5 Lead-nurturing Campaigns that are Worth a Try

Telemarketing companies resort to lead nurturing to engage with the non-sales ready leads present in their business phone lists database. The applications of lead nurturing could be a powerful tool throughout the sales process from initial call to repeat selling. Lead nurturing is, in fact, the key to the success of internal enablement efforts, when you start a campaign. The blog discusses five lead-nurturing campaigns that you might use to create brand awareness, get new customers, and increase repeat sales.

Campaign to re-engage with leads

Chances are less that all your prospects will convert at the end of the sales cycle. The phone lists for telemarketers have number of leads that did not respond or became inactive at one point of the process. Planning re-engagement campaigns can help you get in touch with these inactive leads and try to make them re-enter the sales process.

Campaigns that are product-focused

When a lead takes a step further towards sales closure, it gets more focused about the product, and it is important to provide the accurate information. Make sure that you know the pain points of the prospect and how your product/service could address those problems. Educate the lead about the key features and advantages without sounding biased. If possible, share data sheets, whitepapers, and case studies with the prospect.

Campaign to cross-sell

Also called as the upsell campaign, cross-selling capitalizes on the existing clients. You can provide the client information and incentives to purchase new products/service and expand their business. Before you call a customer from the business phone list that you have, ensure that you have a detail of the client’s background and ensure that the cross-sell campaign could actually benefit their company. Focus on the benefits of upselling instead of sales pitching.

Campaign for contract renewal

Make a list of clients whose contracts require renewal in the coming weeks or after a month. Your telemarketers may get in touch with the customers over a call and if possible, use a marketing automation software for data accuracy. Running a contract renewal campaign minimizes the chances of clients missing on the renewal of contract and also increases your sales figures.

Campaign to engage with not sales-ready leads

If a lead is not ready for sales at present, it doesn’t mean there’s no probability of conversion in the future. Drive campaigns to engage with such leads at regular intervals so that they do not forget about your company or go to your competitors.

Apart from the above-discussed ones, there are more lead nurturing campaigns a business could introduce for brand awareness and sales. Make sure that you know your target customers and demands well and have an updated data for successful implementation of a campaign.

3 Unusual yet Crucial Training Tips for Telemarketers

Telemarketing requires spontaneity, resourcefulness, and confidence. A telemarketing list may consist of the some crucial leads but it is nothing but a useless spreadsheet in the hands of an incompetent caller. There is a lot more to telemarketing than just being persuasive, engaging and cordial when you speak to a client. On that note, we present to you, three telemarketing tips that are not all that commonly heard of, but if and when used rightly, may help close deals with even the most hard-to-crack prospects.

Be firm (but polite) with PAs and Secretaries

When you’re a telemarketer, there are points for speaking politely to clients. Gatekeepers such as secretaries and personal assistants of high-end business prospects get so many telemarketing calls in a day that they are in an ‘auto-reject’ mode. You may not even get a chance to finish your sentence if you are too polite with secretaries or personal assistants. If, on the other hand, you add a little more command to your voice and lead into the conversation with something like ‘I’m looking to speak with…, thank you’ you may end up speaking to the client. This ‘firm but polite’ way to go about things actually increases your chances of getting the clients on the line.

Use Open Questions

Close-ended questions that may only be answered with a yes or a no are not favorable for a telemarketer. Chances are, even if you’re selling something, the prospect may be interested in answering your questions. They might still simply turn it down with a firm no. For instance, if you ask questions like “Would you be interested in hearing out investment options?” the client may directly say no without even considering the benefits. As opposed to this, you need to focus on asking open ended, conversational questions. Examples include ‘What does your budget for this look like?’ and ‘How much time, do you think you can devote to this?’

Short Sale Closing

When we say short say closing, we mean, resorting to the good old hit and trial method. Instead of waiting for the actual sales pitch/telemarketing script to finish, you may take a moment to figure out how the prospect perceives your attempt to sell your product. All you need to do is, stop and ask something like ‘So, how is our product looking so far?’ or ‘Do you see yourself using our services yet?’ If they respond positively, it indicates you are heading the right direction and hopefully, towards a closed sale. If not, you keep on trying to pursue them. Getting to know what’s on the mind of a prospect is always a good thing.

So, those were three unique ways telemarketers may use to close sales. Remember to imbibe them in an effective telemarketing script and overall strategy for best results. Like, with all telemarketing operations, good telemarketing strategies begin with good telemarketing leads.

