BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS (B2B)

Data Cleansing

This is a process used to ensure a company’s customer information database is consistent and accurate.  By removing inconsistencies from database records (as well as clearing inactive users), telemarketing service representatives (TSRs) are more likely to have the information needed to more completely and efficiently service customers.  This type of telemarketing activity may verify information such as an address, phone number, current account holder, account type, and desired level of service.

Customer Appreciation

It is important to understand that customers appreciate being contacted proactively if it serves their interests.  The key is their interests.  Your company needs to ensure that there is alignment between their interests and your reason for contacting them.

This type of telemarketing activity is performed to thank a customer for loyalty to your business and are not sales calls in the  traditional sense.  However as part of this process, the TSR can identify whether:

Charity Fundraising

Non-profit agencies use both outbound and inbound telemarketing calls for market awareness and to raise charity donations.  Agencies periodically conduct pledge drives through various marketing channels that result in an influx of donor calls, hence inbound telemarketing.  Outbound telemarketing is used for recruitment, cultivation and retention of the agency’s donor list.

Political Registration/Voter Participation

Political telemarketing services vary from voter registration, polling, Get Out The Vote (GOTV), voice broadcasting and campaign fundraising.   GOTV drives are the final stages of voter engagement campaigns where political groups are looking to drive as many supporters or registered voters to the polls.  Since there is limited time, political organizations need to rely on various tools to simplify and scale up to a high volume.

Market Research

Outbound telemarketing for market research is often used for product/service reviews and customer feedback. This is a highly cost-effective means for conducting large-scale market research and can cover vast geographical locations from a single base. TSRs conducting interviews can range from small executive level surveying to nationwide customer feedback questioning.

Sales Lead Generation

Whether B2B or B2C,  telemarketing sales lead generation is used to qualify a company’s prospects by adhering to strict qualifying criteria.  This model (often outsourced to a third-party call-center provider) represents the separation of cold calling and prospect qualification from sales appointment setting and the actual selling by the company’s internal or field sales force.

This division of the sales process allows a company to more effectively use their more expensive sales personnel to do what they do best: use their extensive knowledge, communication, presentation, negotiating and closing skills to convert prospects into new customers and deals.

New Customer Acquisition

Businesses need new customers for their growth and survival.  Using outbound telemarketing services to find, qualify and sign-up new customers is an effective direct marketing system.  Whether it is a TSR calling prospects from a dialing list or via a pre-recorded message using a computerized dialing system, there is no prior existing relationship.  It is often referred to as cold-calling or dialing for dollars.

Telesales

Once a company has identified and qualified a customer prospect (by whatever means), telesales is the process that sells your products or services directly to the customer by telephone.  Telesales converts those opportunities into business for your company.  Depending upon the market (business or consumer) and complexity of the product/service, the telesales process may entail one or a  series of telephone calls until sales success.

Collections

One of the types of telemarketing services that companies often require is the collecting of outstanding invoices payments from their customers.  This is important to maintain cash flow and working capital for a company’s development.

If the company list of debtors is small, this process of contacting customers via the telephone is handled internally by the accounting group.  If the list of debtors is large, however, this process is often handled by a dedicated tele-collections team or outsourced to a third-party provider.

Customer Reactivation

Using telemarketing services to reactive your customer base is one of the highest ROI opportunities a company can invest in.  At some point in the past, these inactive customers purchased from you or engaged with your company in some way. You’ve already spent the time, effort, and money to get them as a customer, so it is much more cost-effective to bring them back than it is to find new customers.

There are many reasons why a customer no longer uses a company’s products or services. Customer Reactivation telemarketing is simply designed to understand why they stopped being active and entice them to become active customers again.

Formal Process

Companies that lack a formal home improvement appointment setting process result in fewer appointments and have more cancellations.  Worse, will also have more sales calls where the homeowner doesn’t show up or is unprepared for a professional presentation.  As a result, their salespeople experience lower closing ratios.

SHOULD INCLUDE

First Impression

The process is the first impression and sets the tone with your prospective homeowner. Basically, what the caller hears will create a picture of what the home improvement contractor is.

