A Taste of Harmony, funded by the Scanlon Foundation, is one of those events. It’s an annual initiative that does amazing things to recognise and celebrate cultural diversity in Australian workplaces.

Staying in touch with your existing connections is vital for successful business. It allows you to update your client base of new opportunities to work with you, plus helps you to encourage great ongoing relationships, repeat business and referrals.

But, over time people’s businesses circumstances change. They may stop trading, pivot their offering, or simply have a change in circumstances. As a result, a database of client contacts can quickly go cold. Suddenly, you aren’t sure which of the contacts in your database are still engaged businesses.

That is exactly the problem NZTE were facing when they reached out to the Hot Leads team. With a CRM crammed full of contacts that hadn’t responded to previous emails, they weren’t sure which of the businesses were still active and who might benefit from their value-packed digital platform.

That’s where we stepped in.

Tactical Telemarketing

“We had this project that was important to us, but we didn’t have the time or bandwidth to work on it internally,” says Emma Lewis of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE).

“We wanted to deliver value to our huge base of exporters and business connections by helping them register for our digital platform. But, we had a database of contacts that we’d been collecting for more than 2 years and we weren’t sure which ones were still engaged.”

NZTE is a government agency. Its role is to support Kiwi exporters of all sizes to grow their businesses internationally in order to grow a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy. With NZ products being sought after the world over, this is no small task!

With a hugely busy workload, they did not have the capacity to check the status of each individual in their database. But Hot Leads did!

A Hot Partner

While every business can benefit from telemarketing, not all businesses have the same needs from their calling campaigns. So, taking the time to establish the needs of our clients and the outcomes they are looking to achieve is vital.

“We chose to work with Hot Leads because of their boutique service offering. We had unique needs and didn’t want a company who simply made sales calls. Hot Leads were able to understand our unusual needs and respond to them, tailoring their service to our different goals.

Working with the team was great. Grant, our Relationship Manager, was super switched on and very easy to deal with. Everyone involved just got who we were and what we wanted. They were all totally reliable and responsive.

Because of who we are and the connections we have, we wanted to work with a customer-centric brand, and that is exactly what Hot Leads delivered for us.”

Impressive Results

NZTE had been struggling to make a connection with some of the contacts in their CRM database. The contacts had been sent several emails by NZTE, but were still unresponsive.

Enter Hot Leads! Our team got on the phone to find out if these businesses were still trading and exporting. We then gathered updated contact details, introduced the businesses to the NZTE digital platform and guided them through the registration process.

With humans speaking to humans, we were able to create real connections that opened the door for further contact from NZTE. Over the course of the campaign, we helped activate 500 customers on the digital platform!

“When working with Hot Leads, we got exactly what we needed. They got the results. The final outcome was that we cleansed our CRM database and are now confident that everyone we have there is an engaged business.

Hot Leads were also able to sign many of our CRM contacts up to our digital platform so that we are able to deliver value to these businesses digitally.
If you need a business that takes the time to understand your individual needs and delivers great results, then Hot Leads are the ones to call.”

Do you have an upcoming project that you need help with? Then, let our team know your unique needs and we can tailor a telemarketing strategy to help you achieve it!

Competition in business can be a good thing.

Having industry competitors breathing down your neck can motivate you to work harder and become more innovative, providing better services to your customers.

But increased business competition can also be scary, particularly if you’re working in an already over-saturated industry. How can you stand out from the crowd?

How can you ensure your business is successful during slow periods when so many others are vying for your customers’ attention?

Increased competition in business doesn’t have to leave you feeling defeated, regardless of your industry. Instead, use it as an incentive to build your brand and find ways to excel.

Here are some ideas on how to set yourself apart from your competitors.

Why You Shouldn’t Let Competition In Business Bring You Down

How To Manage Competition In Business

Get to know your customers

Knowledge is power, and knowing your customers well is a valuable power move for any business owner. Spend time getting to know your customers and attempting to understand their challenges and needs.

The better you get to know your customers, the more you’ll be able to tailor your marketing and services to them.

Highlight your differences

Some industries are more competitive than others. Take real estate agents, for example. Not only are you competing against other businesses in your area, but you often need to build your own brand within a wider company.

