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, cold calling, new business development, sales lead generation, telemarketing

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

I get approached by a lot on online business looking to outsource their ad sales.

Well, I say outsource their ad sales but, basically, they don't have any to outsource.

What they all really mean is... "I want you to sell advertising for my unproven Web 2.0 business but I haven't any cash to pay you".

There's a great article in today's Sunday Times The new dotcom boom which gives some insight into this.

Whilst drawing some parallels with the last dot-bomb bubble, most notably the growth of start-up networking events, it's recognised that there are a some differences this time round.

Today, it's typcial of Web 2.0 start-ups see their exit through a strategic buyer rather than an IPO. VC activity is up but no-where near the feeding frenzy heights of last time around. One reason could be that it's so much cheaper to actually start up a Web 2.0 business today.

"Lastminute used to cost millions of pounds every year in technology," says Hoberman [Brent Hoberman of Lastminute.com and wayn.com]. "Now it is far cheaper." How come? "Moore's Law. Everything becomes cheaper and faster." Can you set up for 20,000? "Absolutely," says Clegg [Judith Clegg of the Glasshouse, the company that runs Second Chance Tuesday]. "Less, perhaps."

Add this to the fact that most Web 2.0 start-ups' business model is based solely on advertising revenues and you start to see why we get approached by so many people to sell advertising on commission.

The problem is that none of these start-ups have anywhere near enough traction to make a CPM model pay. So, to fill the void, there's this vague idea that someone can just make a few phone calls and drum up a quick ad deal for their "next big thing".

Sure, ad spend is moving rapidly online. However, as the article points out "with lots of social networking sites all seeking advertising money, some kind of shake-out is due."

Web 2.0 businesses typically work on some low value/high volume model (which could be be that a directly listing fee, monthly or annually subscription or CPM ad revenues). The trouble for us is that these models just don't work well with telesales (which needs at the very least a medium value proposition) unless you're prepared to buy business in a land-grab.

If you're looking to self-fund and grow covering your sales costs (outsources or in-house) from revenue then you either need a higher value offering or a small number of partnership deals which will bring the long term revenue scale you need.

So, now you know, please... stop calling me ;-)

Labels: new business development, sales outsourcing, start-ups, telemarketing, telesales, venture capital

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

Thanks to YouTube, I now have access to Alec Baldwin's cameo scene from Glengarry Glen Ross

Baldwin's character, the crisply-dressed and pitiless Blake, parachutes into a sleepy real estate office to threaten, berate, and otherwise motivate its hapless salesmen.

Levene: The leads are weak.

Blake: "The leads are weak." F*****ng leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years -

Moss: What's your name?

Blake: F**k you, that's my name. You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove a eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name.

Gives me goose-bumps everytime I watch it.

Labels: sales, sales lead generation, telemarketing

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 quite a few 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

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, sales lead generation, telemarketing

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

I was watching The 40 Year Old Virgin the other day and was reminded of why I don't call myself a "telemarketer".

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, sales lead generation, telemarketing

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, cold calling, marketing, telemarketing

With the spread of broadband, low-cost telephony and VoIP, there have been a growing number of experienced telemarketing & sales people striking out on their own as free agents.

Many are disillusioned with the large call-centres, or perhaps their job was outsourced overseas. Some have decided to take a career break, perhaps to raise a family, and want a new, home-based, flexible working arrangement. Whatever the circumstances, there is a growing pool of talented home-workers that you can leverage to expand your business.

Some key advantages of using freelance telesales & telemarketing people are:

Freelancers come pre-loaded with experience - on average most freelance sales & marketing people have at least 5 years experience. Using a freelancer gives you access to highly skilled knowledge workers on an "as needed" basis, which means they can hit the ground running and start delivering results for you.

In contrast, call-centres have large overheads. If you're paying 250 GBP a day per agent, they need to pay their agent less than 80 GBP per day to cover overheads, management, down-time, etc. This means they usually employ young and inexperienced people compared to a freelancer.

