I must admit, I'm not a purist about this one.

For many people "Telemarketing" and "Telesales" are inter-changeable descriptions for the role of sales lead generation and appointment setting.

I suppose, strictly speaking, you could describe them as:

Telemarketing - conducting marketing research, surveys, data-cleaning and generating marketing leads by telephone.

Telesales - actually closing business over the phone.

These are two extremes with telemarketing being the softer end of the spectrum and telesales being the sharper end (we clearly see ourselves at as the latter)

However, I've found that when most people are talking about "telesales" they're thinking about someone who's making calls to either generate leads or set up sales appointments.

Essentially, telemarketing and telesales are both seen as part of the sales process.

Interestingly, Wikipedia currently describes Telemarketing as follows:

Telemarketing (known as telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits to prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call.

I thought the "known as telesales in the UK and Ireland" was interesting.

Certainly, I know a number of US based "telemarketers" who would always consider themselves salespeople, so maybe Wikipedia's got that one right.

Either way, whether it's telemarketing or telesales, it's always about the same thing - opening doors and closing deals.

Labels: telemarketing services, telesales

One of the things we're finding in the current economic climate is the need to recalibrate success metrics for telemarketing campaigns. Essentially, we need to re-think the number and type of meetings that can be delivered for a given number of days effort.

Some of this is sector specific and some of it holds true across all sectors.

Generally, if you'd asked any seasoned telemarketer at the beginning of 2008 how many meetings they could book in a day it would roughly equate to 1 per day.

A "deal a day" has been the unofficial benchmark for B2B telemarketing.

And, for clarification, I'm talking about senior level, well qualified meetings, not just a 15-minute coffee that's been squeezed out of a prospect and has a 100% chance of being bounced.

So, what's changed since early 2008?

Actually, you know what's changed; we've entered one of the most severe recessions experienced for decades.

What this means from a telemarketing perspective is that it's become harder to get meetings but, ironically, the meetings are much better quality.

Think about it. When times are good, budgets are plump, people are generally more open to looking at new ideas and exploring new relationships. Bringing in a new agency, consultancy or vendor to pitch their credentials is the norm.

However, when budgets have been cut off at the knees and you're wondering whether you've still got a job (or a business) in the next 3 months, you're going to restrict your time to things that have both a short-term impact or are critically aligned with the business agenda.

This means two things:

Firstly, it's essential that your pitch hits those hot buttons. OK, the time-line may vary depending how strategic your proposition is, but unless it cuts directly to what's on the business agenda right now, it's going to fall on deaf ears.

Secondly, if they are interested, you can bet it's hot one.

People just won't meet you to shoot the breeze at the moment. If they've agreed to see you it's because they need your help.

We're finding that businesses which hit those hot buttons and can deliver a rapid return-on-investment without large capital investment are still getting traction.

Sure, the "one deal a day" rule could now be more like one deal every two or even three days, but if the trade-off is high conversions, shorter-lead times, etc then telemarketing can still be one of the best direct marketing mediums for high-end B2B lead generation.

Labels: b2b telemarketing, telemarketing agency, telemarketing ROI, telemarketing services

This is really something that annoys me about telemarketers that use scripts; I'm sure you've had this happen to you too.

The phone rings, I answer "Hello, David Regler" and they start "Can I speak with Mr David Regler please?"

Did they not hear what I just said?

If find this happens in both B2C and B2B telemarketing and it comes down to the simple fact that they're more interested in reading the script than actually opening their ears and listening to what the prospect is saying.

This is one of the reasons why we don't use scripts.

Somewhere there's a book that every telemarketing company has read that says you have to start a call with "May I speak with Mr X, please?". So, guess what, that's what every telemarketing company says when the start the call.

Think about it, you've probably been called a thousand times with that same line. So, when you hear it you just know what's coming, right? Shields up!

The trouble is that they might very well have something of interest but when they start out like this you just stop listening and start thinking "how do I get out of this call?

So you've got this bizarre situation where the telemarketer isn't listening, he's just trying to grind through the script and complete "another call". The prospect on the phone isn't listening because they're sat there trying to figure out what to say to get out of the call (which they'll do once the telemarketer finally takes a breath!).

Two people on the phone, neither wants to be there and neither is listening to the other.

Strange world, isn't it?

Labels: b2b telemarketing, cold calling, telemarketing services

If you're considering hiring a telemarketing agency for a campaign, what are the questions you should ask?

I've been asked this before on a number of occasions, particularly by people who have "tried telemarketing before" and had their fingers burned.

The reality is that telemarketing is one of those businesses which you can literally set up with a phone and a spare room. If you include freelancers, there are probably thousands of telemarketing agencies out there, and quality does vary.