In cases like this, where it seems like everyone is offering the same thing, it’s helpful to remember that your individuality can be your superpower. While you may offer very similar services to other agents, they are not you. Focus on what makes you unique, and use that to stand out from the crowd.

Level up your marketing

Need to reach more customers? Don’t be afraid to invest in your marketing to help you get in front of the competition in business. Brand visibility is crucial, so getting your name out there should be a top priority.

If your existing marketing campaigns don’t seem to be working, experiment with something new. Telemarketing is one tactic that can give your brand a boost.

Recently, Vangie Philpott from LJ Hooker Huntly used the Hot Leads service to try and generate leads in a slow market. She had experienced an increase in competition with an influx of new agents in her area, so she wanted to stand out and put herself ahead.

The results were fantastic. After a telemarketing campaign, Hot Leads were able to generate 43 appraisal appointments for Vangie. While her colleagues were struggling to connect with customers, she was busy doing appraisals, making connections, and building relationships with her new leads.

Focus on what you can control

At the end of the day, you have no control over how many competitors you have or how they run their business.

But you do have total control over your brand, your marketing, and your services. Instead of wasting time and energy worrying about what the competition is up to, focus on the things you can do to help your business succeed.

Getting your name in front of customers, understanding their needs, and building relationships is never a waste of time. Telemarketing is a great way to achieve all those things, and provide you with an extensive list of warm leads to keep you busy while the competition are twiddling their thumbs.

If you’d like to be proactive about getting ahead of your competition in business, reach out to the Hot Leads team today.

Fundraising campaigns are a lifeline for many not for profit organisations and charities.

They rely on donations made by the public, corporate organisations and kind hearted souls to carry out their important work.

But, those donations don’t flow in like magic. It takes consistent work and follow up to maintain existing donors and generate new ones.

Unfortunately, this can be a job that doesn’t get the full attention it needs as it is so time consuming.

It is especially hard in a time of uncertainty where some fundraising opportunities are cancelled or postponed.

So, what is the solution?

Donations are required to do valuable support work. Yet, the support work takes up much of the organisation’s time so they can’t dedicate time towards encouraging
donations.

Luckily, if you find the right resource, it is a job that can be outsourced.

Partnering With The Right Callers

We have all had that moment where we pick up the phone to a number we don’t recognise and find ourselves trapped on the call with an aggressive salesperson.

That is telemarketing done wrong.

Rather than choosing someone who is all about the sale, you should select a telemarketing partner who actually cares. Not just one that cares about the results they are going to achieve for an organisation, but one who also cares about the people they get on the other end of the phone.

For us here at Hot Leads, it is an honour to help amazing organisations source funding so that they can carry out their valuable work. Which is why we treat everyone involved with the utmost respect.

We know that there are people out there who want to contribute to your cause and we are passionate about finding them for you in a respectful and professional way!

Testing Interest

Cold calling can be hard if you aren’t sure what you are doing. If you don’t arm yourself with the right tactics, then you are unlikely to have much success.
You may find your call recipients hanging up on you or giving you a hard, flat no. That can be really disheartening and off putting! However, if you enter the call to have a conversation, rather than going for a hard sell, then you’ll enjoy greater success.

Creating a conversation about donations takes practice and skill. AND a well-crafted script. These are the things that professional telemarketers have in their back pockets. They have been trained to create opportunities for your team, whether it is a call back opportunity or joining an email
database.

By having a telemarketing firm test interest on your behalf, you don’t waste internal resources. It also helps you to gather valuable insight into where your organisation is positioned. Armed with extra insight and sentiment about your market, you can then make informed decisions.

Maximising Your Resources

Most charity organisations do not have the internal resource to make hundreds of calls a week. And to be honest, that wouldn’t be the best use of their time!
Especially when you may have a number of campaigns with different audiences and objectives. Each one will require a different strategy and calling objective. You need people with diverse and flexible calling skills.

Maximise your resources and allow your team to focus on what they do best by sourcing some help.

By engaging a telemarketing firm, your team will get to focus on the quality, warm leads only.

As a reputable telemarketing firm, we can utilise your own databases or you can gain access to ours. We make initial fact finding calls to gauge the interest of potential donors. Once we have compiled a shortlist of those that are interested, we pass them on to you for the next stage of communication.

