Making Telemarketing an Integral Part of Your Plan

Utilising the phone in B2B telemarketing is often decried but it has a real part to play in any successful direct marketing strategy. Like all activity, its success is dependent upon communicating the right offer to a well targeted market – small is beautiful in this context – quality not quantity each and every time. 

The cost of telemarketing falls neatly between low cost mailing and email broadcasting and high cost field selling.

Correctly used, it can play a pivotal role as the link between the two activities, and will work so much better than asking your high cost field sales team to undertake telesales; in reality they don’t like doing it and with few exceptions, the results show! 

So here are some useful tips to get the maximum benefit from your telemarketing activity: 

• For starters, verify your data via the phone before undertaking any promotional activity – don’t forget, data changes at around 30% per annum so an accurate starting point is essential.
• Mail out and/or email broadcast in sizeable chunks that allow your telemarketer to follow up two days after receipt. Response rates vary dependent upon your offer and the market but overlaying telephone follow up will invariably double the response from your campaign. The follow up call should confirm receipt, open a dialogue, ascertain whether there could be any interest and identify the correct decision maker. Some will be interested but not at this time – this is the start of an on-going relationship so it is important that such interest is diarised and a call back made at the appropriate time. Others will deny all knowledge of the mailing/email and request further information which should be sent by return and then followed up. The majority will state no interest but don’t be disillusioned with these results – to some extent you are looking for a needle in a haystack and there will be some golden nuggets out there. Results will vary from one campaign to another but typically in the B2B leisure market you should be achieving 20-25 calls per hour with 5-7 effective calls ie where contact is made with the decision maker. From these calls, an appointment in the range of 0.5 to 1 per hour would normally be achieved. This activity will ensure your sales team is kept supplied with a constant stream of well qualified sales leads and result in a much better use of your expensive field resource. For larger campaigns, consider buddying telesales operators with two or three field sales staff but always ensure that your sales representatives re-qualify the appointment before visiting. It’s also worth undertaking each campaign in specific geographical areas to aid journey planning. 

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