Bad telemarketing vs intelligent lead generation

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We know that ‘telemarketing’ has a bad rep.

It conjures up visions of tightly-packed call centres with clinically symmetrical desks, and perfectly aligned dividers. It makes you think of automated dialling systems, and transient individuals who earn minimum wages and have little enthusiasm for the product or service their client has to offer. And it definitely says ‘paint by numbers’ telemarketing scripts.

I’ve got to say it. In these circumstances, the term ‘dynamic team’ is actually code for ‘high staff turnover’, rather than indicating a collective ability for fast thinking.

I call this the churn and burn mentality. Churning through call after call, hour after hour, day after day, as rapidly as possible to get through the numbers in the hope of gathering a few positive results, qualified or not. This type of calling is sadly a hit and miss process which just collects ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. It doesn’t add value for the client, and burns through data, rendering it useless for the future.

It’s not about numbers

We are all about fast, qualified results. Our absolute first tier goal is always to create as many ready-to-action leads for the client as possible in the allocated time. But as well as focusing on meeting our clients’ immediate lead generation objectives, we care about what’s in their pipeline a week, a month, or even a year down the line. And we do this by establishing if a ‘no’ really is a ‘no’.

Therein lies the difference between playing a numbers game with call centre people who don’t care (and aren’t in all honesty, paid enough to care), and engaging with a team of professional lead generation consultants.

You see, in a consultative situation, we don’t believe that ‘no’ means ‘no’.

More often than not, it means “not now”, and that is a hugely different answer. If your lead generation team, whether in-house or externally resourced, don’t pursue a ‘no’ with the same enthusiasm as a ‘yes’ they are essentially destroying the opportunity for a forward-looking pipeline.  The value of the ‘no’s’ and the ‘not now’s’ is enormous for a client with vision. Our consultative approach delivers information about competitors, market awareness and above all the ‘when’ of it all.

Double your leads

Through simple, yet brief conversations (as opposed to scripted surveys), we establish a timeline of ‘when’ the prospect may be open to changing or upgrading their current product or service.

We generate immediate appointments, and by also capturing the ‘not yet’ prospects, provide another wave of appointments in the future which, when tracked and nurtured, often doubles the total number of leads generated in the initial campaign. So our clients get twice as much value from their investment in us, and from their data.

Consultation, not churn 

After years in the business, I know that the success of lead generation isn’t to do with the volume of phone numbers dialled. It’s about the number of engaging conversations we have with decision makers. We’ve proven time and again that prospects respond more positively to an intelligent, non-threatening dialogue with an experienced sales and marketing consultant who is able to discuss their business with understanding and knowledge than they do to a “5-minute survey” from a script-reading call centre worker.

We believe that our value to you and your pipeline lies in our proven ability to generate instant ‘yes’ results, and our inability to take ‘no’ for an answer.

lisa@hotleads.co.nz

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What’s the magic number for lead gen cold calls per day?

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The more, the better

There’s the ‘as many as possible’ crowd, who value quantity over quality. We’re talking 100-120 calls per day. And sure, that works, in its own way. But it’s hard work, and apart from a very few exceptional telemarketers, maintaining this call rate is an unrealistic and unsustainable goal unless you are working with an offshore telemarketing sweatshop. And do you seriously think your prospect can’t tell that they are being rushed through a script?

Calling by numbers

Then there’s the ‘based on my careful calculations’ group. This group follows a methodology where time is carefully broken down and allocated to research, talk time, scheduling, adding data to the CRM, scheduling meetings (if that’s the call objective), etc. I won’t bore you with the breakdown details, but this method generally calculates that a telesales person should make an average of 8 cold calls per hour, or around 60 calls a day. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but it places the emphasis on getting through calls as a KPI, rather than getting a higher conversion rate.

Better, not more

Finally, we come to our philosophy which quite simply places the ‘quality of the call over the quantity.’ That’s not to say we don’t get through 50-70 calls a day (because we rock) – but it’s never done by sacrificing outcomes. More often than not, fewer phone calls means a higher level of engagement and longer, more in-depth conversations, equalling a better result. And that’s what we focus on.

Are you getting hung up on call numbers?