Working In An Uncertain Market

No one truly knows what the coming months have in store for us. With a new protection framework to understand, new variants of the virus evolving, and uncertainty about how long this health crisis will last, your usual marketing methods may be off the table. And even if you can still utilise those methods, they may not be as effective as they once were.

So, what can you do?

There is one marketing method that will always cut through and generate results. That method is having valuable conversations with people. Conversations create a connection and an opportunity to build trust, plus they allow for a question and answer situation.

Unfortunately, conversations take time to have. And there is no way to speed up that process. You can’t hit fast forward on people! The best option is to outsource the initial conversation process to trusted telemarketers like the team here at Hot Leads. We love conversations. And the conversations we have with people open the door for your team. We start the conversation for you to continue.

Want to have a conversation about how we can make conversations for your organisation? Then reach out to us today!

The Child Cancer Foundation provides strength and comfort to families impacted by child cancer all over New Zealand via personalised support. In order to carry out their amazing work, they rely heavily on donations collected through various annual fundraising drives as they receive no government funding.

Throughout 2020 and 2021, people’s minds have been occupied with thoughts of lockdowns and shifting alert levels. The Child Cancer Foundation needed a targeted way to remind their various donors and sponsors of the upcoming donation opportunities.

That’s where we come into the story.

Tactical Telemarketing

When you are making such a big impact on the families of Aotearoa, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. Yet, how do you prioritise the right jobs to focus on when you are in the business of supporting families through such a difficult period in their lives?

Well, Francesca, Marketing Manager for the Child Cancer Foundation, found a practical way that her team could focus on their core work.

“We had a number of upcoming projects, but didn’t have the internal resource available to make a lot of phone calls, so we reached out to Hot Leads. And we are glad that we did! We had a particular fundraising campaign due to launch as a lockdown started and we weren’t sure how it would go and if fundraisers would still get involved.

The Hot Leads team did a lot of work checking in with our registered participants. That work helped us know exactly what the sentiment was we were dealing with. It stopped us having to make assumptions and we could move forward with our plans thanks to the information that Hot Leads gathered for us.”

A Hot Partner

No matter how worthy your cause is, it can be hard to encourage donations when there is so much else happening in the world. Especially when usual fundraising methods are off the table and lockdowns force you to reschedule various funding drives.

“We were pleasantly surprised by how many of our donors appreciated a phone call from us. The Hot Leads team completed warm and professional calls that took some pressure off our team. Because of the groundwork they did with their calls, we were able to retain or increase our donor’s contributions as well as update their details for our system.

Hot Leads also did a LOT of work formatting their templates to ensure the information received from phone calls could be easily used and uploaded into our system post campaign. The team are very flexible and accommodating.”

Impressive Results

In a time of uncertainty and event cancellations, the Child Cancer Foundation was still able to connect with potential donors and raise awareness of their various fundraising campaigns through a number of telemarketing campaigns.

“The Hot Leads team were really passionate about creating great results for us. They went above and beyond in many areas. Not only did they create a large number of warm leads for our team to follow up on, but they had some solutions to make calling campaigns more effective.

We had a number of different campaigns with different audiences and objectives. They included corporate and consumer, raising awareness of events, tele-fundraising, technology, and a mixture of warm and cold leads. Hot Leads had great flexibility and adaptability, able to change their approach when things changed to achieve the best results possible.

Going forward, we now have an extra tactic to utilise for future campaigns. We can better focus our internal resources, allowing our internal team to focus on making more cost effective calls. The Hot Leads team are really easy to work with. They make the process straightforward and clear. Their customer service is great and it was always easy communicating with the team. We had a really positive experience and will be running more campaigns.”

So, if you are looking to raise awareness of fundraising drives or simply generate a list of warm leads, then the Hot Leads team can help you do it.

Get in touch with the team today to chat about how we can help you achieve great results like the. Child Cancer Foundation did!

As New Zealand’s largest network of independent insurance brokers, BWRS understand kiwi’s insurance needs better than anyone. With 25,000 clients nationwide, this customer-centric company is as experienced at providing risk management solutions to corporate organisations as they are at offering rural insurance solutions to the nation’s farmers.

Knowing the importance of referrals in reaching new customers, BWRS partners with various insurance specialists to offer great risk management solutions to their clients.