Whether an outbound cold-call or an inbound call responding to your marketing activities, this personal connection should make the homeowner feel welcomed rather than being an interruption.  Accordingly, the conversation should be courteous, professional, and respectful of the prospect’s time.  Whenever possible, the homeowner should feel in control.

As part of the appointment, the setting is the needs analysis for your field sales personnel.  Chiefly, what are the needs, concerns, history, and urgency of the homeowner?

Your field salesperson will confirm these things during the homeowner visit.  However, learning this information in advance will greatly help in the planning, sales presentation and questions asked.

The home improvement appointment setting process should then confirm the homeowner’s understanding of what the next steps are and thanking them.

Sell The Idea

The home improvement appointment setting process needs to sell the idea of the value of an in-home consultation.  Because the homeowner’s initial contact with your company may be a general information inquiry or for a price quotation.  Consequently it needs adjusteing so the homeowner appreciates the value of an in-home consultation with your field sales personnel.

An in-home consultation is a very simple, normal process repeated thousands of times each day with homeowners.  Consequently, the inside sales personnel need to be skilled at helping homeowners understand the simplicity and necessity of this process.

Furthermore, the homeowner prospect must be comfortable and excited about the results they can anticipate from using your company’s services to solve his/her particular need.

Confirmation And Participation

The process needs to ensure that the right people with sufficient time allotted on their calendar will participate in the in-house presentation.  Also, the appointment setting personnel need to explain how the time will be used.  For example, questions, inspection, measurements, sales materials, and the benefits of a personalized solution to his/her needs.

Who should attend the in-house presentation?  Basically, the homeowner who will decide on a contract, but also the people who need to understand your company’s products and services are there.

Since homeowners have hectic lives, an appointment reminder action should be part of the home improvement appointment setting process. Generally, this is email reminder the day before and confirmation telephone call or SMS text two hours before the appointment.   Because you wish to avoid “no-shows” which wastes your field sales staff’s time.

Finally, one last question for the homeowner prospect is where they heard about your company.  So you can pass this back to your marketing staff for future activities.

Appointment Criteria

Before considering a third-party for your business appointment setting services, you should invest the time to formalize what are the business appointment criteria required. This process of definition serves to delineate what your company will require as a business appointment for your internal sales staff.

The better the definition, the clearer the expectations to the outsourcing service provider and your internal sales staff. This results in higher qualified business appointments and higher conversions to new customer sales, which is your ultimate goal.

Some basic business appointment criteria include:

Prospect List

The success of your business appointment setting services will be greatly influenced by the quality of the prospect list.  Better the quality of data, the more efficient the process of contact, and filtering of prospects.

Using a third-party outsourcing provider to “filter” a universe of potential customers to generate pre-qualified prospects is an expense that needs to be monitored and controlled. The smaller the “universe” of potential sales prospects, the more efficiently the outsourcing provider can dedicate its resources and lower the cost of identifying a potential new customer.

A good quality appointment prospect list is worth the investment to help lower the cost of the of the appointment setting outreach process of the service provider.

Appointment Ranking

To paraphrase George Orwell, “All business appointments are equal, but some business appointments are more equal than others.” That is, some business appointments are more important than others and need to be ranked and prioritized.

Why? Most companies have limited sales resources and need to prioritize how they are used to maximize their return on investment.

Each company’s criteria for ranking business appointment leads will be different. Your business may prioritize time to close, the value of the account, level of urgency, etc. For example, an urgent interest may require a “live transfer” from the outsourcing service provider to your internal sales staff.

Alternatively, a long time to close may be periodically contacted by the outsourcing service provider until its status has changed.  This frees up your internal sales staff for higher-ranking business appointments.  This is a dynamic process that is constantly in flux.

You should balance the complexity of your ranking system of business appointment leads versus the effort required to manage and administer.  If it has more than five ranking types, reconsider.

Service Provider Selection

When outsourcing to a business appointment setting services provide your company can leverage its resources and experience to increase the efficiency of operations. Generally, there is a cost reduction versus dedicating the appointment setting activities internally.

