Posts Tagged ‘Telemarketing’
Can Outsourced Telemarketing for Your Events Work?
Telemarketing can be a powerful way to generate leads, especially for association and corporate events.
When outsourced, it is low risk, and can help you develop the new audiences you need to keep your events vital.
And unlike maintaining an in-house telemarketing operation, outsourcing lets you easily blanket all time zones, and take advantage of the “switch-on, switch-off” flexibility an outside group provides (and a stable of employees, even part-time employees, does not).
Outsourcing also lets you save on talent-recruitment fees, training, holiday pay, desk space, telephone, computers, software, and many other resources.
Besides those savings, you get access to top-tier telemarketing talent (the same advantage that drives associations and corporations to outsource functions like accounting, IT, and legal counsel). And in telemarketing for events, talented reps really matter.
Want to learn more of the pros and cons of outsourcing your telemarketing operation?
Call Randy Lieberman at 800.290.8714 or send an email to randyl@foundationmarketing.com.Why Outsource Your Telemarketing?
Don’t kid yourself. Cold calls are still integral to sales. But they continue to be a source of dread.Prospects who’ve given no real indication they’re interested in your offer may not listen to it. And sales reps who curl up at rejection may not make the calls in the first place.
What can you do to make cold calling less a chore?
Change cold to warm
To ensure the success of cold calling, you need to turn cold leads into warm ones before making your pitch.
Warming up a cold lead—moving her “down the sales funnel”—takes commitment, persistence and a lot of time. Time your sales reps may not have.
Professional marketers have the time—and the skills.
Professional telemarketers are skilled not only at leading substantive conversations with prospects, but at picking up signals from them that indicate a strong intent to buy.
Professional telemarketers are skilled in mastering the details of your brand—and your competitors’. They don’t “read a script.” Instead, they come across to prospects as knowledgeable and credible—an advisor you can trust.
Professional telemarketers don’t force-fit an offer. They take the time to learn the prospect’s pain points and requirements, and never try high-pressure tactics (which don’t work, anyway).
Professional telemarketers are good at follow-up. Once they’ve contacted a prospect, they don’t leave her hanging; they take the extra effort to keep the prospect warm (primarily through email outreach).
And professional telemarketers are persistent. Like Winston Churchill, they “never, never, never give in”—something most thin-skinned sales reps all too often do.
What are you waiting for?
Cold calling is a necessity, and still one of the most effective means of generating leads. But the key to improving your odds is warming cold leads.
Have you tried outside telemarketing recently? If not, what are you waiting for? To learn how it can work for you, call Randy Lieberman at 800.290.8714 or send an email to randyl@foundationmarketing.com.
CMOs Look Anew at Telemarketing
Every year, Chief Marketing Officers spend more money on social media.It’s a trend we’ve seen for well over a decade—and there’s no end in sight.
During the next five years, according to The CMO Survey, spending by CMOs on social media will rise to become 21% of their total budgets.
But where’s the corresponding impact?
The same research reports that only 10% of CMOs believe social media makes an above-average contribution to company performance; and 40% believe it makes a below-average one.
Tweeting, Facebooking, Snapchatting and posting on LinkedIn are nabbing all the attention, but almost none of the sales.
Maybe it’s time for CMOs to look anew at a time-honored medium: telemarketing.
The old-fashioned phone call makes a comeback
And why not? In a digitalized world, suddenly a phone call stands out.
In a 2015 study in the UK by B2B Marketing, CMOs overwhelmingly reported they understood the need for a human touch in business.
“When it comes to thinking about the nuts and bolts of what makes their business work, marketers are unequivocal,” the study said. “Ninety-six percent of respondents said human interaction was either very important or important in securing new business, and 98 percent stated that human relationships were key to retaining contracts.”
The same study reported that 71% of CMOs who use telemarketing find it effective or very effective.
Trade shows set a clear example
Among the heaviest users of outbound B2B telemarketing today are trade show organizers.
According to research by the Large Show Roundtable, a whopping 85% of large-show organizers use telemarketing to attract attendees to their events.
That makes a lot of sense when you consider the highly “perishable” quality of the show organizer’s product.
Like the operator of a cruise ship, a tradeshow organizer can’t sit still while she waits for sales to grow incrementally. At a certain point, the ship sails, full or not. That’s all there is to it.
Have you tried telemarketing recently? Or are you sitting still?
Learn more
To learn how B2B telemarketing can help you reap rewards, call Randy Lieberman at 800.290.8714 or send an email to randyl@foundationmarketing.com.
B2B Telemarketing: Antidote to “Content Shock”
Three years ago, marketing guru Mark Schaefer coined the term “content shock” to describe customers’ reaction to the surplus of online marketing content.“In any human, natural, or economic system, when there is an overabundance of some commodity, and there is a limited capacity to consume that good, something has to change,” Schaefer said.
But during the three years since Schaefer first wrote about content shock, little has changed—except that information overload has worsened.
Take email—most B2B marketers’ favorite lead-gen tool—for example.
According to research firm The Radicati Group, 116 billion B2B emails are sent every day. The average businessperson receives 123 of those (only 14 of which are spam).
Your customers are deluged
No wonder response rates keep plummeting.
So what’s the antidote? Send even more email? Publish more blog posts? Sent more Tweets? Resort to producing cat videos?
We may be biased, but we think the solution’s telemarketing.
Outbound telemarketing—when your list is good, your offer attractive, and your message crisp and compelling—isn’t a form of spam or “interruption marketing.” It is instead a time-tested—and underused—way to break through the clutter and focus people’s attention on your value proposition.
Underused is important
We’re living in the “New Age of Content Marketing.” And, if Schaefer is right, your customers may be about to go into full cardiac arrest.
But telemarketing remains underused by B2B marketers like you; which makes it, in a vast sea of marketing content, a relative novelty—and a powerful way to counteract content shock.
That’s one key reason why clients who count on us are reaping significant rewards.
Learn more
To learn how B2B telemarketing can help you achieve those rewards, call Randy Lieberman at 800.290.8714 or send an email to randyl@foundationmarketing.com.