Instead of concentrating on the number of outgoing calls, how about turning it around and looking at the number of quality leads generated as your defining metric?

When you’re setting up your campaign KPIs, start at the end of the process. Trying working backwards. Ask yourself what you need to provide in order to make your lead generation campaign more effective.

As part of the process, you will also extrapolate a feel for how many calls potentially need to be made (and therefore your list size), but that should be the upper limit if you ensure that:

  1. Your list is the best it can be. How complete is it? How much time is going to be wasted finding phone numbers or tracking down the right contact? You may recall me saying in an earlier blog on databases that we’ve been provided with lists which are missing up to 30% of the contact phone numbers!
  2. Your offer / product / solution resonates with your target market. Don’t waste time and money on talking to the wrong person, or making an offer which doesn’t fit your target market and their potential needs. Test and refine it if needs be, it’s well worth the small amount of extra effort and expense to guarantee better results.
  3. Your supporting collateral is on the money. Do you have professionally prepared marketing material to support your campaign? Does it reinforce the campaign messaging, communicate the right depth of information to reassure the prospect, and provide them with a mechanism to take the offer further? If someone is too busy to talk, then sending out collateral by email (preferably) or even snail-mail is your second bite of the cherry. It can also measurably boost response rates. And while we’re at it, how’s your website looking? Does its messaging support the campaign, and do you have a landing page where you can allow prospects to ‘buy’ or , and for you to track where your leads have come from?

In a nutshell: There’s more to running a successful lead generation campaign than the number of calls you make. Think better, not more. We do.

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Is Christmas really a dead period for new business prospecting? Think again.

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It’s only October, and frighteningly, I’ve spotted Christmas decorations and advertising going up already. I call this the ‘Christmas creep,’ as the season seems to start earlier every year.

For many retailers, Christmas shopping accounts for between 40-80% of their annual sales, so it’s all good news for them as their customers get hyped up to spend, spend and spend some more. But what if you don’t operate in the retail arena?

The danger of giving your sales pipeline a holiday!

A commitment to regular and consistent prospecting ensures that your sales pipeline never runs dry. People go on holidays; sales pipelines don’t!

Yet, I’m already starting to hear non-retail businesses dismissing the rest of the year as useless for lead generation and putting off what should be pre-Christmas projects until the New Year. It’s only October, folks!

Perhaps they are so busy leading up to Christmas that they think they don’t need to prospect? By effectively closing down their prospecting activities so early, it leaves a huge three-month hole in their sales pipeline, and can result in a massive, stressful scramble to try to catch up in the New Year.

It’s a dangerous practice to only look for new pipeline opportunities when sales are slow. By then, it’s too late. If sales are slow to start with, it’s because of weak prospecting, so you are only ever playing catch-up.

But enough about the sales pipeline slackers. This is what you need to know!

Let me tell you what do our sales savvy clients do over Christmas.

  • They focus on the future. Not just on the here and now, but on developing a consistent year-round spread of opportunities to support their businesses.
  • They stay engaged. They continue to prospect right up until the middle of December, so they have a head start over their competitors come the New Year.
  • They use the season for a reason. Our really clever clients combine using Christmas communications (think eCards) with telemarketing calls to update customer contact information, nurture prospects, or to plant the seeds for making contact in the New Year.
  • They utilise the ‘quiet’ time profitably. They use the real quiet Christmas period (the second week of December through to the second week of January) to work on their databases. They profile new prospects, and clean up and verify their data so that their lists are up-to-date and accurate, ready for calling/marketing in the New Year.
  • They take a well-deserved break. Their salespeople go on holiday and can kick back and relax, knowing they aren’t starting from ground-zero in the New Year.
  • They hit the New Year already running. Unlike those businesses who have given up by October, these clients have ready-to-go databases and campaigns. And those who have left it to the New Year to do even the basics of getting ready for another competitive year are eating their dust.

Get off to a cracking 2018

With some strategic planning and a highly motivated telemarketing team (that’s us) behind you, the ‘Christmas creep’ is a profitable time to prospect, update and nurture. Come holiday time, you can happily close your doors knowing that you are fully prepared for a flying sales start in the New Year.

lisa@hotleads.co.nz

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