So, here's a list of areas which you can focus your questions to determine whether a telemarketing agency is right for you:

1) Client experience - has the telemarketing agency worked on similar campaigns for other clients in your sector? Most sectors have their own terminology and ways of doing business. If your telemarketing agency has worked for similar clients previously they are more likely to quickly grasp your proposition. Typically, when you speak to the telemarketing agency, you'll get an understanding of whether they "speak your language".

2) Market & Sectors - what type of companies has the telemarketing agency experience of calling into. Whilst the first question looks at client experience, this is focused on the companies that you are targeting. For example, a telemarketing agency may have worked with other web design agencies previously, but if they were calling one-man-bands and you want to target FTSE 100 prospects that doesn't really work.

3) Function & seniority - similar to the above question, is the telemarketing agency experienced at calling into the function and/or level of decision maker that you are targeting. For example, if you are targeting HR, has the telemarketing agency successfully completed similar campaigns into that business function. Again, language varies between functions. Calling CEO's is very different to calling middle management.

[It's worth mentioning before I continue that often you need to take a view of the breadth of experience the telemarketing agency has, rather than expecting to find an agency that has done exactly the same campaign as yours. An example could be a telemarketing agency that has called into HR previously for a training company, and has also worked for software companies before, but not run a campaign for a software company calling into HR. Like most things in life, it's about finding the right balance]

4) Reporting - how will the telemarketing agency keep you up-to-date on the progress of your campaign? Do they provide summary reports? Can they work on CRM systems? Depending on the scope and scale of your campaign, a regular update by Excel could be all you need. The important thing is to be kept informed on how the telemarketing campaign is progressing.

5) Data - two questions here. What data will the telemarketing agency be using and, once the campaign has finished, what happens to the data? Cutting costs by re-using stale data is a false economy. And the quality of data has a direct impact on the output of any telemarketing campaign. Personally, I would always make sure that the telemarketing agency buys (or builds) the data-set on your behalf because then it's their responsibility to make sure it's good data (they can't blame you that the data was poor), plus you "own" the data at the end of the campaign (subject to the terms of the data provider, of course).

6) Track record - how long have they worked with their clients? As I said earlier, there are lots of telemarketing agencies out there. What you're looking to avoid is an agency that can't provide references for long-term clients. Good telemarketing agencies (and good freelance telemarketers) keep clients over the long term. Even if they don't work continuously on campaigns, their clients will come back to them. Why, because good telemarketing agencies (and telemarketers) are hard to find! For example, we're still working with our first client we started with back in 2005. That speaks volumes!

7) ROI - telemarketing should always deliver a strong ROI (return-on-investment) and agencies that understand this should be willing to advise you on what they can deliver for their fees. Good agencies will agree deliverables up-front, and work closely with you during any pilot or proof-of-concept period to review performance. If an agency can't give you any clear indication of what ROI they expect to deliver on a campaign - walk away.

8) Staff retention - what's their staff turnover, or churn rate? How long have their people been working with them? This applies equally to telemarketing agencies with employees or ones that work with associates (such as ours). Why is this important? Well, assuming you want to develop a long-term relationship with a telemarketing agency, you want to know if the time you invest getting their people up to speed with your business and proposition is going to be wasted or not. For example, one of our team (who we've worked with for several years) used to be a manager of a telemarketing agency. She told me one of the reasons she stopped and went freelance was because she got tired of coming back after the weekend and finding a whole new team to train. Large call-centres have the highest rate of churn than any other business.

9) Client portfolio - how many clients do they work with? And are any of them direct competitors? This gives you a good indication of whether you're going to be "just another client" or whether you're going to get a more personal service. Also, the question around competitors tells you whether there's likely to be any conflict of interest (and whether the telemarketing agency has any integrity). Working with a telemarketing agency that handles your competitors brings up so many issues around data security, intelligence leaks, etc; it's best to simply avoid it altogether.

10) Who's calling - finally, who's actually going to be picking up the phone and calling on your account? Any telemarketing agency, once you've agreed commercials, should introduce you to the team member(s) who will be working on your account. This is your opportunity to speak with them (ask some of the above questions, like "how long have you worked here?") and get a feel for whether you are comfortable with them representing your company on the phone. If the telemarketing agency can't do this, it means that you'll just get the "next one available", which pretty much means you're just another number to them.

So there you are, 10 areas to probe and prod a potential telemarketing agency.

And if you find more than one agency that ticks all the boxes it'll probably come down to the best question of all - do you like them?

Labels: b2b telemarketing, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I was chatting about this with one of my associates recently (an experienced telemarketer who's made 1000's of pitches over her career) and we were discussing the process of refining a pitch. It was apparent to me that in the business-to-business (B2B) space, telemarketing is much more of an art than a science.