This is due to the business appointment services provider’s investments in equipment, technology, training, and staffing that most companies can not justify since that is not their primary business focus.

Depending upon the complexity of the sales process, your internal sales personnel can focus on converting qualified sales prospects to customers rather than searching and filtering for prospects. This streamlining of your company’s internal sales process improves sales conversions and lowers the cost of customer acquisition. Additionally, your internal sales team can dedicate more resources to your existing customers to increase average revenue and referrals.

Your service provider should have the experience and quality that aligns with your company’s expectations.  A benefit of working with a business appointment services provider is the real-world experience gained by dealing with a history of multiple clients.

Your internal sales staff will benefit from this knowledge to improve their productivity and efficiency by focusing on pre-qualified sales prospects to new customer conversion.

Coordination Between Parties

Coordination and transparency of communication are key elements to the success of a relationship with a business appointment setting services provider.

Once your company has decided to use a third-party outsourcing provider to generate sales prospects’ appointments, you have created a virtual extension of your internal sales staff. Your management philosophy should encompass both internal and external sales groups to work as an integrated team with complementary goals.

A service level agreement (SLA) defines the responsibilities and expectations of your company and the outsourcing service provider. It is often a working document, subject to change as the business experience evolves.

Each party in the business relationship has its responsibilities and each receives corresponding benefits. To be a long-term relationship, both parties need to be satisfied.

Technology allows for communication between parties to be virtually instantaneous and transparent to distance. Whether a telephone call, chat, or virtual conference, the communication method and frequency should focus on results versus expectations and what needs to be changed to align them better.

Service Provider Compensation

Your company’s decision to use a third-party business appointment setting services provider reflects various business goals. Two basic ones are increased revenue and profitability by reducing the cost of sales prospects appointments and new customer acquisitions.

The service provider compensation plan you negotiate needs to reflect these two fundamental business goals.

First, the compensation plan needs to be balanced and profitable for both parties. Otherwise, the relationship will be short-lived with losses for both. Second, the level of risk assumed (opportunity and financial) should be shared and minimized. Third, the metrics that govern the compensation plan need to be transparent to ensure trust.

Listed below are a variety of options for a business appointment setting services compensation plan:

Cost-Effective Marketing

Using business telemarketing services is often cost-effective for companies with limited experience and sales /marketing resources.  Pilot-test telemarketing campaigns may be initially small with a limited budget and investment of resources.

Set up a time for telemarketing services is less than conventional marketing options like print advertisement and direct mail.  Fast completion and review of the results will help you determine whether business telemarketing services are a good fit.

After completing a pilot-test telemarketing campaign, the business telemarketing services provider may offer a performance-based cost structure.  This may be a fee per qualified contact, qualified sales appointment, etc.

This allows you to control costs and provides a clear indication of the telemarketing campaign’s outcome and a minimum guarantee return-on-investment.

The success of this type of performance-based cost structure requires transparency and profitability for both parties.  Generally this is not available with alternative marketing options  such as direct mail and print advertisement.

Immediate Feedback

The telephone call is the most direct means of marketing contact with an existing or prospective customer.  Using business telemarketing services to promote your company provides an immediate measure of interest in your products or services.

This direct, unfiltered communication between the telemarketing agent and the sales prospect provides quick responses.  This includes their questions, needs, decision-making process, and level of interest.

When using telemarketing services for your existing customers serves to differentiate your business from the competition.  Whether the customer is a business (B2B) or a consumer (B2C), a greater understanding of their needs and satisfaction creates greater customer loyalty  This serves to create a barrier for your competition.

With business telemarketing services you build rapport with your customers and create a personalized service relationship.  This allows for customizing your products and services.

Increase Efficiency

When outsourcing to a business telemarketing services vendor your company can leverage its resources and experience to increase the efficiency of operations.   Generally, there is a cost reduction versus replicating the telemarketing activities internally.

This is due to the telemarketing services provider’s investments in equipment, technology, training, and staffing that most companies can not justify since that is not their primary business focus.

Depending upon the complexity of the sales process, your internal marketing and sales personnel can focus on converting qualified sales prospects to customers rather than searching and filtering for prospects.  This streamlining of your company’s internal sales process improves sales conversions and lowers the cost of customer acquisition.

