Telemarketing 101

In any lead-gen marketing campaign the end goal is the same. We want to produce the most leads as fast as possible. But what does that mean? Let’s look a little closer.

First off… what is a lead? To some a lead might mean little more than the contact info of someone working within the industry we serve. Perhaps a bit simplistic but it works for some.  But it doesn’t address the end-game. The true goal is to generate leads that end in closed sales. So what we really want out of our lead-gen campaign is the most “closeable” leads.

All right, how or when do we know if a contact is closeable (or sales-ready)? This starts with a collaborative effort between the sales and marketing departments. By reviewing previous sales efforts (successful or not), strategic direction, product/service offered and the target market we can come up with a quite detailed profile of the type of contact that will likely result in a closed sale. Once we know the target profile we have a list of attributes that we can use to filter our contact list.

Great, so how can we quickly determine those in our contact list that meet our target profile? The primary tools in use are telemarketing and e-mailing campaigns. However, we might be better served by understanding what they actually deliver because we are really looking at two different animals.

The best practice e-mailing campaigns use a multi-touch approach that moves a contact from a low to high level of awareness and appreciation (demand) of our company/product/service. These best practice campaigns include the use of in-depth tools to watch/listen to the actions taken with messages sent and websites/landing pages visited. We collect data from these interactions and try to interpret its meaning often employing a scoring system to gauge the strength or weakness of the lead. Unfortunately the only way we get actual profile data is by asking for it through a webform. This is good but the reality is that many decision-makers/influencers tend to withhold this info until they are well along in the selection process. So if we think this through logically we see that an e-mailing campaign is really a tactic better suited  for demand-generation.

The best practice telemarketing campaigns are designed to gather the profile information needed to identify how closeable the contact is. As a matter of fact, we want little effort made by our tele-reps in building demand so as not to come off as a sales call. With well-designed lead rating systems we can quickly determine the sales-readiness of these contacts based on actual profile data received directly from the contact. With contacts that are rated not sales-ready we determine what future nurturing and callbacks to use. This is a great time to initiate a demand generating e-mail campaign. The bottom line is that telemarketing calls are much better at finding the buyer’s profile. With this you can easily determine the leads that result in more closed sales.

The best campaigners employ both tactics to grow their business. But it’s important to remain clear on what one actually gets from each.