Here's why I say that.

Direct marketing has always included both a creative element (such as writing copy) and then a science element (metrics, split testing, etc). These things go hand-in-hand because a minor change to the copy, when tested properly, can show a huge uplift in results.

That's why I've always thought of myself as a direct-marketer (coming from a sales background initially) as I'm always focused on results.

Anyway, the same is true for telemarketing but here's the difference: in B2C direct marketing campaigns, the volumes are such that tactics like segmentation, split testing, etc can be applied. For example, if you're sending out 500,000 direct mail pieces (or emails, or whatever) then you can test 1,000 on two different versions to find the one which makes a difference. A 1% uplift can make a huge impact to the overall campaign ROI.

However, in business-to-business telemarketing, and particularly high-end B2B telemarketing, these numbers really don't make sense.

For many clients, we may work on a campaign targeting a few hundred companies. When you really target your sweet-spot, for most small businesses, this is normal. When you are faced with a very small segment, it's not as easy to see statistically relevant results from making discrete changes.

Plus, add to this the human element. That is, even with a script (if you use such things, we don't) the message isn't delivered exactly the same way every time - even using the same telemarketer. So many variables come into play that it's impossible to determine which one made the difference.

Hence, it's an art, and one which is best practised by experienced people who have learned their craft by making thousands of pitches.

Labels: telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

It's always good to put a name to something.

After my earlier post which asked the question "Is stand alone telemarketing dead?" I was reading an article in CCF (yes, even I read the call-centre press) and came across the term "Unified Communications" in an article about future technology trends for call centres.

The article refers to Unified Communications (UC) as the "next big step" which offers real integration between telephony, the web, email, instant messaging and social networking sites.

The example they give is where agents "have a view of which experts are available to help them if they encounter a problem when on a call. The expert could be asked to join a chat session and shared documents could be used"

Obviously, much of this is referring to large inbound contact centres but how about UC for outbound?

From my perspective, as a small telemarketing agency already combining phone, web, email and IM (such as Skype) on a regular basis between client teams and our new business people, this is already available. OK, it requires a certain amount of intelligence on the part of the "agent" but that's not a problem for us.

Another area where unified communications is an interesting concept, particularly with respect to telemarketing & lead generation, is the integration of web forms, email marketing and pay-per-click lead generation with an outsourced telemarketing or telesales resource.

To me, this is when we start to see increased returns by joining up disparate marketing technologies into a closed-loop process. The actual communication channel used shouldn't really be of any concern; neither should we be be forcing prospects into any particular channel for ongoing communication.

As I say, unified communications are available now, but just not on one platform that you can scale and manage across 1000's of agents

So, I guess it'll still be a few years before the big boys catch up.

Labels: telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I've posted often about our approach to lead generation and appointment setting and how it's different the the way most telemarketing companies work.

But a recent conversation with an associate who's probably written the book on cold-calling made me wonder whether telemarketing as a stand-alone marketing tactic has finally had it's day.

Certainly, in the b2c sector it's days are well and truly numbered, evidenced by the growth of TPS and the Do Not Call Registry in the US. As far as business-to-business telemarketing is concerned, I think the time is also running out.

Now, let me be clear, I'm not saying that prospecting for new business by phone is dead, far from it. But, I do believe that telemarketing on its own is no longer effective.

This typically applies to larger telemarketing agencies and outbound call centres than smaller telemarketing companies, as their entire business model is based upon volume and scripts. Their approach is to keep dialling until they finally reach someone and then deliver a killer script designed to "trick" them into saying "yes".

Excuse me, but that simply doesn't work any more.

For many senior decision makers, telephone is no longer the preferred method of communication. Partly due to the telemarketing industry and partly due to the nature of work (mobility, home-working, meetings, time pressures, etc) business people today avoid incoming phone calls as much as possible.

And if you do get them on the phone, will they really sit through a six-minute scripted pitch? I don't think so.

In business-to-business, lead generation today is about one-on-one marketing, opening a dialogue and using a mix of communication methods.

Here's an example of how large call centres have got it so wrong:

I received a call a while back from a utility company (it was already my utility company as it happens) wanting to get me to switch my electricity to them.

Now, as it happens, I was interested in doing this, but I wanted to see something in writing before I made any decision ("decision strategies" are a whole other area to blog about but basically, many people want to see something before they can make a decision). So, I asked them to send me something. "Sorry, can't do that" was the reply.

If you're from the old school of sales you'd probably chalk up my request as a "time waster" or a delaying tactic and simply move on. But, I don't subscribe to all those "buyers are liars" sales cliches.

No, the reason they couldn't send me anything was because they were sitting in an office in Chennai or Glasgow and were not in anyway joined up with the whole sales process.

