I was reading an interesting survey "B2B Marketing Budgets, Strategies, Tactics and Trends" (download a copy here) which looks at the changes in the marketing mix for companies.

The survey looks at tactics for both lead generation and brand awareness for B2B companies.

From a lead generation perspective, the top tactics in terms of effectiveness are:

1) Inside sales and telemarketing are considered the most effective tactic for lead generation (47.6% rated them "highly effective")

2) Trade shows and conferences are the next most effective (moving up to 2nd place from 3rd in the previous year's survey)

3) Executive breakfasts and events fell from 1st place to 3rd place in the survey.

Another thing that stood out to me is that marketers from large companies consistently rated inside sales and telemarketing as highly effective in generating leads whilst smaller companies are more likely to use lower-cost digital tactics for lead generation (search marketing, websites, podcasts) even though "these tactics are not among those they rate most effective"

Is it me or does that not make any sense?

Why use less effective tactics if they don't work as well?

Well, the more you dig into the report you realise that it's mainly an issue of budgets being squeezed and marketers trying to get more from less.

And, on top of that, it's these low-cost digital channels that are seeing the greatest increase in spend.

According to the report, the most widely used digital tactics are company websites (95.4%, which makes me wonder who are the 4.6% of B2B companies that don't have a website) and email marketing (87.7%).

Social networks and blogging continue to see increases in budget spend but also continue to rank lowly in terms of effectiveness for lead generation (they rank higher for "brand awareness")

So, how do you square those stats?

People are spending more money on marketing tactics that are less effective for lead generation compared with proven tactics that consistently deliver?

Has everyone just lost all business sense or is there a different story under the headline figures.

Crucially, it comes down to budget.

Some of the most effective marketing tactics require a larger investment. Trade shows are not cheap. Running a high-touch telemarketing campaign over several months also requires considerable investment.

Sending out 1000 emails however is very low cost. Whether it delivers the number and quality of leads needed to keep your pipeline full is a different story.

Looking at budget size the survey shows that smaller companies have smaller budgets (duh?) and that companies that only sell B2B with a direct sales model (ie: their own salespeople rather than through resellers and channel partners) have the smallest budgets of all.

Even more of a reason not to waste money on in-effective tactics, I say.

Which is why we always work with clients on fee models that are part fixed and part paid on delivering results. For our fixed fees we do things including telemarketing, email marketing, event/trade-show support, etc (basically stuff that we know "works") and then we link the balance of our fees to results, such as a % of revenue generated.

It's a model that works for our clients and, we believe, ensures that we don't waste our time (or your money) doing stuff that isn't linked to tangible revenue growth.

Labels: b2b email marketing, b2b lead generation, b2b marketing, b2b telemarketing, inside sales, sales lead generation

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

I noticed today a Twitter Sales Lead Tool which searches tweets for keywords relative to your business. It seems to filter tweets based on intent words (such as "need" or "looking for") and then delivers you a list of sales-ready leads which you can communicate directly with via the tool.

All very neat stuff.

It's something you can already do manually with a search string or advance search form and then saving the search. But, the search tool is free and looks to make organising the results easier so maybe it's worth a punt.

However, my real question is whether you really can get sales ready leads off twitter.

You see, as I've posted before Are social networks just a waste of time for B2B lead generation?, I wonder whether they really generate qualified sales leads or just a lot of time wasting noise.

Let's take our business as an example.

I'm looking for prospects who want telemarketing, right? (Well, not exactly, but lets follow this route). If I run a search on twitter for "telemarketing" I get a whole mixed bag a people complaining about telemarketing, looking for a telemarketing job, people looking for hire someone for a telemarketing job, it goes on.

OK, so I filter it by using a search string to remove the word "job" and to only look for people asking a question. What do I get? Well, in this instance, just one tweet and it's someone looking to hire someone.

But let's assume I actually get more. What next?

Well, for it to a qualified "sales-ready" lead I need to tick a few boxes. Basic stuff like budget, target market, timescales, etc. Whatever the filters are that you need to decide whether it's a qualified lead.

My point is that, when you really drill into these things, for b2b lead generation twitter doesn't seem to deliver. Of course, if you're selling something that has less qualification criteria and/or a large universe of people looking, then it could be a goldmine.

But for my business (and for pretty much all of my clients) I don't think so.

The more I look, the more I see that most of the buzz comes from people selling training or tools to use social media for lead generation. Everyone's jumped on the Sales 2.0 bandwagon and are making hay.

