What happens when your digital marketing doesn’t generate enough leads? What if you haven’t got time yourself to keep in regular contact with your clients or even just hate calling? What if you haven’t got time to sort the high priority leads from the other leads? The answer for most businesses, especially if they’re selling to other business is they need to use an old technology called the phone.

Telemarketing, you may say, isn’t it dead? Don’t people hate telemarketers? Well the answer is, yes, if it’s a telemarketing call, but what if the call’s prepared for, positioned and conducted properly like a genuine business call, not a spammy cold call?

In an episode of The Marketing Strategy Show, I sat down with Lauren Watts from GenLeads – a telemarketing company that specialise in business calls to discuss how you can best use the telephone as a sales tool for your business.

Why don’t people make phone calls?

The main reason for this is that businesses in sometimes regard telemarketing as an outdated method of marketing and sales. However, when a well prepared and well-spoken telephone call can make a lasting impression.

Another very big reason why businesses aren’t doing more telemarketing and cold calling is the fear of rejection. They are “scared” of the person at the other end thriving badly about them or saying no.

Also, most businesses think that their time is better spent meeting with the prospect rather than qualifying the lead because it can sometimes take 8 or so phone calls with the prospect to get that appointment/meeting.

In addition to the above-mentioned causes very often sales reps are tasked with a meaningless KPI like xxx calls per day that leaves another reason why people aren’t making phone calls which is spending little to no time on lead nurturing. So, they are only focusing on the sale and not on nurturing the lead.

Two Common Mistakes

1. A common mistake that a majority of businesses make when utilising telemarketing as a strategy is that they follow a pre-planned script and just read the lines and so sound “false” and too salesy instead of being conversational.

2. Businesses regularly buy lists when they are searching for prospects. Unfortunately, when buying lists, you don’t know how up to date the list is or when the last time someone updated the list or checked it for accuracy. It’s better to complete your own list.

Best Practices for Telemarketing

Surprisingly it is more cost effective to do telemarketing than other methods of contacting people via email or direct mail. Because you are actually speaking to them, you are building a relationship with the prospect as well as giving your business a human touch.

It also important to think about each of the following three points when you are using telemarketing in your business;

• It takes several calls to achieve the sale. Why? Because 80% of sales are made between the 5^th and the 12^th call compared to a 2% sales success rate on the first call. So, make sure you aren’t just giving them a sales pitch on that first call.
• Ensure if you bring a lot of energy and personality to your phone calls.
  Because there is nothing that will damage your reputation more than a series of calls where you use the generic robotic “Hi I’m Kym from TMSC, I am calling you with a great offer today”. Straight away the person being called will switch off because they know it’s a sales pitch and aren’t willing to buy at the current time.
• A trend that has emerged is callers using key talking points rather than a script. When the caller only has certain points, they need to make rather than a to the letter script that they should follow.

Telemarketing vs. Other Media

1. You get immediate feedback from your customers and prospects.

2. Telemarketing allows you to be top of mind for your prospects meaning they are more likely to contact you if they have a problem that your business, organisation or service can solve.

3. Compared to other methods of marketing. Telemarketing is the two-way communication. 

When you receive an item in the mail, or see/hear an ad on radio or TV there is no way for you to instantly respond or give feedback to what you just heard. Whereas with telemarketing the customer/prospect can give you immediate feedback on what they liked and didn’t like about your call.

Final Thoughts

Telemarketing might seem like a daunting task for businesses that haven’t made calls for a while or for businesses that considered telemarketing as a viable marketing strategy. So, remember the following to set yourself up for telemarketing success;

• Telemarketing is all about building that relationship between you and the customer as that is what often motivates the customer to buy from you.
• When you call a prospect or customer you have around 20 seconds to capture their interest otherwise they will zone out and not really be listening to what you are saying.
• Make sure whoever is making the calls is energetic, well trained and they have the key points that need to be brought up in the call.
• Plan the amount of calls that need to be made to reach the desired outcome.
  For example, say your business needs 30 new leads every week to keep the business going and keep the lights on. You may have to make 300 calls to get those 30 good leads
• Make sure that the leads you are gathering are in your key demographic or your ideal customer.
• To ensure that you are regularly calling your clients to make sure your database is kept up to date.
  Nothing makes your business seem more unprofessional than calling one of your clients with the wrong information or the name of a person who no longer works there.
• Your database is a business asset and having an in-depth database that is kept up to date could add thousands of dollars of value to your business when it comes time to sell the business.
• Have someone who is qualifying all your calls to see which prospects are ready to buy and where each prospect is in the buying cycle.

Connect with Us

If you need any help with understanding the benefits of telemarketing or how to make telemarketing work for your business feel free to give us a call on (02) 9125 0520 or visit themarketingstrategy.co to book in an obligation free consultation.