So they didn't send me anything. Wasted call, wasted opportunity.

When we work on new business campaigns for our clients we operate as part of their team. We hold collateral, send emails from our clients' domain, and nurture leads through the pipeline.

When we initially approach someone (by phone or email) and they ask for info, what does it tell them when we send it to them and then follow-up? It tells them that we're interested in starting a dialogue.

It may (and often does) take several phone calls, emails & voice-mails over a period of weeks or months until they're ready. Over that period we're demonstrating that we're not a pushy salesperson, we value their time and we want to do business.

When the timing is right, we'll book a meeting (or conference call, or whatever the appropriate next step is).

To me this is simple. Why have most telemarketing companies got it so wrong?

I guess, lucky for us, they have :-)

Labels: appointment setting services, lead generation agency, lead generation company, new business development, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

For me, one of the interesting things I picked up at the Being Digital event I attended yesterday (excellent event btw) was that consumers don't mind adverts as long as they're relevant.

OK, that may seem obvious, but it came out of a lengthy panel discussion on how to monetise content in a fragmented market without upsetting your audience.

When adverts as relevant (or targeted), such as with Google Adwords, then people don't object to them. In a way, there's this serendipitous effect that the advert appears to reach you just when you were looking.

OK, maybe that's over egging it, but there's no doubt that the more targeted your ads the higher the conversion, or CPR, or whatever metric you're using plus (and here's the real thing) the less you upset your target market.

This is what I've always said about targeted cold-calling for new business.

When you really target your audience, then your hit rate goes up, plus the people you are calling will respect the fact that your call was relevant to them. Even if they're not interested today, they will agree that they could have been.

Think about it. For most telemarketers they're calling you just because you're the next person on their list. How does that make you feel? Now, how different does it feel if someone contacts you because they've actually thought about whether you might be interested before they called you?

Perhaps they've done some research about your business or competitors. Or they've noticed a trigger event that makes them believe you would respond positively to their message.

Approaching any new business campaign in this way is essential to starting a relationship that you can build on for the future.

It's about mutual respect, really.

Labels: appointment setting services, cold calling, lead generation agency, lead generation company, new business development, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

The guys at Jigsaw sent over an email today for a webinar they're running next week "Microwave Your Cold Calls -- Sales 2.0". Catchy title, I thought.

But why does it seems that everything is "2.0" nowadays?

According to their blurb,

Prospects today are even more short of time than ever and "Old school" selling techniques are less-and-less effective. It's time to not only warm up your cold calls. It's time to "nuke 'em". It's time for Sales 2.0.

I agree that things have moved on. Email is the preferred method of contact for many prospects (particularly senior ones) and, as I've blogged about many times before here, you need to target prospects with precision to make an impact today.

Nigel Edelshain, who's behind this Sales 2.0 concept and is presenting on the webinar, says that most sales people "do reasonably well once they are in a sales meeting. But most of them are unable to execute a successful prospecting/lead generation program".

100% behind you there, Nigel. For salespeople also read: "any small business owner and Director". Nigel goes on to say:

One element that really distinguishes "Sales 2.0" in my eyes from "old school selling" is the focus on the front end of the sales process not the back end. The "old school" sales books always focused on closing techniques and said very little about prospecting. "Sales 2.0" flips this approach and puts most of a sales person's time and energy into research and prospecting.

Again, couldn't agree more Nigel. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that if lead generation is done right the deals almost close themselves (OK, maybe that's a bit far)

But, he's correct that if you target the right people with a well researched proposition it's at least 50% of the way there.

Whether that's really 2.0 or not I'm not so sure.

No doubt, Nigel will go on to show us how we can use Jigsaw, LinkedIn, et al to target prospects and that's where the 2.0 bit will come in.

But I wouldn't rule out the "old school" either. Even with the all the tools available to target prospects, sometimes you've still got to pick up that phone.

But that's just my 2.0 pence... or 2.0 cents if you're on Nigel's side of the pond.

Labels: sales lead generation, social networking sites, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

Can you remember that line from Joe in Reservoir Dogs - "Let's go to work"

What a great film!

There's this theme that runs through some of my favourite films. Films like Ronin, Heat and, of course, Reservoir Dogs.

In all these films there's this core team of experts who come together to execute a plan.

That's something I completely identify with because it's at the heart of what we do; we pull together a team of seasoned experts, usually formed around a core team who we have worked with previously, to make it happen.

Our clients use us because we just "get to work".

It's something I've always enjoyed about people who are real experts at what they do; the straight-forward way they effortlessly deliver.

Whether we're talking about a builder, plumber or sales person, you know when you're with someone who's an expert in their field. And we're not talking about "book smart" here, I'm referring to the seasoned, battle-scarred expert who's earned their stripes in the trenches.