Additionally, your internal sales team can dedicate more resources to your existing customers to increase average revenue and referrals.

A benefit working with a business telemarketing services provider is the real-world experience gained by dealing with a history of multiple clients.  Your company staff can benefit from this knowledge to improve their productivity and efficiency to focus on other core areas of business.

Grow Business Quickly

A company can quickly grow their business using business telemarketing services to generate sales lead prospects and appointment setting.  Your internal sales personnel focus on the prospect to customer conversion, which quickly results in incremental sales revenue.

As your company’s customer base expands, your internal sales personnel will likely require dedicating more time and resources to new customer retention further increasing sales revenue.  There will be a natural ebb and flow of activities between your services provider and internal sales personnel reflecting your company growth targets and financial resources for expansion.

Your company’s current customers may not have bought your products or services for some time.  They may be considered dormant or inactive.  Using a business telemarketing services provider to engage these types of customers with messages of appreciation and special offers to reactivate their interest level in your company.

This type of contact offers the potential of new sales opportunities and referrals as well as instant feedback as to why they are not currently active customers.  You already know who they are.  You need to find out why they are not generating business for you.

Extend Market Reach

Most companies are limited in their market coverage due to resources.  These resources may be technology, knowledge, personnel, time, finances, etc.  Using a call-center outsourcing services provider for telemarketing activities can help supplement these resource limitations, with a low-level investment and risk.

If your market is geographically local, using business telemarketing services allows for trial and expansion, zip code by zip code.  Quickly.  Your internal staff and resources can be stretched with incremental customers and sales in a manageable fashion.

If successful, repeat as your company resources will allow.  If not successful, review, adjust and repeat, or switch marketing strategy.

For your existing customer base, new products and services can be presented by your services provider.  This process allows for the opportunity of new customer referrals to stretch your internal staff

Measurable Results

Using business telemarketing services for your company, like any marketing investment, should have identified goals that can be measured.  Both qualitative and quantitative goals are used, where these services lend themselves to highly measurable results.

Based on the data provided by your business telemarketing services provider, together with your internal company data, you can adjust your marketing strategies and investments to offer the highest return on investment.

Some basic telemarketing quantitative goal metrics include:

Listen | Listen

To improve business telemarketing sales calls start with the most basic of steps:  get information, establish trust, credibility, and some level of personal connection.  Since this process is completely non-visual, it is strictly a matter of verbal communication between you and the business contact.

Your basic rule of guidance should be to talk less and listen more.

Recent research indicates that the most successful telemarketing salespeople talk about 43% of the time and listen to the business contact the remainder (57%) of the telephone conversation.  They recognize that business contact is the most important party in this conversation.

You should make the business contact the focal point by asking questions, listening, and learning to determine what his/her potential business needs are and whether there is a fit for what your business has to offer.  If the business contact feels that your are actively listening, you will establish personal rapport and credibility.

Ask Directed | Open-Ended Questions

Your telephone conversation with the business contact has an ultimate goal.  This goal might be a new customer, sale, business referral, problem resolution, etc.

The questions that you ask should be the right questions directed toward achieving this goal.  For the most part, they should be open-ended (responses that are not a “yes” or a “no”) so that business contact talks providing information while you actively listen.  For example:

Visualize The Solution

Changing your perspective to that of the business contacts will help you improve business telemarketing sales calls.  Using directed, open-ended relevant questions will help reveal the business contact’s issues, objectives, pain, and potential solutions.

What does business contact desire his/her situation to be like after a potential solution? Your goal is to help the business contact visualize how much better life would be with your solution, and the pain of not solving the problem.

Once the business contact can internalize the solution as being his/her decision, it then becomes a natural process of your helping implement the solution.

Why Different?

The business contact needs to understand what makes your solution (product or service) different and why that matters.  You need to answer the question, “Why will I be better off if I work with you and your company rather than someone else?”

You should anticipate and proactively address this topic with the business prospect:  ” I would like to explain why working with me and my company would be in your best interests…”