focus on just one message. Instead, you can test multiple value propositions. Since calls are digitally recorded, you can instantly tap directly into the thoughts of your market. Messaging approaches and value propositions can be compared, tested and changed in a moment’s notice. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your telemarketing value propositions. They are easy to change and you can obtain instant feedback on what works and what does not resonate with your market. When your message aligns closely with your market’s needs, you are in a much better position to move prospects into your sales funnel.
Nurturing Focused on Pain Points: When sales cycles are long, nurturing becomes even more critical. A great way to shorten your sales cycle is to develop a touch strategy, which includes telemarketing, and is focused on providing relevant information that is tied to your prospect’s pain points. The idea is to push the pain – keeping it top of mind – while offering useful and relevant information to solve the problem. Consider developing your nurturing marketing matrix centered on top market pain points.

Building Databases and Uncovering Contacts : Leveraging the Internet With Telemarketing

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Considering that over 60% of a telemarketing lead generation campaign’s success is directly attributed to the targeted database, it is evident how important data is to achieving desired results. Building and maintaining accurate contact databases is an ongoing challenge for many marketing and sales departments. Although every organization has unique data challenges or needs (from verifying existing contacts to uncovering new ones), one commonality is that no one wants to waste time and resources chasing the wrong prospects.

For contact generation and verification programs, TeleNet has had the most success using a combination of telemarketing, web research, and electronic validation. We have been running programs of this nature for years and the biggest innovations have primarily come through the way we use the Internet. For a number of reasons, organizations have become much less willing to share employee information (not directing calls without a specific name, etc), requiring more upfront research to uncover the appropriate contacts needed to start the verification process.

If you are tasked with building or maintaining a database, here are a few online sources of information that can be utilized to assist you with your contact generation process:

Data Services such as Hoover’s or Harte-Hanks (subscription required) – used to find company information and executive and other high-level contacts
Company Websites – used to find management team members or press releases, blogs and other content that may provide relevant contacts and contact information (i.e. direct lines, email naming conventions)
Google Searches – used to search for specific titles or job functions within specific companies to uncover contacts for verification
Networking Sites such as Linked-In or Jigsaw – used to search for specific titles or job functions within specific companies to uncover potential contacts (and who they may be connected to) for verification
Industry Resources such as trade publications and industry organizations/conferences – used to search for key executives within target companies

These sources play a key role in uncovering the contacts that should be verified through the calling process. Even if the contacts uncovered turn out not to be the appropriate contacts, they serve as a starting point to penetrate organizations and obtain referrals.

How to Keep (and even increase!) Telemarketing Lead Generation Budgets

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

At MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit earlier this month, a survey of B2B marketers unveiled statistics relating to increasing or decreasing marketing budget by area. The report showed some trends. For instance, the majority of B2B marketers are planning to decrease dollars for TV Advertising. However, relating specifically to telemarketing, nearly as many B2B marketers reported that telemarketing dollars will be “decreased” as those who reported that telemarketing dollars will be “increased” in 2009.

This is a very interesting observation. So, what does it mean? My opinion is that during this period of economic struggle, companies that align their telemarketing activities closely with sales and driving business will increase their telemarketing dollars. Conversely, those companies that align telemarketing more closely with awareness building marketing activity will cut their resources.

So if you believe in telemarketing and find it a valuable part of your marketing strategy, how can you keep (or even increase) your dollars? My suggestions are…

Focus on measurable activity that drives leads to your sales team
Collaborate regularly with your sales team to ensure you’re providing the “right” type and level of leads that they can close
Avoid broad-based awareness campaigns or surveys without specific offers
Don’t waste time or money. If a campaign is not producing results, then stop it. Analyze results and make proactive changes.
Engage in closed loop activity so you can tie ROI to your campaigns
Measure, Measure, Measure! Make sure you have comprehensive reporting so you can measure and report all activity.

The Importance of Lead Generation Goals: Setting, Communicating, & Tracking

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Goals are the measurement of success. Without goals, how can you know if success was achieved? Thus, it is important to determine what success is and to communicate the goals necessary to achieve that success.

Goals are best created with the input and approval of all parties involved. That means a joint effort on the part of both client and telemarketing vendor. Furthermore, there must be upper level management approval of the goals on both the client and vendor side. The measurement of success must be clear to everyone, and it must be achievable. Setting a goal too high can create panic and then complacency while setting a goal too low can cause laziness. Either way true potential is not reached. Base goals on a combination of past performance, the state of the market place and desired growth.

Additionally, there may be multiple types of goals. For example in a lead generation campaign, there will obviously be a lead goal, but the data garnered from non-lead conversations is also very valuable. Make sure to set goals for all the important data points.

Once the goals are set, communication of the goals is the imperative next step. Anyone that will affect the goals and the delivery of the final product should be fully aware of what they are, how they will be achieved, and the timeframe in which they are to be met. That means not only upper level management through the Marketing Communication Specialist making the calls, but also the support staff like Quality Assurance & the IT team. Setting and communicating goals isn’t where the process ends. Once those steps are complete, the goals must be tracked. Thus, the proper tools must be created in order for the progress to the goals to be monitored. Make sure the tools are in line with the right measurements and that they are easy to use and understand.

Success will be more clearly understood and obtained if the above process is followed. To recap, goals should be set with buy-in from both client and telemarketing vendor, they should be communicated to all involved parties, and they should be monitored consistently. Following these guidelines will help achieve successful telemarketing campaigns.

Three Things Lead Generation Managers Should Do in the Fourth Quarter

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Time flies! It’s hard to believe that it’s already 4th quarter (for those of us on a calendar fiscal year). Right now your sales team is focused on closing business. Your best sales reps are aggressively pursing all of their immediate opportunities and are working feverishly to meet and surpass their quotes in order to maximize the potential of their compensation plans.