"Workman like" is a good term for it. No fuss, someone who quickly knows what needs to be done and gets organised to do it. Simple.

In fact, one of my favourite client testimonials pretty much sums it up:

"David is easy to work with, he understands how to get results and he delivers."

Let's go to work...

Labels: new business development, sales outsourcing, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

Adding to what I said on my previous post, I came across this blog "The Ultimate Revenge On A Telemarketer".

This really is the best! Have fun.

I found it on an Ecademy blog which was talking about how to avoid telemarketers.

It seems the word "telemarketer" is not a label someone wants to have; it's signifies someone who's a low-level, scripted, call-centre...well, "telemarketer"

The reality is that I know many big-ticket "telemarketers" who have been doing this for a long time and have made a lot of money (and still do).

Generally they focus on business-to-business and very high level work. Calling on CEO's is completely different to calling someone's home in the evening (CEO's are soooo much easier)

Consider this...there are some industries where the "big-billers" do all their business on the phone. They make cold-calls, they cut high-value deals on the phone and make a lot of money.

Generally they're in some kind of "broker" activity, such as recruiting, or executive search.

Think about that, recruiting's an industry that thrives on cold-calling. One veteran once told me "recruiting is cold-calling"

I personally do about 50% of my work by phone. It's nearly always "cold-calling" - whether it's research or lead generation. But then again, I also use email a lot and online networks such as LinkedIn

There's two main reasons I don't call myself a "telemarketer":

1) It limits what I do, as I say, the phone is only one way in.
2) It devalues what I do, when people are looking for telemarketers they want to pay next-to-nothing.

That, and the social stigma, public humiliation and verbal abuse ;-)

Labels: cold calling, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

OK, so there's always a point when I engage with a new client when we start to discuss fees. For "appointment setting", there are a few fee models on the market, ranging from the very bottom (setting up meetings for financial advisers or low-value B2B propositions) to the very top...CEO of a global company.

I pretty much focus on the upper-middle to top of this market.

Typically, my clients want to engage with senior budget holders and decision makers where their value proposition has the most currency. In larger companies that's not always an easy person to find. Often for consultancies I need to find a departmental or divisional head... or even a "Director" level interim who's heading up a programme. Titles can be a bit misleading...

[You can't go out and buy those names on a list, BTW.]

Anyway, we now get back to "how much" is the meeting worth?

Whilst there are methods of calculating the life-time value of your potential client, as used by many direct marketing guru's when establishing ROI and Client Acquisition methods, I find these don't really help.

In any case, the cost of getting the meeting will be far less than the cost of "pitching" for the business. For any company with a complex sale, and long bidding process this cost regularly runs into hundreds of thousands, GBP or USD, take your pick.

Therefore, when you factor in the cost of sale, it's more important to have a well qualified meeting than just any meeting.

Another way of establishing cost per meeting is to look at alternatives, such as trade shows, events, or even your own biz dev people cold-calling - OK, so we both know that'll never happen :-)

When I've sat down with clients before and looked at the costs, when you add up lost billable hours or sales "down-time", plus costs of the event etc, the cost per meeting always runs above 1000GBP.

I regularly deliver qualified meetings for less than half that amount, as well as supporting my clients with account research & intelligence that they can leverage for success.

Labels: appointment setting services, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I was chatting to a fellow business developer the other day and we discussed the concept of "the wall" in cold-calling.

Hitting the Wall is a term from marathon running (also called "bonking") where the runner experiences dramatic fatigue.

From a cold-calling perspective, it's a very similar experience. It's something that few people (and most call centres) appreciate because they forget that cold-calling is essentially a human activity.

What do I mean by that?

With other methods of direct marketing, such as direct mail or email marketing, it's easy to play the numbers game. For a start, there's a lot of consistency in the medium used and message delivered. With telemarketing, the message is delivered by a human being.

Remember that.

Most new business developers, the experienced ones that have been in the game a long time, will tell you that they like to alternate projects. For me, 3 hours is a good length of time to work on the same job. It's long enough to get some momentum, but short enough to keep you fresh.

When I get calls from potential clients and they start talking about, "I want 20 leads per week, based on 60 hours of calling", etc, I know that they've never actually done the job themselves.

Now, those metrics could actually be correct. But the idea that one person can stay chained to the desk and deliver the same message again & again without getting bored, tired or clinically depressed... I don't think so.

What did The Prisoner say? "I am not a number..."

To me, this is one of the key aspects of understanding whether I can deliver on a campaign - bandwidth.

As always, it's all a matter of quality vs quantity.

Labels: cold calling, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I was watching The 40 Year Old Virgin the other day and was reminded of why we don't do B2C telemarketing.

