Entries from March 2008
The Components of a Successful Business-to-Business Telemarketing Call
Successful B2B telemarketers must understand the basics of a successful call: from the opening statement, to engagement and qualification, to close. Each of these stages has techniques and skills that a successful telemarketer must master.
In the opening statement the telemarketer gives his full name and the company name, and explains the reason for the call. Outline techniques in the training session on how to get past the assistant or executive gatekeeper by showing that their call is important to the assistant’s boss.
Once the right person is reached, the call moves to the engagement stage. This is basically finding out if there is a match between their needs and your offer. Here is the critical point where the ability to ask effective questions and to gather pertinent information will make a difference. While they are uncovering the prospects’ needs, the telephone marketer is also building the case for the prospect to meet with the sales staff.
It is here in the training that the new employee must learn how to handle prospects objections and generate real leads. You’ll want to include a list of every possible objection and practical responses for each one. If the telemarketer has the qualities of a problem solver, they will engage the prospect in a helpful way vs. Slipping into an adversarial role with them. It is at this time the telemarketing rep will be able to determine whether or not the prospect meets your lead-qualification criteria.
In the close of the conversation, the telemarketer should restate the agreed-to next steps and ask for confirmation.
Being able to use the new information your telemarketing employee has learned along with the sales techniques takes practice. Role-playing is critical to telemarketing training. Both a variety of objections and a variety of types of prospects should be rehearsed.
Assign the newly hired rep to a mentor, most likely one of your best staff members who can coach and support the new person.
Long term success
Some unrealistic expectations can short-circuit a good telephone marketer from doing their best. The telemarketer cannot be expected to do more than one job. Their total focus needs to be on lead generation.
As you know, telephone marketers face a lot of rejection on the phone and need support to keep their enthusiasm up. The call center manager should consistently reinforce the idea that rejection should not be taken personally. Occasional motivational boosts will help them feel recognized for their efforts. Publicly recognize individual telemarketers for their accomplishments. Create a team atmosphere and encourage them to share tips on what techniques are working best for them.
When you maintain an optimistic, continually improving environment, you will have great results in hiring, training and keeping your best employees. When you encourage a winning attitude, you will hire and keep winners for your telemarketing lead generation programs.
When it Comes to Generating Sales Leads, Do Virtual Events Make Sense for B-to-B Marketers?
Think of a conference or tradeshow conducted online with presenters, exhibitors and attendees exchanging information and networking from the convenience of their computers.
These “virtual events” can benefit all parties. Attendees don’t have to travel, or even leave their offices. Neither do the speakers and exhibitors. This saves everyone time and money.
And the convenience of attending via their computer can boost the number of attendees significantly.
I think virtual events are great. Why? Because few of the conferences or tradeshows I want to attend happen in little ol’ Rhode Island. So if I want to attend I have to waste way too much time at the airport and on the plane, then again in the rental car or taxi line, trying to get there. Or I have to spend three or four hours taking an Amtrak train to New York City. Or I waste an hour and a half or more, both ways, driving to attend the event if it happens to come to the Boston area.
Compare this to what is involved in attending a virtual event: I block the time on my calendar. Then at the appointed hour I click on a link and attend the event via my computer.
The same goes for when I’m speaking or presenting at one of these virtual events.
Yes, it is sometimes good to get out of the office and network with clients and suppliers at in-person conferences, tradeshows or seminars. But often that means losing the day or more just getting there and back, not to mention the time away from my family. This makes me pretty selective about which in-person events I will attend.
I’m less selective about signing up to attend virtual events. Why? Because if I determine that the virtual event isn’t a good investment of my time, or the presenter is putting me to sleep, I simply close my browser and use that time for other things instead.
If you are thinking about doing a virtual conference or tradeshow, you might want to read Best Practices in Virtual Events, a white paper created by The FactPoint Group, a Silicon Valley-based research, and consulting firm, for Unisfair, a provider of virtual trade shows, expos, conferences and marketing events.
A number of the best practices covered in the white paper relate do generating sales leads and driving sales. For example:
- Create an event strategy and clear goals.
- Proactively interact live with attendees.
- Promote the event as being available “on-demand” after the live event.
- Qualify and prioritize the leads that result.
- Conduct an ROI analysis.
The white paper is full of useful information, including statistics you can use to benchmark your own virtual events (i.e. 52 percent of registrants attend the live event) and tips on how best to promote your virtual events, maximize attendance and keep attendees engaged.
Request your free copy of Best Practices in Virtual Events by sending an email to
For additional strategies, tactics and tips related to using B-to-B marketing events to generate qualified leads and drive sales, check out the articles under the heading B-to-B events & trade shows at my website’s Learning Center for Marketers.
Ideas to Incentivize Lead Follow-up by Sales
It’s 9 a.m. Monday morning. Do you know what’s happening with your leads?
Your ultimate goal is to use the information gleaned from lead follow-up results to determine which lead generation sources or lead nurturing approaches are resulting in the most closed sales and revenue for your salespeople. 