However, sometimes it can be difficult for their brokers to generate the results they want to from these existing relationships. So, BWRS decided they needed some extra support to help build a healthy sales pipeline and secure ongoing leads. Enter the Hot Leads team!

Tactical Telemarketing

Senior Marketing Manager at BWRS, Carla Gilmour, had been in touch with the Hot Leads team in the past and was impressed by their ability to keep her on the phone, so she reached out to them.

Working with data lists provided by BrokerWeb, Hot Leads initiated a trial 50-hour test campaign to generate qualified appointments for their brokers while marketing a fantastic Lifestyle Insurance solution.

“For brokers, it is hard to do the cold calling and have people repeatedly tell people they aren’t interested. This way, we get an initial gauge and then pass over the warm leads only.”

Building A Piping Hot Pipeline

“Insurance is a long sell where people only renew once a year, so it’s critical to have that pipeline to secure ongoing leads. This is a really cost-effective way to make initial contact and get an understanding of whether the client is interested in going further with insurance.”

How long does it take to build a pipeline? When you’ve got the right people on the job, it may be faster than you think! Within a few days, Hot Leads started to secure appointments and the results exceeded BrokerWeb’s expectations exponentially.

“We quadrupled the number of leads for this particular referrer, providing us with a really healthy pipeline to start reaching out to.”

Fantastic Service, Outstanding Outcomes

In fact, the results were so impressive that well before the initial campaign ended, BWRS asked Hot Leads to double the size of the campaign moving forward!

“They were getting fantastic rapport with the clients – it blew my expectations. We finished on around 55% conversion, getting so many leads through, setting up telephone appointments, and sourcing potential clients for email contact at a later date.”

While the outcomes alone were impactful, the benefits didn’t end there: they seeped throughout BWRS to imbue the organisation with a sense of confidence and a more positive mindset about the power of telemarketing.

“The most important thing is opening everyone’s eyes within our network of brokers to how receptive referrals are to having an insurance conversation. There was a perception that cold calling wouldn’t work, which is obviously not the case.”

The teams at BWRS and PGGW are over the moon about their smokin’ new pipeline and excited to continue exploring the potential of telemarketing in the future.

“Hot Leads have created a steady stream of leads and a solid pipeline. We have already had 160 odd leads! It’s a really healthy pipeline for our brokers to work through. We will definitely be using this method again!”

Need a lucrative pipeline for your business?

Well, if you’d like to experience all the benefits of a strong sales pipeline for yourself, reach out to Hot Leads today to find out how we can help you do it.

Treadway Equipped are automotive equipment specialists based in Whangarei. They are an offshoot of Treadway Ltd, a well-known wheel and trailer parts wholesaler established in 1976. Both companies are proudly family owned and operated in New Zealand and boast an impressive 100% satisfaction for 100 days or a money back guarantee. Treadway Equipped are working to be the first choice of companies looking to select the right automotive equipment for their business.

When Hot Leads first met with Treadway, they were looking not only to generate more sales leads but to get in front of their ideal customers – something which had previously proven difficult.

The personal touch

Hot Leads is also New Zealand owned and operated. Lisa Barker, Director of Hot Leads said, “We knew the exact, straight-forward, no nonsense approach Treadway needed to generate their dream customer.”

At only 20 hours a week and within 6 months Hot Leads generated millions of dollars of opportunities for Treadway’s sales pipeline.

The database was diverse and comprised a range of clients spread throughout New Zealand. Telemarketing offered Treadway a cost-effective engagement without the need to have a Sales Rep visit each business location.

Loren Bill, Treadway Sales Manager had this to say:

“I was happily surprised. Maryanne (Hot Leads Consultant) was perfect for this role. Her level of expertise was fantastic, and she easily related to our industry and gained customer confidence.

The first part of the job was calling all our existing clients – a database of around five thousand! Maryanne was able to generate an opportunity from every fourth or fifth call, which was an incredibly impressive conversion. Over a thousand. The second part, the cold calling, was a little harder to convert, but it always is. The results returned were still excellent.

Hot Leads smashed it and their recording and reporting system worked so well. I received daily emails, so it was easy to track our R.O.I.”

There were two telemarketing/lead generation companies we considered for this role, and I met with both of them, but after a small test with each, it was crystal clear that Hot Leads would deliver the best results. Deciding to work with Hot Leads was definitely the right choice.”