Don't get me wrong, social networking platforms can be useful for sales lead generation. Identifying and researching prospects are two key areas where we use them every day.

And, I don't rule out that as they develop and adoption grows within business, we won't find serious buyers tweeting their intent or starting discussions on LinkedIn groups whereas they used to wander around an exhibition hall looking for solutions.

But right now, for b2b sales lead generation, I think you're still better off investing your time, money and energy in more proven tactics.

Bottom line is that we're interested in delivering results. Whilst it might be sexy to talk with clients about social media the reality is that we can't guarantee it'll deliver qualified sales-ready opportunities.

Labels: b2b lead generation, sales lead generation, social media

Another day, another acronym for qualified leads, eh?

This time it's the guys at RainToday, in their post No Budget, No Problem: The New Definition of a Qualified Sale.

They have come up with FAINT, which stands for:

Funds, Authority, Interest, Need, Timing.

It's a variation of BANT but, as you'll read in their article, they propose that asking about Budget kills a lead which could still be a genuine sales opportunity.

They have a valid point regarding asking about Budget but, in the end, I think it's the difference between qualification for leads and for sales opportunities.

You see, budgets are set for known categories of product and services. Plus budgets are the domain of mid-level managers. If you're in that game, understanding whether there's a budget in place can be useful and saves a lot of wasted time.

However, if you've got a new proposition for something that they don't already buy, or something that they have covered in a different way then it's no use talking about budget related to your specific offering.

In most situations like this, prospects will need to build a business case to invest in your solution. They need to find budget. If they want it enough and are senior enough - they will get the money.

"Authority" is a better way to qualify in this instance, backed up with some questions around their particular circumstances to uncover a real "Need".

From a lead generation perspective, Budget and Money are both areas that are best qualified more deeply as part of the sales process, which is when you're actually sat in front of them.

Labels: appointment setting, lead qualification, sales lead generation

According to TACK's Buyers Survey 2010, "Email now dominates as an acceptable channel for salespeople to make contact to arrange a first appointment with 84% saying email is acceptable, followed by a telephone call and then by letter."

The 2010 survey reports on the views of buyers from FTSE 100 companies to SMEs within manufacturing, retail, B2B, financial services and business services sectors across Europe, Asia and the US.

Remember that this survey looks at buyer's "preferences", which doesn't necessarily mean "effectiveness" of the channel to generate appointments.

This seems to run counter-intuitive to B2B marketing's perception of email for new business prospecting. With the increase in SPAM you'd expect email to be declining as a channel.

Again, let's not confuse effectiveness with buyer's preference.

It may well be that buyers prefer an approach via email since it's easier to reject or ignore than having something breathing down the phone at you.

Also, we shouldn't confuse a hand-crafted email specific to a person with bulk B2B email.

The latter is certainly viewed as SPAM and has increasing low pull rates for new customer acquisition. The former, we find, can be very effective at securing appointments without ever speaking with the prospect.

From a trend perspective it looks like, as well as email, telephone is marginally up on previous surveys, as is snail mail (we are seeing a lot of prospects requesting info by post, and generally direct mail is having a resurgence in B2B circles).

Fax is down (shock news!) and amazingly face-to-face cold calling is up.

Finally, LinkedIn has made an appearance as a preferred channel. Let's see how long it takes before that gets wrecked.

Judging but the amount of consultants selling "Sales 2.0: get sales leads through LinkedIn" as the new magic bullet, I'd say not long.

Labels: appointment making, appointment setting, b2b lead generation, sales lead generation

It's a great image, and one that I snatched from Velocity's excellent B2B Marketing Manifesto.

In this they assert that whilst on the "old days" the sales department saw themselves as the engine room, today's B2B marketer needs to realise that they are in fact the engine that drives sales and that sales are the tires, the "rubber hitting the road".

Their thoughts on the role of "marcom" managers equally made me smile:

"Marcom people provide a valuable service to their companies. Because that’s exactly what they provide: service & support for the sales team. When sales needs a new data sheet or case study: you’re the dude. You handle the trade show stands and e-newsletters. You own the brochures and the website. That’s a valuable function. But it’s not marketing. Not any more."

That makes me smile because, originally coming from sales not marketing, I've always believed it.

B2B marketing should be about one thing - generating qualified sales leads.

The reason that things have changed is that today's digital media now engages prospects much earlier in the sales cycle and in a way that if completely different to the old days.

