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By Alan Brooks

Successful Telesales Campaigns

By Alan Brooks

In the current climate telesales companies are promoting like mad. “Spend your budget getting guaranteed sales results, not on brand building” is the mantra. So what are the keys to a successful business to business telesales campaign?

  • Have a compelling offer
    To get a busy buyer to give up some of their time to a stranger there must be the prospect of an immediate benefit that is relevant to them, valuable to them, credible that you can deliver, and capable of being explained in a few short sentences by a non-expert telesales operator.

  • Be timely
    Some services in particular have an inherent time deadline, such as the closing of a tax loophole, are so are therefore more likely to generate an immediate yes to a meeting rather than a call me again in 9 months.

  • Be able to identify your prospective customers
    And you must be able to do so in such a way as your telesales company can source accurate lists of such people to contact. If you cannot be specific about who might buy, the agency will have a lot of wasted calls for every success they bring you. And they will have to charge you accordingly.

  • Brief the agency well
    A prospect will gain an impression of your firm not only from what they are told, but the way that they are told it. At its most basic level, for example, they may warm to a bubbly enthusiastic telesales lady but not then bond with an older, quite formal male who goes to meet them.

  • Have support materials available

    • Some prospects will want to see something before agreeing to a meeting. The agency must be able to quickly provide materials (printed and / or web) which support their script in order to call again and book the meeting or close the sale

  • Have the business development resource available

    • If you cannot follow up appointments made with the right members of your team in a timely manner your investment will be wasted.

    If you do not have these factors in place even the best telesales agency will not be able to get you appointments with customers you want to meet. This is not to say that they won’t get you appointments. But the appointments they do get may well be with customers you don’t want to meet, most commonly constant price switchers and clients who are difficult to service or perennially dissatisfied with their suppliers. Both will be low or zero-profit customers for you.

    And finally,

  • Do your metrics first

    • Understand what the value of a new customer is to you, how many you want to gain AND can service in a specific period of time, and therefore what return you are looking to get from this exercise. Set that as an objective for the agency and incorporate it within their contract. Agencies who can genuinely deliver will have no problem with this. But beware of those who show very specific returns in their marketing material but won’t agree to be tied to anything more than hours spent or calls made within the contract.

    If you’d like to find out more, a more detailed article on this subject is available. Give us a call or email acb@hydemarketing.com

    Posted on 3rd September 2009.

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