The film is about Andy Stitzer, who has a nice life complete with an action figure collection and a cushy job at an electronics store. But the only thing is, he's a 40 year old virgin who has just fallen in love with a woman, who doesn't want sex in the relationship

There's a scene where Andy calls a single mum he's met to make a date and, because he chickens out and pretends he's a telemarketer he gets the following response

[Telephone ringing]

Hello.

Hey, how you doing?

How you doing?

I'm well.

Who is this?

This is James.

James. Do I know you, James?

[Grunting]

I was wondering whether you had a few minutes... to talk about a little laundry detergent.

Are you a telemarketer, James?

Yep.

Are you at the top of a tall building? Can you get to a roof quickly? Jump off! I mean, you people are sick. Get a real f****ng job, why don't you? Go shoot yourself in the f****ng head. Hey, why don't you just, you know, get a knife and run into it? Why don't you do that, huh? Okay. I'll see you later, James. Nice to talk to you. F**k your mother, okay? Bye-bye.

Oh.

Anyone recognise that? I know a guy who was looking to recruit B2C (business-to-consumer) telemarketers on a commission only basis. He was telling me that no-one was interested in doing the job. Er.... really?

Here's a hilarious audio file to listen to: "Crazy Lady VS Telemarketer".

Over 17 years of sales prospecting, I've encountered a few people like this who have obviously had one cold-call too many and snapped.

OK, I admit it... maybe I've played along with them a little, just for the entertainment value. Once they're boiling it's so easy to keep 'em there.

But, the reality is, this type of aggressive, confrontational approach isn't going to get you anywhere.

Labels: sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I read an interesting article on RainToday.com called "Does Email Cold Calling Work?". The article's written by Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies. (I'm a big fan of Jill)

Reading Jill's article reminded me of my blog back in May, Email vs Cold Calling, which looked at exactly the same topic.

Jill says: -

"When I talk about email cold calling, I'm not talking about huge email blasts to everyone on your mailing list. I'm talking about targeted, focused, and totally personalized emails. That's what captures the attention of prospective clients.

Because it's virtually impossible to connect with decision makers on the phone, you need to immediately start thinking about how you can include e-mail in your account entry campaigns."

I wonder how many telemarketing companies have realised this?

Of course, most telemarketing companies are just not set up for doing this, and their people wouldn't know how to construct a targeted email that works. In a way, the majority of telemarketing companies are focused purely on one thing...the phone; they've built their whole business model around it.

Meanwhile, the corporate world has rapidly adopted email as a preferred method of communication. Think of all those executives with their Blackberry's.

To me, it's pretty obvious. If you can't get them by phone...try something else.

Labels: appointment setting services, cold calling, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

Recently, I was chatting with a client and he called me the "go-to-guy to get-you-in".

I must admit, being a "Go-to-Guy" is something I've always worked towards. It's about building a reputation for your expertise and delivery.

One of my favourtite films is Pulp Fiction. And one of my favoutire characters in the film (a personal hero, even) is the tuxedo-clad Winston Wolf a.k.a "The Wolf".

He's the "Go-to-Guy".

When Jules and Vincent are in a tight spot, having just accidently blown a colleagues head off, they are releived when their boss, Marsellus says, "Go back in there, chill them ... out and wait for The Wolf, who should be comin' directly."

From there on, what does The Wolf do?

He qualifies what his client wants, gets all the details, etc and then sets expectations that he knows he can deliver: "Expect a call around 10:30. It's about thirty minutes away. I'll be there in ten."

Next thing we see is The Wolf's car pulling up outside Jimmie's house with the caption: "NINE MINUTES AND THIRTY-SEVEN SECONDS LATER"

Now that's how to do it.

When Jimmie opens the door. We see, standing in the doorway, the tuxedo-clad Wolf. He looks down to his notebook, then up at Jimmie.

THE WOLF
You're Jimmie, right? This is your house?

JIMMIE
Yeah.

THE WOLF
I'm Winston Wolf, I solve problems.

JIMMIE
Good, 'cause we got one.

To me, this is my goal as a freelance sales & business development consultant. I'm the go-to-guy when a client wants help opening doors. Sometimes I work with clients on ongoing campaigns; sometimes it's just a one-off project.

If I can't get you in, I know someone who can.

Labels: appointment setting services, freelance telemarketing, sales, telemarketing services

Did you know that everyone has a built-in SPAM filter?

When you get one of those cold-calls, or the door-bell goes and there's this guy with a name-badge and clipboard...you just know that you're about to be SPAM'd.

Senior executives have had so much SPAM that they've installed firewalls and sophisticated human SPAM-filters, otherwise known as PA's. They put policies in place so that anyone who answers the phone must immediately junk-folder any call that is SPAM.