Think of it like this, you don't have to go too far back to remember when B2B marketing was all about exhibitions, adverts in the trade press and postcards send by direct mail. These all generated sales leads but significantly, the leads usually went straight to the sales team and marketing were told the numbers afterwards (if they were lucky).

Roll forward to today and not only has search and social media brought more people into the funnel earlier in their decision making process (during the research phase when they were previously sat back reading an article in the trade press or wandering the halls of the NEC picking up brochures) but today it's all much more measurable and the first contact point is often now the marketing team.

And this latter point is a key one. Most of these leads are not yet-sales ready.

In the old days these "leads" would be junked by sales.

Someone wanders onto a stand, asks a few questions and the salesperson realises that they're a just a tire-kicker... do you think they filled out their little blue slip for them? Yeah, right!

If you look what's hot in the B2B marketing media it's all about lead nurturing and lead scoring.

Demand generation has basically created a new headache for marketing because it's now having to deal with "leads" which they previously never saw, either because the information was given out without collecting details (think of an article in a magazine rather than a downloaded whitepaper) or the leads never made the cut through the natural selection process of the sales team.

The reality is (which is something a lot in marketing seldom admit) that lead generation is a wasteful process. Almost regardless of the metrics you choose, the number of leads that actually convert to real sales is always a low percentage.

If you run a direct mail campaign and get a 2% pull, you're not able to see the number who opened the mail but didn't read, or maybe put the letter to one side and got distracted by more pressing issues. Obviously, you can throw in a PURL today and track response online, but you're still only able to see so much of what happens.

As soon as you start to get deeper analytics someone's got to manage them. Someone's got to tweak them, measure them and report on them.

Sure, this can be about optimising campaigns to get better results but it can also be about creating extra work that doesn't really impact sales (although, maybe it justifies the marketing spend to get more budget to do more work?)

I'll give you an example.

I was reading a blog recently that went into the intricacies of a particular B2B marketing campaign. When is came to the metrics and ROI it was all about increased traffic for keywords, numbers of downloads, back links, etc over a given period of time (in this case 6 months). Finally, we got down to where the rubber meets the road.

After all this, and a £30,000 budget, they expected to deliver 2 new prospect meetings. 2 meetings for £30,000!

Now I'm not saying that there isn't any value in the other metrics and arguably downloads are just longer term prospects that will convert with a little lead nurturing. But, equally, they could just be more tire-kickers who are draining your resources when you should be concentrating on leads that are going to convert this quarter.

Perhaps, what will eventually happen is that B2B marketers will start to think like sales people.

What started as the dream of measuring every interaction with early-stage suspects has quickly moved on to information overload.

The response? Marketing automation; score everything and automate the lead nurturing process with lots of drip messages so that the cream rises to the top.

In other words, only real sales-ready leads are passed on to sales.

Sounds a lot like my old Sales Director when he handed me my first batch on fresh hot leads: "Now your job is to make most of these go away"

Welcome to the new world of B2B marketing.

Labels: b2b lead generation, b2b marketing, lead nurturing, sales lead generation

I read a recent article featured on DemandGen Report, Four Keys to Converting Stalled Leads into Closed Sales During A Downturn, which looks at approaches you can take to recycle "dead" leads and convert more of those stalled deals.

As Dave Green says in his article, "the slowdown in the economy has created longer selling cycles and smaller deal sizes", which is something I certainly agree with.

Dave suggests that one way to recycle those dead or stalled deals is to run a professional telemarketing campaign to understand what the problem is. This could be done as a market research project and the resulting information can be used to offer incentives that address the problems of delay.

This is an excellent way of re-engaging with leads that the sales team have lost traction with. In my experience, sales will too easily write off deals which, with a different approach, can be possibly brought back to life.

Telemarketing can be used either to re-engage or, at the very least, further qualify whether the opportunity can indeed be salvaged.

I also like Dave's comment that "no matter how sophisticated the automated nurturing process is, there is no substitute for human interaction."

It's good to hear that coming from a well respected demand generation guru.

Labels: b2b telemarketing, demand generation, lead qualification, sales lead generation, telemarketing lead generation

If you're thinking of running a lead generation campaign, telemarketing is still an effective B2B marketing tactic to consider.

Obviously it's not the only lead generation tactic and, if you read the marketing press, you'd think that everyone had dropped telemarketing lead generation in favour of "social media" or "twitter". But, when it comes to ROI, telemarketing is still a solid direct marketing tactic for lead generation.

So, when is it best to use telemarketing for lead generation?