Good as gold – Hot Leads know their stuff

The key to success when it comes to a database of this size is efficiency and keeping an interactive dynamic with customers. Relevant and engaging conversations with existing and potential customers maximise rapport and open the door to strengthen ongoing business interactions.

According to Maryanne Simpson (Hot Leads Consultant):

“The personalised conversations made each business owner feel valued and supported whilst gathering valuable information for Treadway management. Customers appreciated the personal, one to one, contact and were impressed with our speedy response, with information requested emailed immediately, and quotes often sent on the same day.

It was very clear that without reaching out to these prospects, Treadway would have missed out on hundreds of opportunities to quote on new equipment as most owners reverted to old buying patterns, and were reluctant, or simply too time poor to research alternatives.”

When following up with the interested parties, the connection had already been established. So, it was a lot easier to move them onto the next step of booking an appraisal service.

Will Loren be using Hot Leads again?

Loved using them for set campaigns and will definitely do so again.

The Pukekohe branch of Barfoot and Thompson boasts some impressive statistics. They were the #1 Branch of the Year in 2021 and won the Residential Sales, Large Office of the Year in the 2020 REINZ Awards. I think we can agree, their agents know how to sell property!

But Pukekohe agent, Neil Sharpe, recently discovered his marketing needed a more strategic approach. Auckland had entered a level 4 lockdown and all the usual methods of open homes and meeting in person were off the table.

So, he turned to a method that would allow him to keep marketing during lockdown restrictions.

Tactical telemarketing

During a citywide lockdown, many things grind to a halt – including a lot of the functions of the property market. So as you can imagine, it is an incredibly difficult time to launch a new career path in real estate! Unless you have a secret marketing weapon up your sleeve like Neil Sharpe discovered.

“Having Hot Leads on my team during lockdown was invaluable. Due to Covid, I wasn’t able to carry out regular marketing methods like letterbox flyer drops. But, by having a professional team making calls on my behalf, it kept my name out there, and allowed me to book a whole bunch of appraisals to start my career off in a really positive way.”

A hot partner

“I loved the idea that I could use this service to build relationships with people.” Neil knows that Real estate is a competitive profession and there are a lot of other agents in the region. But, a telemarketing campaign allowed him to stand out and open the door on a number of opportunities that he would not have had access to otherwise.

When following up with the interested parties, the connection had already been established. So, it was a lot easier to move them onto the next step of booking an appraisal service.

“Everyone I have followed up with was very impressed with the friendly nature and professionalism of the Hot Leads team. When they called the prospects, they made it seem as though they were part of my team. It made the connection far stronger when I called.”

Impressive results

In a time when door knocking and open homing is not allowed, Neil was able to connect with a huge number of people through the telemarketing campaign. And the timing could not have been better.

During lockdown, people spend a lot of time in their homes. Which means they have a lot of time to seriously think about their property, life circumstances, and next moves. Coupled with the onset of Spring and the imminent arrival of new property valuations in Auckland, lots of people were ready to take action, but weren’t sure how to do it.

“The results of the telemarketing campaign are really promising – it is going to pay for itself.” And, it has been so much more effective than a letterbox flyer drop as the results can easily be measured.

“Off the back of the campaign, I’ve booked 18 appraisals, had 70 people sign up to my email database, found 2 people who wanted to discuss the purchase of a property, and have 72 people who have requested follow ups, 8 of whom are keen for appraisals. I could not have achieved this level of connection with traditional marketing methods in the same time period.”

Neil is excited about the remaining potential for further telemarketing campaigns and feels this is just the tip of the iceberg. “I am happy with the results we have got so far and I know something further will come out of this. It will be well worth the investment!”

So, if you are looking to make an impact in your region, telemarketing could be your secret lockdown weapon for keeping you active and visible.

Get in touch with the team today to chat about how we can help you achieve great results like Neil!

Harcourts Grenadier is the leading Harcourts franchise in the South Island. But like most real estate agencies, their busy agents are constantly challenged by the need to generate more listings to meet buyer demand and build healthy sales pipelines.