It's even got so bad that some companies register with the Human SPAM police, otherwise known as the CTPS in the UK, to publicly say "no Human SPAM here".

In the electronic world, SPAM filters work on the basis that if it looks like SPAM then it is SPAM. Some people use overly-zealous settings on their SPAM filters, and so they only get emails from people that they already know and are on their white-list (this is a bit like CTPS or no-name policies in companies).

So, here's the thing. The way to avoid the Human SPAM filter is simple: Don't SPAM.

I contact senior executives daily on behalf of my clients. Sometimes I just phone them up. Sometimes it's by email and sometimes I reach them via a networking site, such as LinkedIn.

However, when I contact them I make sure that I do not look or sound like SPAM.

For a start, I'm usually contacting them because I've invested time researching their company to make sure my approach is well targeted. I take time to check that they will be interested in my proposition before I initiate contact.

If I'm unable to check this before-hand (a real cold-call, yes I do these too), I don't just launch into a script that doesn't respect their time, I ask simple questions to quickly establish if there's an interest. In short, I think about the person I am calling before, during and after my call. I work from the stand-point that I want to potentially develop a relationship and so I treat the person politely and with respect.

Sure, the reality is that not everyone is going to be interested in my proposition. If I've done my research and I have a well-targeted approach, maybe I'll be successful with 30-40%. But, I've still dealt with the people who are not interested in an honest, straight-forward & respectful way.

At this point you could be forgiven for thinking, "So What?". My approach may not seem very special. In fact, you could say that all I'm doing is thinking about who I approach and being professional when I contact them.

And here's the thing...this is the exact opposite to how 95% of tele-marketers work.

My approach takes time; it's about creativity & flexibility.

Most call-centres work a "numbers game". What's it like to do a job where you're grinding away at the numbers with very limited success. You start to get a negative process mind-set..."just another call, say my pitch. Not interested? OK, onto the next call. Every No is nearer a Yes, right?".

So the call-centre says, "we're only getting a 3% success rate, how can we get more people to make more calls faster? Let's automate dialing, let's chain everyone to their desk and give them huge "target boards" to motivate them."

No wonder some of them have 140% employee churn-rates.

Is it any wonder that companies put policies in place to avoid these poor people? Speaking to 100's of depressed and demotivated drones every day must have health & safety implications ;-)

I've coached entrepreneurs on "cold-calling". One woman I coached was concerned that she would make mistakes when she made the calls. I said "that's great, making mistakes is just human. And the more human and unpolished you are the less you sound like you're calling from a call-centre"

That's it...it's just about one human connecting with another. Be polite, think about the other person and ask for what you want. You may be surprised how simple it really is.

Labels: sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

There was a time when telephone selling, or telesales, was considered an lower level of of sales, compared to the smart-suited executive in his top-of-the-range car. Of course, this opinion varies from sector to sector; just look at recruitment to see highly paid executives who spend all their time selling by phone.

Nowadays, other sectors are beginning to realise that the telephone, when accompanied by online tools, can be a far more effective method of selling. We're seeing telesales now being utilised as a compliment to the sales cycle, particularly in areas such as software which were once considered "high-touch" and too complex to be sold using the phone.

I think that there are three key drivers behind this:

Online Presentation & Demonstration Tools - such as GotToMeeting, and WebEx, now make it simple to handle early parts of the sales cycle remotely. With decision makers and their teams often geographically dispersed, handling initial presentations online not only saves money in travelling costs, but can also dramatically shorten sales cycles. Plus, it enables the telesales agent to collaborate with pre-sales technical support (which could be located elsewhere) to provide all the answers that client needs.

Fee-Based and Disruptive Business Models - hosted applications, "software-as-service", and other low-cost charging models have made the on-the-road sales person no longer viable or cost-effective. Utilising remote selling, usually in conjunction with e-commerce platforms or live-agent tools, is the way forward. You still need highly-skilled people, but now they can service more customers in less time than is possible with face-to-face selling. Need an example? Look no further than salesforce.com

Changing Customer Attitudes - can you remember when they said no one would buy groceries online? when it comes to enterprise sales, people have been a little slower to catch up. Partly, I suspect, because sales people have a vested interest in keeping their cars. However, decision makers have become time-starved and scheduling a 20-minute online presentation can be much more preferable to blocking out an hour in the day (plus they can fit the online meeting in while they're working from home...or even while they're on the train!). Can you remember when most of your clients didn't have email? Nowadays, most middle-managers can only be contacted via their Blackberry (see Email vs Cold Calling) You get the point, people are far more open to new ways of doing business, especially if it saves them time.

Telephone Sales, Telesales, Remote BizDev, call it what you will...it's a growing part of sales today, and a great way to shorten otherwise long and costly sales cycles.