Here are 3 situations which make telemarketing an ideal tactic for lead generation:

1) In early stage markets - if you're selling new technology, or are in an early stage market, then you can guarantee that your prospects are not looking for you. That's not to say they're not looking for solutions to their particular problem, it's just that they don't yet know your product or service exists.

In these circumstances, you need to educate the market. A telemarketing lead generation campaign is ideal for this situation as it is all about starting a dialogue.

2) Against established competitors - unlike above, here there's an established market with existing "players". Very often these competitors are the "usual suspects" that prospects turn to when they are looking for RFP's or solutions.

In this situation, you need to break in and get their attention otherwise they'll simply continue with the people they know. Again, using telemarketing as a means of opening a dialogue is ideal.

You should note that each of the above examples needs a slightly different approach and objective. A campaign to build awareness for your business against incumbent competitors will be different to one where you are educating the market.

3) Targeting a "wish-list" - a third way to consider whether telemarketing is a suitable lead generation tactic is when you have a highly targeted "wish-list" of companies. Typically this implies a small list of businesses, less than 200 companies for example.

Why is this a good fit with telemarketing?

Well, if you know that your proposition is ideal for a very small target market (perhaps based on a number of firmographics such as turnover, ownership, etc) then you need to make sure that you maximise every possible opportunity available.

Essentially, you can't afford to sit back and wait for them to come to you.

In all three examples there's a common theme: control. Telemarketing is all about pushing out into the market and taking control of the lead generation process.

As I said at the beginning of this post, telemarketing is not fashionable at this time. Read the press and you'd believe that marketing today is only about "permission-based", "online" and "social media".

Google may be great, but if you're selling something that your audience is not looking for (yet) then all the adwords budget in the world will not deliver the leads you need.

Likewise, if you want to break into a competitive market with established, better resourced incumbents then you need to engage before the buying process starts.

In the right circumstances, telemarketing still remains an effective lead generation tactic.

Labels: b2b telemarketing, sales lead generation, telemarketing lead generation

I came across an interesting piece on Inside Sales from the Bridge Group based in the US.

They've published a "Periodic Table of Inside Sales Metrics", which is an interesting way of presenting many of the metrics they've researched.

The Bridge Group specialises in consulting on Inside Sales for technology vendors and their president, Trish Bertuzzi, is founder and manager of the Inside Sales Experts group on LinkedIn.

Looking at the metrics they present, there are some interesting ones from a telesales perspective (what we would typically refer to "Inside Sales" as in the UK)

Under lead generation, the average quota for appointments per inside sales rep is 16 per month. Also, the average hours per day on the phone for lead generation is 4 hours.

Now, I know from reading other articles published by The Bridge Group that many of the inside sales people surveyed are also responding to and qualifying inbound leads so this doesn't mean that 4 hours a day, 20 days a week generates 16 appointments from outbound cold calling.

To me, that's not a million miles off our experience in lead generation and appointment setting for technology vendors.

We figure that one of our team (focused purely on outbound lead generation) can generate a qualified appointment every 1 to 1.5 days for a technology proposition.

Based on The Bridge Group's figures their on quota average is 1.4 per day but, as I said, that will be a mixture of inbound and outbound lead sources. Which means I think we're broadly on the same page.

Also, I liked the metric that that average ramp-up time for an inside sales rep was 4.5 months.

If only we had that long :-)

Labels: appointment setting, inside sales, sales lead generation, telesales

I often discuss the issue of blow-back with clients who are concerned about potential brand damage when considering using telemarketing to generate leads for new business.

As the saying goes, "you can't make an omelette...."

Of course, anything you do which involves making an unsolicited approach for new business, whether that's by phone or email, carries a degree of risk. I've seen sales people sit all day doing anything rather than pick up the phone and cold call because they're afraid of rejection; in the trade they call it call avoidance.

But, for a company considering working with a telemarketing agency, it's a legitimate concern to have. After all, anyone making a call on behalf of your company is representing your brand in front of potential clients.

In my experience there are two things that you should be aware of:

Firstly, scripts should be avoided at all costs.

Whoever's calling on your behalf needs to clearly understand your proposition. That's not to say they need to be experts, they just need to know your key messages, how you're positioned and why the prospect should consider meeting you (if the output is a meeting, for example). This is why we invest time in client briefings at the start of every new business campaign.

If your prospect receives a call from someone who is obviously reading a script it tells them immediately that it's a cold call from someone who probably doesn't even know who they are and what they do.

An intelligent, well-researched approach says something entirely different...