Freelancers are flexible - you don't have to use them full-time for large projects. In fact, they probably don't want to work full-time, that's why they're freelancing. Maybe you just want them to work a few days a month? If you're a small consultancy operating in a niche market, maybe you just want someone to target a short list of 50 companies.

A call-centre could never handle this type of work; they want volume. Call-centres, of 20+ seats, have overheads that dictate they need volume. All those people need to be fed regular work. If you're a corporate and need a campaign to hit 10,000 companies in 2 weeks, then you need a call-centre. Even a distributed freelance network like ours could not scale to handle that type of project.

Freelancers can operate as if they're part of your company - freelancers can send emails from your company domain, work with your marketing collateral, and operate as if they're part of your team. With collaborate online tools, such as Salesforce.com, or Microsoft's new Office Live, it's easy to share customer contact details, diaries, etc. Many freelancers operate like Virtual "Sales" PA's, setting up appointments for you and chasing quotes on your behalf. Because you engage a freelancer direct, you can build a relationship with them over time. They learn more about your business and develop as part of your team.

By comparison, whilst call centres can place outbound calls as if they're from your company, typically that's all they're set up for. They don't send information by email and call back, their model is all about crunching through high volume. Plus, they have terrible churn rates (employee turnover), which means building any long-term relationship with an individual is almost impossible.

Freelancers are doing this work because they want to - if you've ever been called by some 18 year old in a call-centre reading a canned script for the 100th time that day, you'll understand this point immediately. Freelancers do this work because they're good at it and they enjoy it. This point alone makes all the difference.

In summary, for directors of small businesses or companies operating in niche markets, hiring freelance telesales professionals can be an ideal fit. For most small businesses, as little as 30 hours a month can deliver real results. Their costs are comparable with most telemarketing agencies and call-centres, they're experienced, and can work on an appropriate scale for your needs.

If you need to feed a hungry team of 20 sales people with "leads" then, I'm afraid, you'll still have to work with the big boys.

Labels: freelance, telemarketing, telesales

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, freelance, sales, telemarketing

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

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, 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, marketing, telemarketing

There's a great quote from Lou Adler from his article "The Best Article Ever Written on Passive Candidate Recruiting"
on the Electronic Recruiting Exchange.

The article covers key metrics which Lou believes will significantly increase your results for sourcing passive candidates. Incidentally, this article is equally appropriate for cold calling for sales people.

The quote I particularly like is:

"The Internet has made the process of finding names of passive candidates quite easy. But this is only the first step in getting them into your network and possibly hired into your company. Look at the names as the start of the process, not the end."

Resources such as ZoomInfo have made it easier to search for people (especially if they're US based). For LinkedIn read the same.

However, in most cases, this will just provide the entry-point, or the starting block. As Lou observes, "this is only the first step...look at the names as the start of the process, not the end."

Whether you're sourcing names, digging for competitive intelligence, setting appointments...at some point you need to pick up that phone ;-)

Labels: competitive intelligence, sales lead generation, telemarketing

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

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, cold calling, sales, sales lead generation, telemarketing

Over the years, as a Sales Manager and Director, I've used nearly every form of lead generation possible. From advertising and email promotion to one-to-one methods such as telemarketing.

I remember the shock of calculating the cost of a trade show at £2000 GBP per lead. A year later, when none of the team had converted a single lead, it kind of sticks in your mind.

I've known business owners who have spent 100's hours a year attending networking events, and never got a single sale from them.

Sure, Pay-per-click campaigns are very cost-effective per lead...but they don't suit every product or service. For a start, your potential customer needs to be out there actively looking for you. If there's already two or three suppliers on his radar, he's very unlikely to be looking elsewhere. You need to reach out directly to him.

Response rates on Direct Marketing campaigns rarely exceed 2%. What if there are only 100 potential companies that are right for your product?

Two leads are unlikely to be enough to guarantee success. So the real cost to consider here is the cost of missing opportunities.

In new technology markets where it is critical to get traction before you are locked out, this is the real cost to consider.

Labels: sales lead generation, telemarketing