Tactical telemarketing

Anna Penny Moore, Grenadier’s Business Operations Officer, says that rather than task individual agents to cold call their catchment area, the business decided to take a more strategic approach. “While some of our offices had considered running their own outsourced telemarketing campaigns, we felt that it made more sense to undertake lead generation from a company perspective. That way, we could make sure our scripting, processes, and database protocols were consistent, compliant and well-coordinated.”

Doing a company-wide lead generation project using telemarketing was a new tactic for Grenadier. Over time, they had used radio and Google AdWords, digital advertising, and participated in collaborative franchise campaigns with varying levels of success.

A hot partner

Anna checked out several telemarketing companies as potential partners for their lead generation project, but until she met Hot Leads, she says she was singularly unimpressed. One company pre-invoiced her for just asking about their processes, before even taking the time to call her back. Anna was relieved to find that Hot Leads had a highly professional approach as well as real estate industry experience. And they could access and manage legally compliant databases, as well as understanding the restrictions they needed to work under to avoid encroaching on other franchise territories.

“Hot Leads has been great to deal with,” says Anna. “Their price structure is reasonable, and they knew how to accommodate our exacting database requirements.”

Results that count

When she compares the success of telemarketing to their other marketing tactics, Anna says it has generated much better results for Grenadier. “In the last three months, Hot Leads has made 98 appointments for our agents. The meetings have resulted in two sales, and we’ve secured five new listings. Even if a prospect isn’t ready to list their property, we know they are going to and can nurture the relationship until they’re ready to commit. These are opportunities we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Our management teams are all very pleased with how the campaign is tracking, and Hot Leads has most definitely exceeded our expectations.”

ecommbi delivers fully integrated ‘best of breed’ omnichannel eCommerce and Online solutions, leveraging decades of experience with customer-centric user journeys. Their enterprise scale platforms provide the all-important single customer, single product and single inventory views, with a focus on middleware and data management.

Lead generation blues

Because of the size and highly technical nature of their projects, ecommbi traditionally has a long sales cycle – it can take years to go from initial engagement to delivery. However, their adoption of emerging technologies has generated a new market and a shorter sales cycle. “We are now taking on more mid-tier projects,” says Glen Moody, ecommbi General Manager. “The projects are smaller but faster, so we need to keep our sales pipeline well populated.”

Glen says the business considered and abandoned several potential sales models, including hiring salespeople to focus on pipeline building. “The people we found who had strong lead generation skills didn’t have the grasp of technology we needed. And the ones with great technical sales skills didn’t have the cold calling experience or initial contact skills. It was a real issue for us.”

Here’s Hot Leads!

To fill the gap in their lead generation process, Glen engaged Hot Leads. “We had worked with them before, and knew they had the skills and experience to set up and manage campaigns, segment and mine the data, and critically, have robust conversations with the targets that we had identified as hot prospects.”

“We had 170 specific businesses that we wanted to target with two solutions using a technical sales approach. After going through our marketing strategy and collateral with Hot Leads’ consultant, she quickly understood what we wanted to achieve. So when we kicked off the initial programme, we got good results from the outset. And as our solutions are reasonably technical, every conversation with us or one of our prospects enabled her to refine her approach further and generate even more leads.

“Our Hot Leads’ consultant now probably knows more about sales in our business than 90% of the people who work here, which is a powerful thing. Using Hot Leads has been extremely cost effective because of the high value of each sale. Our ROI is much better than if we’d had to find, hire, and train an in-house lead generation resource.”

Smooth operator

ecommbi has two business units so frequently runs multiple and simultaneous campaigns, often with sub-campaigns inside of longer-term ones.

“There is some complexity in what we do, and we often pivot from one campaign to another,” says Glen, “but Hot Leads are very responsive, and manage our requirements smoothly. For one campaign, we only wanted to reach six senior IT executives at some of New Zealand’s largest enterprises. Our Hot Leads’ consultant contacted and talked to all of them on the same day – so a 100% success rate.

“The other thing we appreciate is the ability to turn our lead generation activities on and off at any time. Using Hot Leads’ services gives us real flexibility in being able to control our sales. We are careful never to over-commit our ability to deliver, as that can damage our reputation.”

Completing the sales cycle

“Using Hot Leads has completed the last piece of our sales process puzzle,” says Glen. “We struggled for eight years to get it right, and their lead generation services have ticked all the boxes. Hot Leads perform consistently and effectively and have become an ongoing part of our business strategy.”