Secondly, pushy sales people will kill any chance you have.

In this business, a little guile, wit and persistence is always needed to deliver results (after all, if it was that easy....). But thinking you can strong-arm someone into a meeting never works.

At best they'll agree to the meeting and then cancel it. At worst they'll remember your company name. And if you upset them they will always remember it.

So, always make sure you work with people who have an interest in delivering quality sales appointments, not just another name in the diary or meeting notched up on the board.

That may mean fewer meetings. But, in our book, fewer, quality meetings often lead to more profitable new business.

Labels: appointment setting services, new business agency, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency

Always a source of interesting perspectives for small businesses, I found a good article in today's Sunday Times "Small firms can thrive amid corporate giants".

The article interviews a number of small business owners, mainly agencies, professional and support services, who have been successful in winning new business with major corporates, and surviving the process!

For me, a couple of key take-aways from the article are the need to avoid getting locked-in too low within major accounts (which can both keep you positioned as a low-level supplier and expose you to risk when your contact leaves), plus the importance of choosing the right clients in the first instance:

"Working successfully with big players also means being prepared to turn down work that doesn't meet the plans and aspirations of your own business"

I couldn't agree more with this last statement. Investing time to identify the right clients for where you want to take your business is critical. I find that whilst our clients get a lot of their current work by referral or other word-of-mouth sources, this may not be the right strategic fit to grow their business.

Where we add value is by targeting specific companies, usually major corporates, that meet our clients' growth aspirations. This sets up a new business pipeline that both builds on and augments your usual work portfolio, setting a trajectory for future growth.

Labels: lead generation agency, lead generation company, new business agency, sales lead generation

The guys at Jigsaw sent over an email today for a webinar they're running next week "Microwave Your Cold Calls -- Sales 2.0". Catchy title, I thought.

But why does it seems that everything is "2.0" nowadays?

According to their blurb,

Prospects today are even more short of time than ever and "Old school" selling techniques are less-and-less effective. It's time to not only warm up your cold calls. It's time to "nuke 'em". It's time for Sales 2.0.

I agree that things have moved on. Email is the preferred method of contact for many prospects (particularly senior ones) and, as I've blogged about many times before here, you need to target prospects with precision to make an impact today.

Nigel Edelshain, who's behind this Sales 2.0 concept and is presenting on the webinar, says that most sales people "do reasonably well once they are in a sales meeting. But most of them are unable to execute a successful prospecting/lead generation program".

100% behind you there, Nigel. For salespeople also read: "any small business owner and Director". Nigel goes on to say:

One element that really distinguishes "Sales 2.0" in my eyes from "old school selling" is the focus on the front end of the sales process not the back end. The "old school" sales books always focused on closing techniques and said very little about prospecting. "Sales 2.0" flips this approach and puts most of a sales person's time and energy into research and prospecting.

Again, couldn't agree more Nigel. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that if lead generation is done right the deals almost close themselves (OK, maybe that's a bit far)

But, he's correct that if you target the right people with a well researched proposition it's at least 50% of the way there.

Whether that's really 2.0 or not I'm not so sure.

No doubt, Nigel will go on to show us how we can use Jigsaw, LinkedIn, et al to target prospects and that's where the 2.0 bit will come in.

But I wouldn't rule out the "old school" either. Even with the all the tools available to target prospects, sometimes you've still got to pick up that phone.

But that's just my 2.0 pence... or 2.0 cents if you're on Nigel's side of the pond.

Labels: sales lead generation, social networking sites, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

Thanks to YouTube, I now have access to Alec Baldwin's cameo scene from Glengarry Glen Ross

Baldwin's character, the crisply-dressed and pitiless Blake, parachutes into a sleepy real estate office to threaten, berate, and otherwise motivate its hapless salesmen.

Levene: The leads are weak.

Blake: "The leads are weak." F*****ng leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years -

Moss: What's your name?

Blake: F**k you, that's my name. You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove a eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name.

Gives me goose-bumps everytime I watch it.

Labels: sales lead generation

I've started playing around with Spoke recently which, since this summer, has now opened up access for free.

Last time I looked a while back I decided not to join as it appeared to be predominantly US focused and I couldn't justify the monthly fee (when compared to the access I was getting via LinkedIn).

[BTW, it's still very US focused as you can't search for contacts by country, although there are non-US contacts & companies on Spoke)

So, how is Spoke different?

