There is much more to telemarketing than cold calling. 

With the latest technology and readily available databases, the telemarketing sector is under constant scrutiny about how they should and shouldn’t be contacting potential customers.

We bust the negative connotations surrounding this marketing technique and tell you how to engage with prospective clients.

A simple internet search of the word ‘telemarketing’ brings with it a multitude of definitions ranging from good to bad.

The top result on Google classifies telemarketing as:

 “The marketing of goods or services by means of telephone calls, typically unsolicited, to potential customers”

Google

 ‘Unsolicited’, ‘unwelcome’ or ‘unwanted’ are not words you want running through the mind of a prospect before you’re telesales team have even begun to pitch your services.

Cold calling within the B2B telemarketing sector should and can be a thing of the past through simple qualification procedures. 

The distinction lies in whether your prospect has been targeted or is aware of your offering before you even pick up the phone. Any good lead generation company or sales team should be directing all efforts to those leads who are more likely to be interested in your product.

STATISTICS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COLD CALLING:

• 69% of buyers accepted a call from new salespeople in the past 12 months
• 27% of sellers say making phone calls to new contacts is extremely effective
• 82% of buyers are willing to meet the salespeople who reach out to them
• 62% of buyers want to hear from sellers when they are actively looking for a solution to resolve a problem
• 75% of prospects from various industries have attended an event or scheduled a meeting based on unexpected cold calls

Far too often businesses favour quantity of calls over quality and find themselves stuck in a rut in terms of appointments or leads generated. However, with numerous simple techniques which marketers can use to engage with prospects before calling, the cold call can easily become a thing of the past.

Factors to consider before calling:

DATA FOR TELEMARKETING

For any campaign to become successful, particularly within the B2B sector, marketers must start with what is potentially the most important aspect of any campaign – the data. 

Telemarketing relies heavily on the quality of data from the offset. Correct data sourcing and capture is a fundamental building block which needs constant attention to maintain and enhance.

 As a telemarketing company, we often find that bought data can become worthless if not prioritised correctly.

Ask yourself – Have you targeted the right type of organisations? Are they the right size? And are they the right type of individuals within those organisations? The answer to these questions can determine how qualified your data is and the likelihood of your offering being accepted.

Start by looking at your customers or those who have spent before. Use the characteristics of this data to shape any additional records you purchase or collect. Most of the time you’ll find a trend within the customer base. That trend can be used to determine and refine your target audience.

EMAIL AS AN AWARENESS AND EDUCATION TOOL

Email marketing is a powerful tool that can maximise the exposure of a campaign. It should be used as an extension of your marketing and sales efforts.

Topical updates with a point of interest to your target audience is a great way to update potential prospects. It can also encourage interest in your offering. However, plugging your product in every email can lead to complaints of spam emails and turn off a potential customer.

Instead, provide readers with interesting information related to your offering. This way they can get something back from engaging with your mailer. By maintaining a relevant recurring point of contact, businesses will know your name before you even pick up the phone – turning that cold call into a lukewarm one.

Sophisticated email marketing platforms allow users to find out who opened an email campaign. These platforms show what links recipients clicked on and how many times they clicked on each link. This information can be used to assess and target prospects who have shown a vested interest in the email. This method of qualifying leads is relatively straightforward and can have a substantial impact on the coverage and awareness of a campaign as well as a prioritisation tool.

YOUR WEBSITE

Perhaps one of the simplest and least optimised methods of collecting leads for your marketing efforts is through your already content-rich website. Website tracking software, such as Google Analytics, can provide you with invaluable website visitor statistics, allowing you to view exactly who is looking at your website, what pages they clicked on and how long they were on each page.

These statistics are easily pulled off and can help form a list of already warm leads for your sales team or email marketing campaigns.  Analytics like this can also give you an insight into how visitors find and use your website and how you can optimise this to keep them coming back.

Targeting, prioritisation and awareness are factors that can help businesses to generate leads and build business databases and marketing platforms. And by following our guidance, your sales marketing team can break down, those negative preconceptions of the cold call.

[1] [1] Coreen Menezes, 2020, Cold calling statistics you need to know to improve in 2020, LinkedIn.