The only way to know is to learn what happened to the leads you passed on to your sales team or channel partners.
First off, please understand that if you are supplying your salespeople with truly qualified, sales-ready leads, they will follow up. If they see the sales leads you send them as opportunities to close sales and make their quotas and earn their commissions and bonuses, they jump right on the leads.
However, even if your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors are following up, it is sometimes a challenge to get them to report back on what happened to the lead.
Instead of requiring sales to do extra paperwork, the best way to determine what happened to the leads is to query the CRM system that the salespeople use and see for yourself if the leads were followed up and what the sales results were.
Of course this requires that your company have a CRM system which its salespeople use to manage their opportunities and customers. And you also must enter the leads into the CRM system in the first place.
Unfortunately, when you sell through channel partners such as independent reps, distributors and resellers, the option to leverage a CRM system usually isn’t available. So here are some additional ideas to encourage lead follow-up and reporting back on follow-up activity and results from your companies channel partners.
A “mystery lead” program
Follow-up the mystery lead, get an incentive! Randomly select a lead in every sales territory each month and designate it as the “mystery lead.” Then tell sales that if they report back on that specific lead they earn a prize or incentive.
What’s hot right now for incentives?
Common incentives are gift cards or pre-loaded credit cards, a night at a resort hotel, dinner at a top restaurant, or the latest electronic gadget. You can get creative and have fun with it too. One of my clients gives away a free house cleaning or a car detailing.
The value of the incentive is dependent on how much you are willing to spend to close the loop on lead follow-up. It also depends on the value your salespeople put on the time required to do the necessary paperwork, and how many potential winners there may be.
I recommend that every salesperson have a chance to win for a lead followed up in their territory every month, rather than pulling only one salesperson’s name out of a pool of potential winners.
Points for follow-up program
Your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors earn a certain number of points for every lead they report back on. You can give additional points for ongoing status reports and bonus points for reports on leads that resulted in closed sales. Then these points can be redeemed for merchandise such as logo-wear, desk accessories, iPods, digital picture frmaes or even laptops or a smart phones. One client even includes housecleaning services and car detailing in the list of things their resellers can choose from.
Tie lead follow reporting to the size of their paycheck.
This approach works well for some companies. If they report back on the lead before the sale closes, closing the loop, they get a higher commission on that sale (the carrot). Or if they don’t report back on 80% of the leads they were given within a 90 day period, they don’t qualify for their quarterly bonus (the stick).
So whether you do it yourself by querying the CRM system, or use a carrot or stick approach to getting feedback on lead follow-up results from the folks in sales, you can get more of the information you need to determine how best to target your lead generation investments and resources for the maximum bang for your buck.
Should You Start a Business Blog? Teleclass Tues. March 11
My colleague Dianna Huff of DH Communications and special guest Ted Demopoulos will discuss the how’s and why’s of blogging and how small B2B companies can use blogging to build relationships, enhance their thought leadership, and increase sales.
Complete details and registration:
- Is a Blog Right For You? Teleclass
As many marketers have already found out, figuring out how to leverage blogging and build conversations with prospects takes some commitment. Dianna and Ted will go through a number of questions you and your company need to answer in order to decide whether you’re ready.
You’ll be getting plenty of great advice, for only $39. And if you can’t make it at that time, you can sign up anyway and get a studio-quality MP3 and complete transcript to use at your convenience.
TeleClass:
Is a Blog Right For You? A B2B Small Business Workshop
Special Guest:
Ted Demopoulos, Author and Business Blogging Expert
Host:
Dianna Huff, DH Communications, Inc.
Date:
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Time:
2:00 to 3:00 PM Eastern Time
Sign-up Fee:
$39
Guarantee:
Attend this teleclass risk free. If you’re not fully satisfied, they will refund your sign-up fee, no questions asked.
Learn more
- Is a Blog Right For You? Teleclass
Ten Tips for Successfully Launching Your New B2B Product or Service
If your B2B marketing plans include launching a new product or service, I think you’ll find this interesting.
Schneider Associates, a PR agency in Boston, worked with the Center for Business and Innovation at Babson College to poll B2B marketing and sales executives who recently participated in successful launches.
Here are the study report’s top ten tips for improving the odds of successfully launching your new product or service:
- Create a documented launch process.
- Set a separate launch budget and make sure it is adequate to meet the launch challenges you face.
- Establish your launch budget as early in the product development phase as possible.
- Keep your launch budget stable throughout the implementation phase.
- Determine your launch performance measures before the launch begins.
- Measure the “right” success metrics.
- Include the “right” external launch professionals on your team.
- Fight for bigger budgets.
- Educate your sales force and other internal audiences about your new product or service. Also focus on distributor, retailer or dealer education.
- Spend money on word-of-mouth campaigns rather than on advertising.
A complimentary report on the B2B Launch Survey findings is available here.
If you have additional tips or stories about lessons learned the hard way about new product or service launches, please share them.