At a first glance, it's obviously set-up more for sales & marketing people than LinkedIn. It allows you to search it's full database of 30 million contacts (which makes it nearly 4 times the size of LinkedIn) and you can save searches and set up alerts (which is something that would greatly improve LinkedIn).

The main difference, however, is how it generates it's data.

This article, "Spoke frees up its database", explains this in more detail.

Until now, Spoke has created its database by scouring the web, using third-party providers, as well as asking its members to share their address book contacts. You could think of it as a cross between LinkedIn & ZoomInfo, I guess.

But, as the article points out, "Any kind of database becomes practically worthless if you don’t know whether an entry is accurate or not. Even if 10 percent of it is wrong, you can’t trust it."

To me, this is always the main issue.

All these tools, LinkedIn, Spoke, etc are just the starting point of any names sourcing or business development research. When you're tracking people within companies, guess what, they move about. It's about finding an appropriate entry point.

Sure, if you're after anyone in the C-suite, then just pulling up the website will normally do it. But if you want specific role-holders then you need to get digging.

It's like I pointed out in my post "Drive-thru or counter?", sometimes it's easier just to pick up the phone.

This was illustrated the other day when a colleague emailed me and said he was trying to get hold of a senior budget holder within a major UK retailer. He said he'd searched everywhere and couldn't track down a name.

I just picked up the phone, called their Head Office, got through to the right department and asked. Sometime the simplest route really does work.

It would be nice to think that we can sit at our computers and do everything by searching & emailing (and sometimes that does work). But then you're just limiting your options.

Labels: sales lead generation, social networking sites

OK, so there's always a point when I engage with a new client when we start to discuss fees. For "appointment setting", there are a few fee models on the market, ranging from the very bottom (setting up meetings for financial advisers or low-value B2B propositions) to the very top...CEO of a global company.

I pretty much focus on the upper-middle to top of this market.

Typically, my clients want to engage with senior budget holders and decision makers where their value proposition has the most currency. In larger companies that's not always an easy person to find. Often for consultancies I need to find a departmental or divisional head... or even a "Director" level interim who's heading up a programme. Titles can be a bit misleading...

[You can't go out and buy those names on a list, BTW.]

Anyway, we now get back to "how much" is the meeting worth?

Whilst there are methods of calculating the life-time value of your potential client, as used by many direct marketing guru's when establishing ROI and Client Acquisition methods, I find these don't really help.

In any case, the cost of getting the meeting will be far less than the cost of "pitching" for the business. For any company with a complex sale, and long bidding process this cost regularly runs into hundreds of thousands, GBP or USD, take your pick.

Therefore, when you factor in the cost of sale, it's more important to have a well qualified meeting than just any meeting.

Another way of establishing cost per meeting is to look at alternatives, such as trade shows, events, or even your own biz dev people cold-calling - OK, so we both know that'll never happen :-)

When I've sat down with clients before and looked at the costs, when you add up lost billable hours or sales "down-time", plus costs of the event etc, the cost per meeting always runs above 1000GBP.

I regularly deliver qualified meetings for less than half that amount, as well as supporting my clients with account research & intelligence that they can leverage for success.

Labels: appointment setting services, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I was watching The 40 Year Old Virgin the other day and was reminded of why we don't do B2C telemarketing.

The film is about Andy Stitzer, who has a nice life complete with an action figure collection and a cushy job at an electronics store. But the only thing is, he's a 40 year old virgin who has just fallen in love with a woman, who doesn't want sex in the relationship

There's a scene where Andy calls a single mum he's met to make a date and, because he chickens out and pretends he's a telemarketer he gets the following response

[Telephone ringing]

Hello.

Hey, how you doing?

How you doing?

I'm well.

Who is this?

This is James.

James. Do I know you, James?

[Grunting]

I was wondering whether you had a few minutes... to talk about a little laundry detergent.

Are you a telemarketer, James?

Yep.

Are you at the top of a tall building? Can you get to a roof quickly? Jump off! I mean, you people are sick. Get a real f****ng job, why don't you? Go shoot yourself in the f****ng head. Hey, why don't you just, you know, get a knife and run into it? Why don't you do that, huh? Okay. I'll see you later, James. Nice to talk to you. F**k your mother, okay? Bye-bye.

Oh.

Anyone recognise that? I know a guy who was looking to recruit B2C (business-to-consumer) telemarketers on a commission only basis. He was telling me that no-one was interested in doing the job. Er.... really?

Here's a hilarious audio file to listen to: "Crazy Lady VS Telemarketer".