So with all their focus on closing business, what isn’t your sales team doing?

First, with only 3 months left in the year, they are likely NOT nurturing long-term opportunities since they must focus all their efforts on immediate opportunities in order to impact their quota
Chances are, they see pursuing tradeshow attendees or other unqualified responses as a waste of their time and in the best scenario, they “cherry-pick” the lists.
Most have abandoned their cold-calling activities. Keep in mind, no one likes cold calling. It’s done out of necessity. So, those sales reps who are cold-calling during Q4 are likely your “weak-links” as they are only cold-calling now because they weren’t effective in building their pipeline throughout the year.

Given this typical fourth quarter situation, as a marketer in charge of lead generation activities, what should you focus your time on right now?

Build Your Pipeline. When the dust settles and sales teams have closed all that they can to meet/exceed their quotas for the year, they will be in desperate need to obtain new opportunities for the top of their sales funnel. Get ahead of this by spending significant time in Q4 qualifying leads (tradeshows, webinars, etc) and generating new opportunities (cold-calling) that will positively impact your first two quarters of ’09.
Nurture Your Long-Term Opportunities. Be careful not to send your sales team long-term opportunities when they are in “close business” mode. Instead, this is the time to gear up your nurturing activities so you can keep prospects warm until they are ready for sales attention.
Requalify Your Leads. Look at your leads from the year. Chances are some have fallen through the cracks. By implementing a requalification telemarketing program in which you reach out to your past leads in order to determine current situation/needs, you will likely uncover several “immediate” needs that will impact your Q4 sales numbers. Get these to your sales team asap!

Do Your Telemarketing Lead Generation Goals Reflect the Big Picture?

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

As a telemarketing Program Director, my focus is selling services. Selling services requires a thorough understanding of our prospects individual and organizational goals. Likewise, the value of the service I provide when executing telemarketing campaigns, hinges on my ability to help my client’s reach their overall goals. This is nothing new. Setting goals has long been a part of campaign planning, as it is necessary to ensure achievement of an acceptable return on investment. What is evolving, however, is how these goals are used to motivate and manage your telemarketing team.

In a typical telemarketing campaign, key metrics are tracked and evaluated to determine the success or failure of the initiative. These goals are derived from baseline industry standards or data mining of past performance metrics. While these goals provide important benchmarks for analysis, they also set performance expectations for the team carrying out each individual campaign.

Individual campaign goals are effective but, when there are multiple initiatives taking place simultaneously, you can motivate performance to new levels by communicating the big picture goal to all members of the team. Research has shown that group goals are far more effective in collective endeavors. This is because a team goal is more than just the sum of its individual parts. In fact, it is an entirely different thing all together.

When setting team goals and communicating the big picture to your team there are a few guidelines to follow.

By definition, a team goal should include some input from the team. Typically the goal itself may not be a number you can alter. That’s why group goals should focus on processes (telemarketing best practices), not outcomes (raw number of leads). For maximum buy-in, you should get your team’s input on how you are going to achieve the goal.
Goals have to be specific. You know how many leads you need to generate in a given timeframe, so what is your plan of action? This plan should be outlined and tracked as you make progress towards the goal.
Goals must be challenging yet realistic. That is, the team must perceive the challenge as realistic. Avoiding rigidness is key. Build flexibility into your process by establishing regular checkpoints and a plan for communicating proactive steps to avoid pitfalls when necessary.
Visibility. Setting performance benchmarks motivates and inspires performance excellence. When the results and performance expected of your team is publicly displayed and clearly associated with the overall success of your organization, your goals will be motivating and inspiring.

If you are looking for a way to consolidate your marketing efforts and gain dashboard visibility into the effectiveness of your overall marketing plan, consider team goal setting and motivate your team to new levels of performance.

The Three Fundamental “Touches” That Should be Included in Every Telemarketing Lead Generation Campaign

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT

At Monday’s MarketingSherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin from MarketingExperiments referenced that marketers need to think in terms of touches versus attempts.

We’ve written a lot about touches relating to our nurturing methodology, however, it’s important to also think about the three fundamental touches that should be part of every lead generation telemarketing campaign, regardless of the number of attempts you make…

Touch #1: Critical Business Issue (CBI) Voice Mail.*

It’s amazing how very little attention marketers give to creating business focused voice mails as part of their telemarketing strategy. However, when you think that more than 75% of your telemarketing dials result in a voice mail, it becomes more evident why crafting an effective voice mail message and strategy is beneficial. Think of it as the first touch to your prospects. Read our previous blog posting for tips to create a CBI VM: How to Develop a Telemarketing Critical Business Issue Voice Mail Strategy

Touch #2: The Conversation.

This is the obvious touch that everyone associates with telemarketing. As you craft the messaging for your conversations, keep two items in mind always: 1.) illustrate relevancy by tying to a business pain and illustrating business value (in other words, don’t simply push a self-serving feature) and 2.) Get the prospect talking. When people talk about their own situations, they feel more of a connection to you – which is the first step in relationship building.

Touch #3: Email Follow-up.

Whether you are speaking with a “sales-ready” lead or a long-term prospect, you should (with permission) send an email follow-up upon conclusion of your telephone conversation. This email communication acts to reinforce the discussion points from your conversation, as well as provide additional value to the prospect. Additionally, sending personalized emails to prospects that you are unable to reach can be a very effective way to solicit a next step. For tips on creating your email templates, please refer to Creating Email Templates to Integrate with Your Telemarketing Lead Generation