Labels: sales outsourcing, telemarketing services, telesales

There's a great phrase that Jill Konrath used in her book, "Selling to Big Companies" when discussing sending emails to targeted prospects within large organisations - "one-on-one marketing". Jill writes:

"When you set your eyes on getting into a particular big company you are doing one-on-one marketing. It's writing to one person. That's all. Totally personalized. Totally Customized."

That is so true and, I think, it's probably one of the hardest forms of direct marketing there is.

Consider this: successful direct marketing campaigns are usually measured in single digit response rates, say 1 or 2% (and you can invest a lot of time and money trying to increase that rate by a fraction of a point.)

We're trying to get the attention of just one person, and we need to carefully research and craft our approach to have a chance of success.

Also, when you're running a direct marketing campaign, let's say a mail-out, you can test your copy on a segment of the list, check the response rate, make a few changes, test again etc. Once you've found the copy that pulls the most responses, you can release it to the bulk of the list.

With one-on-one marketing there's no such luxury.

I guess this is typically why I work with companies with high ticket propositions, or where a large account could represent a major lifetime value as a customer; it's worth investing the time as the payback can be substantial.

Labels: appointment setting services, telemarketing services

I was chatting with a good friend of mine, Michael Beale, who has an interest in, amongst other things, the use of language patterns for seduction.

We were discussing a book we both own called "The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading" by Ian Rowland.

It is, incidentally, the only book on the subject endorsed by the excellent Derren Brown.

Cold reading is (my definition) the art of convincing people that you can read their mind, tell their future, etc. It's done by making vaguely specific statements and then adjusting to the responses you get. In my opinion, there's nothing super-natural in it.

Anyway, there's an excellent section on how you can apply techniques from cold-reading to making cold-calls.

Now, I've got to say, these techniques carry a potential risk of blow-back (they're more appropriate with low-level "blockers") but, if you really need to get that information, and you've tried other approaches...they're worth a go.

And, our course, if you want to learn an interesting party trick...

Labels: cold calling, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

The other day I had an amusing cold-call from a recruitment company. I'll not mention their name, but they bill themselves as "specialising in placing and training graduates for high-profile sales and marketing jobs". Yeah, right.

Anyway, this guy calls me up, let's call him James, and from the start he's not listening.

ME: Hello, David Regler.

JAMES: Can I speak with Mr Regler please?

ME: This is Mr Regler.

JAMES: Er...er...(He recovers and launches into his pitch) We're a UK Recruitment company specialising in placing and training graduates for high-profile sales and marketing jobs. I want to arrange a meeting with you...yadda, yadda....synergies....explore relationships...yadda, yadda....

He goes on for a couple of minutes and I don't say a word (apparantly the more he talks the more I'm convinced). His pitch is just the usual canned waffle. Eventually, he closes me for an appointment with probably the oldest one in the book.

JAMES: I'm going to be in your area either May 8th or 11th, which is best for you?

ME: James, I don't understand why you want to meet me (I ignored the fact that he obviously didn't know where my area was and I seriously doubt whether he was going to ever be in it).

JAMES: Er...er....

ME: You're a recruitment company right?

JAMES: Yes

ME: Well...we don't employ anyone.

JAMES: Er...er...(this was obviously not an objection on his script)...I don't understand...er...

ME: We work on an associate model, that means we don't employ anyone. So why would you want to waste your time meeting me?

Talk about lack of qualification. If he'd taken one minute to look at my website he'd have found that out. I mean, the clue is in the name: Maine Associates ;-)

I went on to question James about his company, got to find out that he'd been there 6 months and had been through their intensive sales training which included, wait for it, cold calling. His target was to make 6 appointments a week; obviously it didn't matter what appointment it was - the company didn't have to meet some basic criteria, such as do they hire sales people ;-). If he just wanted an appointment he should have gone to the doctor.

I emailed his MD and suggested that if they wanted to run a real training course on "cold calling" they should give me a call. I'll not hold my breath on that one.

Needless to say, James' approach is not unique. In fact, it's pretty much the standard out there. And while people like James are doing such a bad job, our life is so much easier.

When we contact prospects they instantly know that we are different - and that's what makes the difference.

Labels: appointment setting services, cold calling, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

Welcome to my new blog.

I've been blogging on blogspot for a few months now with my Virtual Sales Team Blog. The focus was to look at online resources to help develop business.

Ahead of the expansion of my website here at Maine Associates, I've decided to merge the same remit with a new blog.

I'll be monitoring the blogsphere to bring you my perspective on what's happening, as well as providing a few anecdotes from the world of telemarketing, lead generation, sales outsourcing & new business development.

I look forward to your comments on my Blog.

Labels: lead generation company, new business agency, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services, telesales