Debunking 2 of the Biggest Telemarketing Myths

Every other industry has its own charm, own compliances and not to forget its own set of myths as well that do nothing more than inhibiting the success rate of the organizations falling under it. The telemarketing industry is no exception. It has one of the greatest number of myths surrounding it, which only make the daunting task of ‘selling over phone’ more difficult. No matter your call center is equipped with requisite software and accurate business telephone lists for churning sales, ensuring that telemarketing myths, in no way, are hampering the performance of your agents is indispensable. Through this article, we debunk the 2 biggest telemarketing myths. 

The Customer Does not Want to Be Called EVER!

One of the biggest myths in telemarketing is the thinking that customers never want to be called. This negative thought, in fact, is borne in the minds of most sales callers even before the person on the other end of the call picks up the phone. In extreme cases, many agents even arrive to a conclusion that customers just hate sales calls. The snapping of the phone lines, in many cases, however, is more related with ‘bad timing’ than reasons such as ‘customers do not want any sales calls’. If a person does not want to buy a product, of course, there’s nothing you can do about it, but once you keep yourself in the place of the customer you would realize that attending sales calls when you are leaving for something important or are already involved in a serious work is not an easy job. Owing to this reason, it is imperative to study your consumers behavior and plan your actions accordingly. Try to get the right contact time from your customers, and when you reach them, converse with confidence. 

I Can NEVER Reach a Live Customer

The access to mobile phones and less use of telephone lines by consumers has created a strong notion among telecallers that contacting a ‘live customer’ is almost impossible in the current age. Though, using efficient call center sales software helps you quickly get through the answering machines in a list and in connecting to live prospects, what do you about customers who only use mobile phones. How do you plan to reach them live? Interestingly, according to a survey done by Qualcomm, the average age of a person who starts using a cell phone is gradually dropping; 13 years being the current figure at which a person starts using a mobile phone. Consequently, most business telemarketing companies are targeting customers above 50 years, who still depend on traditional modes of communication devices such as a landline phone. 

Conclusion

Thoughts such as “How many calls do I need to complete my target” or “Will the customer even let me say a word” are only natural when you work as a sales professional in a call center. Any time of the day, disconnections and people not listening to your sales pitch are disappointing leaving behind no sales, but negative thoughts. This is one big reason that many businesses these days consider it wise to spend on auto dialing software that come with features such as predictive dialing - transfers your call automatically to the customer’s cell phone if no one answers the landline. Regardless of this, it is cardinal to remember that there are businesses that are booming as a result of high-performing sales staff. These sales professionals are churning those sales numbers by connecting with people that exist on the same planet. 

Telemarketing List Providers

Pros And Cons of Telemarketing

Telemarketing Software And Scripts

Accelerate Your Business With Fresh Telemarketing Data

Perfectly screened, clean, and well targeted telemarketing data is a key asset for your company because it feeds new businesses to your company. But how do you get clean telemarketing data? Most of the telephone marketing service providers offer professional data cleansing. They pay great attention to the details and ensure that your data does not contain errors, duplicates, and format inconsistencies.

The Law Mandates the Data Cleaning Process

The Data Protection Act in the USA mandates that all records must be correct (fourth principle) and not held for longer than required (fifth principle). If companies do not clean their data, they may be found guilty for not being compliant with the principles.

Data Cleaning Process

Cluttered telemarketing data costs money and negatively impacts the reputation of your company. The following tips can help you keep your data clean and also accelerate your business.

Audit & sync your database: If you are using multiple telemarketing lists, combine them into one CMS or sync them. You can also manually create a process to ensure that updates in one database reflect in all others. There’s no point in cleansing every database if the same records in other databases are still wrong.

Check for uniformity: Uniformity in the data structure is key to a quality telemarketing database, but at the same time it is also a challenge. For example, if you let a telemarketing lists aggregator type the business leads rather than choosing from a drop-down menu, they will give varying results. They may write United States in multiple ways such as U.S., US, U.S.A, USA, and United States of America.

No short cuts: Telemarketing data cleaning is labor-intensive work. One can do this via email, but response rates will be either slow or low, and what if the email address is wrong? The better way is to crosscheck the data using online research, but companies don’t always list their employees’ contact details on their website. In this situation, you have to make calls to verify the data.

Writer’s take

Smart telemarketers segment their telemarketing data at a very detailed level such as profession, region, interest, etc. Before buying the data, they inquire about the quality of data, the format of data, data aggregation method, and more. A well-established fact in the telemarketing business is that data cleansing isn’t a one-off process. Telemarketing companies must set a process in place to clean their telemarketing data at least once a year.