Over 17 years of sales prospecting, I've encountered a few people like this who have obviously had one cold-call too many and snapped.

OK, I admit it... maybe I've played along with them a little, just for the entertainment value. Once they're boiling it's so easy to keep 'em there.

But, the reality is, this type of aggressive, confrontational approach isn't going to get you anywhere.

Labels: sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

Did you know that everyone has a built-in SPAM filter?

When you get one of those cold-calls, or the door-bell goes and there's this guy with a name-badge and clipboard...you just know that you're about to be SPAM'd.

Senior executives have had so much SPAM that they've installed firewalls and sophisticated human SPAM-filters, otherwise known as PA's. They put policies in place so that anyone who answers the phone must immediately junk-folder any call that is SPAM.

It's even got so bad that some companies register with the Human SPAM police, otherwise known as the CTPS in the UK, to publicly say "no Human SPAM here".

In the electronic world, SPAM filters work on the basis that if it looks like SPAM then it is SPAM. Some people use overly-zealous settings on their SPAM filters, and so they only get emails from people that they already know and are on their white-list (this is a bit like CTPS or no-name policies in companies).

So, here's the thing. The way to avoid the Human SPAM filter is simple: Don't SPAM.

I contact senior executives daily on behalf of my clients. Sometimes I just phone them up. Sometimes it's by email and sometimes I reach them via a networking site, such as LinkedIn.

However, when I contact them I make sure that I do not look or sound like SPAM.

For a start, I'm usually contacting them because I've invested time researching their company to make sure my approach is well targeted. I take time to check that they will be interested in my proposition before I initiate contact.

If I'm unable to check this before-hand (a real cold-call, yes I do these too), I don't just launch into a script that doesn't respect their time, I ask simple questions to quickly establish if there's an interest. In short, I think about the person I am calling before, during and after my call. I work from the stand-point that I want to potentially develop a relationship and so I treat the person politely and with respect.

Sure, the reality is that not everyone is going to be interested in my proposition. If I've done my research and I have a well-targeted approach, maybe I'll be successful with 30-40%. But, I've still dealt with the people who are not interested in an honest, straight-forward & respectful way.

At this point you could be forgiven for thinking, "So What?". My approach may not seem very special. In fact, you could say that all I'm doing is thinking about who I approach and being professional when I contact them.

And here's the thing...this is the exact opposite to how 95% of tele-marketers work.

My approach takes time; it's about creativity & flexibility.

Most call-centres work a "numbers game". What's it like to do a job where you're grinding away at the numbers with very limited success. You start to get a negative process mind-set..."just another call, say my pitch. Not interested? OK, onto the next call. Every No is nearer a Yes, right?".

So the call-centre says, "we're only getting a 3% success rate, how can we get more people to make more calls faster? Let's automate dialing, let's chain everyone to their desk and give them huge "target boards" to motivate them."

No wonder some of them have 140% employee churn-rates.

Is it any wonder that companies put policies in place to avoid these poor people? Speaking to 100's of depressed and demotivated drones every day must have health & safety implications ;-)

I've coached entrepreneurs on "cold-calling". One woman I coached was concerned that she would make mistakes when she made the calls. I said "that's great, making mistakes is just human. And the more human and unpolished you are the less you sound like you're calling from a call-centre"

That's it...it's just about one human connecting with another. Be polite, think about the other person and ask for what you want. You may be surprised how simple it really is.

Labels: sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services

I have a new hero...Doug Spong. He runs Cult Industries, a rapidly expanding global surfwear brand.

I read this article about him at the the weekend, Aussie who has board meetings on the beach

Doug's a millionaire that "wears flip-flops, board shorts and a T-shirt" to work and, last month, he and his fellow executives (all veteran Aussie surfers) "took off for a month's surfing and fishing in the Coral Sea aboard Amnesia, his 110ft converted tugboat."

Now this guy has the right attitude.

What I also enjoyed what his view that his business day is like surfing:

"Some days are so exciting, absolutely thrilling; others are the opposite. It's like a big wave, the ups and downs of this business."

Now that I can certainly relate to. Sales prospecting, lead generation...it's about searching for that opportunity. Somedays you get nothing. Other times you get dumped. You just have to recover and get back out there. But when you get that breakthrough, suddenly all the waiting and kick-backs don't matter.

Anyone who's been in this business will tell you - that's what keeps them going.

Labels: new business development, sales lead generation

I've been following an interesting discussion on the Electronic Recruiting Exchange about whether cold calling or emails are most effective for sourcing candidates.

