Written by If you’re thinking about telemarketing – either in house or through a telemarketing company (like us) – then you need to know that your time and money is being well spent. So, you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of your activity.
Have a purpose
Telemarketing with out a purpose is, well, a bit pointless. What do you want to achieve from your activity? And if you say “lead generation” that’s a good start, but it’s not the whole point.
Do you want to generate leads for your sales team to speak to? Do you want to book meetings? Do you want to sell something directly? Do you want to improve your database?
What outcomes will you be measuring from your activity? Know that before you start, otherwise you won’t be as focused or as targeted in your approach.
What audience are you going after? If your purpose is to generate high-value leads in the financial industry, you need to make sure your activities are targeted towards that – there’s no point spending your time calling prospects that don’t fit the point of what you’re doing. If you want to be successful in your telemarketing, you need that purpose before you start.
Have a plan and a message
Once you have a purpose, you can create a plan. Who will you be targeting? How will you get their information? What script will you be using? What background do you need to have about your targets before you call them?
Who will be doing the calling? Do you have internal resource or will you be outsourcing? What are the parameters? Does the person doing the actual calls know what your purpose is?
A huge part of your plan is the message you’ll be sharing with your audience. If you know who you’re targeting and for what purpose, you should be able to create a script and a message that appeals to them. You should understand what their pain points are, and how your business can solve them.
Your message should be focused on what your prospect will get, rather than what you offer. Give them a reason to care about your service – they don’t care that you generate leads, they care that they will get more sales.
Have good data
Data is the key to any successful telemarketing campaign – it’s why we have a specific database cleanse service.
Calling a lot of people without having the right data is an exercise in wasting time. You should know at this stage who your audience is, so your data needs to reflect that. If you’re targeting Sales Directors, your database should have their details. If you’re targeting Procurement Managers, you need your CRM to be stuffed with them.
If you don’t have the right data, or you have a load of company details but nothing for the actual targets you want to speak to, you need to start with a campaign to get that data – it may delay the start of your lead generation activities for a few weeks, but that time investment pays off massively once you start reaching the actual people you need to speak to.
Have the right training or skills
If you’re planning to run your telemarketing yourself, make sure you have the right people, with the right skills and training. Telemarketing is a singular skill – it requires quick rapport building, a very thick skin, an ability to hear no (a lot) and carry on to the next call with the right energy. Plus, there’s the quick thinking, ability to listen, speed, and attention to detail.
Outsourced providers specifically hire and train people with these skills, and callers have one job – they make calls and generate leads. On the other hand, in-house teams can often be pulled in different directions – if you can, let people fully focus on the job at hand. Having a dedicated outbound team (not one split between outbound and inbound) creates a much better result.
If you don’t have the time or skill, outsourcing is your best option – there’s good reason most companies don’t do this themselves, especially when they don’t have the budget for an internal, dedicated team.
Have a system and a process
If you have a team, you don’t just need the skills and training – you also need the right systems and processes in place to make sure all of your activity is logged, measured, and optimised.
Whichever approach you use, the telemarketers need the right infrastructure to be able to make their calls, log the results, record those calls for quality and training, and maintain their data. An outsourced provider will have this infrastructure in place, as well as the processes for team leaders to train their staff using live and recorded calls, to continually improve quality and results.
If you’re doing things in house, make sure you’re tracking metrics like how many calls are made, over what time period, how many leads are generated, how many of those leads show up to their meetings, how many convert into paying customers, what your ROI is… And you’ll want to track the individual metrics for each caller so you can benchmark and identify training requirements.
If all that sounds like too much to deal with, give us a whistle instead – we’re set up, trained, and ready to provide all of this.