Whilst the discussion has a recruiting focus, it's equally valid for sales & business development.

Reading the emerging discussion posts, what became apparent was that there seems to be a polarised view on this. Some people say email, some say cold-call..with each citing outstanding results they've had from their respective method.

To me, this isn't a case of "either or"...more like "and both".

Cold calling, sending unsolicited emails, using online networks such as LinkedIn are all valid strategies. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages and, guess what, none of them work 100% of the time with 100% of people.

In my experience, different management levels, and different industries have their own particular quirks. And, of course, it all depends on how compelling your proposition is...and what the outcome is that you're after; appointment, qualified opportunity, passive candidate sourcing...they all put a different spin on your approach.

Truth is, for some client's I've set up great high-level meetings without ever speaking directly to an executive. For others I've accurately sourced passive candidates through LinkedIn. Sometimes it's all been by phone...it's like they didn't know email even exists :-)

Email is certainly not going away, and with the rise of Blackberry's and mobile email devices it's often the only way you'll reach someone for a time-sensitive project.

To me, the quality of your approach counts more than how it's delivered. If it's targeted, simple and compelling (and, of course, the timing's in your favour) then you'll get good results.

The secret is to remain flexible and try something different until you get the results you want.

Much like life, really.

Labels: cold calling, marketing, sales lead generation

There's a great quote from Lou Adler from his article "The Best Article Ever Written on Passive Candidate Recruiting"
on the Electronic Recruiting Exchange.

The article covers key metrics which Lou believes will significantly increase your results for sourcing passive candidates. Incidentally, this article is equally appropriate for cold calling for sales people.

The quote I particularly like is:

"The Internet has made the process of finding names of passive candidates quite easy. But this is only the first step in getting them into your network and possibly hired into your company. Look at the names as the start of the process, not the end."

Resources such as ZoomInfo have made it easier to search for people (especially if they're US based). For LinkedIn read the same.

However, in most cases, this will just provide the entry-point, or the starting block. As Lou observes, "this is only the first step...look at the names as the start of the process, not the end."

Whether you're sourcing names, digging for competitive intelligence, setting appointments...at some point you need to pick up that phone ;-)

Labels: competitive intelligence, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company

The other day I had an amusing cold-call from a recruitment company. I'll not mention their name, but they bill themselves as "specialising in placing and training graduates for high-profile sales and marketing jobs". Yeah, right.

Anyway, this guy calls me up, let's call him James, and from the start he's not listening.

ME: Hello, David Regler.

JAMES: Can I speak with Mr Regler please?

ME: This is Mr Regler.

JAMES: Er...er...(He recovers and launches into his pitch) We're a UK Recruitment company specialising in placing and training graduates for high-profile sales and marketing jobs. I want to arrange a meeting with you...yadda, yadda....synergies....explore relationships...yadda, yadda....

He goes on for a couple of minutes and I don't say a word (apparantly the more he talks the more I'm convinced). His pitch is just the usual canned waffle. Eventually, he closes me for an appointment with probably the oldest one in the book.

JAMES: I'm going to be in your area either May 8th or 11th, which is best for you?

ME: James, I don't understand why you want to meet me (I ignored the fact that he obviously didn't know where my area was and I seriously doubt whether he was going to ever be in it).

JAMES: Er...er....

ME: You're a recruitment company right?

JAMES: Yes

ME: Well...we don't employ anyone.

JAMES: Er...er...(this was obviously not an objection on his script)...I don't understand...er...

ME: We work on an associate model, that means we don't employ anyone. So why would you want to waste your time meeting me?

Talk about lack of qualification. If he'd taken one minute to look at my website he'd have found that out. I mean, the clue is in the name: Maine Associates ;-)

I went on to question James about his company, got to find out that he'd been there 6 months and had been through their intensive sales training which included, wait for it, cold calling. His target was to make 6 appointments a week; obviously it didn't matter what appointment it was - the company didn't have to meet some basic criteria, such as do they hire sales people ;-). If he just wanted an appointment he should have gone to the doctor.

I emailed his MD and suggested that if they wanted to run a real training course on "cold calling" they should give me a call. I'll not hold my breath on that one.

Needless to say, James' approach is not unique. In fact, it's pretty much the standard out there. And while people like James are doing such a bad job, our life is so much easier.

When we contact prospects they instantly know that we are different - and that's what makes the difference.

Labels: appointment setting services, cold calling, sales lead generation, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services