The Risks and Rewards of Cold-Calling

In a broader context, offshore outsourcing B2B telemarketing has its own ups and downs. Going deeper, one of its core functions, the so-called cold-calling or teleprospecting, also possesses risks and rewards. For decision-makers of the business organisations in the United Kingdom, allow yourselves to be fed with these pros and cons of cold-calling, if you so happen to decide to outsource your B2B lead generation.

Risks

• Prospects hanging up. You can not expect all leads to give you an acquaintance party on your first, and, even, follow-up calls. It is natural that they do hang up. However, this disadvantage has a cure anyway. It is only through the ability of a cold-caller, supported by a call script, that a sales prospect will be glued on his telephone and answer all the questions that the telemarketer wants to ask. There is always a way to tame a scary lion.
• Wrong timing. No one can really tell whether the decision-maker of a certain company is present or on leave, or has a meeting. Wrong timing may force a telemarketer to forget a follow-up call for a prospect who may be a qualified sales lead.
• Quantity over quality. There might be few telemarketing firms that will offer abundant sales leads, but unfortunately of poor quality.

Rewards

• Reach and response. For obvious reasons, the telephone remains the fastest tool in reaching a prospect and making him/her respond immediately. This shortens the time in determining who are interested with those that are not. Only cold-calling facilitates a two-way conversation.
• Large Volume in a Span of Time. What would you expect with a fast medium? In just a day, tens or less than a hundred prospects are screened for qualification.
• Teleprospecting is powered by a medium that is easy to use and produces fast results.

Lead Generation: Challenges that Businesses Face When Building an In-house Team

There are many organizations worldwide have opted to use an in-house team of sales representatives to do lead generation procedures for the business. It may seem as the best option for cutting down costs for the organization. However, this is only true at the first phases of the campaign. What these organizations do not fully understand that in order to keep the campaign alive they should harness more resources thus more build-up of stress is being brought upon towards the organization's employees.

In addition, building an in-house team of cold calling representatives means that the business needs to face problems and challenges in the process. Some of these challenges are:

1. Leaving the campaign in the hands of a junior

Business owners do not just have to worry about the lead generation campaign for their business; they have numerous things to take care off to make sure that the company stays afloat. Hence, there are numerous times that the business owner is not there to manage the cold calling campaign for generating leads. There might come a chance that the campaign will be put into the hands of a beginner. Doing so can put the program at a higher risk of failing.

2. Only a single strategy is used

Business owners are too busy to think about everything for the campaign. As such, many companies' in-house lead generation program only has a single strategy for gathering leads. Doing so can lead to very limited results.

3. Targeting market is way off

Businesses, especially new ones, may not have the focus yet to know who their target market really is.

When a business encounters these problems, it is much better to outsource their lead generation campaign towards cold calling experts. This way, they can ensure themselves of a successful program for their business' growth.

When is the Best Time to Outsource Call Center Services

Outsourcing call center services is not an easy decision to make but examining a strategic point is one benchmark that helps. When your still starting out in the business you may very well have the opportunity to handle infrequent calls but once sales begins to skyrocket the massive amount of calls from clients and customers may not be enough anymore to provide assistance. This is the best time for you to get help from reputable companies who can ensure that the number of calls is answered.

When a business demands for product support or help desks, this kind of situation might warrant an outsourced service to help. Having your own in house call center could be a very expensive feat for your business, because you have to invest in computers, telephone and other needed software.

Call centers can really help your business grow, the idea of simplifying operations and focusing your resources is too good to pass up. It could also improve the business's return on investment and has the ability to retain customers is such a great opportunity for you that needs to be ventured out.

Businesses that has seasonal highs and lows, such as retail can really turn to an outsourced call center service in order to seek help and for a “pick-me-up” specially during busy times of the year. Dealing with all the ebb and flow of business is just one of the many reasons why outsourcing some or all of call center needs makes sense in today's different business needs.

Telemarketing Works Well for IT Products and Services

The market is constantly changing. The needs of customers are becoming more and more divers as the years come by. Individuality is the name of the trend. As software dealers, you’d need to be on top of things. You need to be able to make a sale. To make that happen, you might have to use telemarketing. But don’t worry, this is not an act of desperation, this is merely the use of creativity. After all, what else can deliver great appointment setting and lead generation services? Only telemarketing can do that.

Lead generation can be a very complicated process. You need to be able to capture a reasonable number of business leads that you can use in your sales campaign. Telemarketing makes it possible for you to gain leads that others can’t deliver. Network management leads and telecommunication products leads are two types of leads that become readily available. You can also use it in searching for good telecommunication services leads. The telemarketers who per perform the task are the best, so you don’t have to worry about quality. The leads are good, and these are guaranteed easy to convert into a sale.

I’m sure you’re interested now. After all, this is your business we’re talking about here. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, now is the right time to make the choice. You have a lot to gain with telemarketing. It’s an investment worth the try. I assure you, you will not regret making the choice.

Knowing the ABC's of Telemarketing

First of all, what is telemarketing?

Telemarketing pertains to a service wherein certain individuals cater to calls that would prove beneficial towards a business' success. Some of the processes involved in telemarketing are those of lead generation, telesales, and information gathering campaigns.

It can either be inbound and outbound depending on the service.

What's the difference between inbound and outbound telephone marketing?

The inbound portion would mean that call center representatives would wait for clients and customers to call them. Inbound telephone marketing would usually cater to order taking or other forms of information acquisition. The inbound portion would usually have representatives that would only have little sales training for prospects are already interested in the products and services even before they have made the call.

The outbound portion of telephone marketing would have higher sales training than that of the inbound portion. The reason is that the representatives are trained to make cold calls to their assigned prospects in hopes of convincing them to pique their interests in a particular product, service, or topic. Some of the services found in the outbound portion of telephone marketing are lead generation services, telesales campaigns, and survey programs.

What would be the industries that can benefit from outsourcing to a telephone marketing company?

There are many businesses in almost any kind of industry that can gain a lot of benefits once they have outsourced their services towards a telephone marketing company. Some of these industries are the financial, information technology, and even the cleaning sector of business can all benefit from outsourcing their services towards a telemarketing company.

The Building Blocks of Telemarketing

Some companies know little about telemarketing. They are clueless on what composes it and how it functions. As a matter of fact, possessing quality sales leads and qualified appointments is what they care the most. For others, they have seen every piece of detail and thus have an organized idea of what's inside the telemarketing process.

The main building blocks of telemarketing are contact database, cold-calling and appointment setting. These three are mutually dependent with each other. Therefore, the absence of one thing leads to useless pursuit. Try removing contact database. Who would you cold-call or make an appointment? How about eliminating cold-calling? By doing so, can you schedule a sales meeting? Try taking away appointment setting and you just have wasted time, money and effort for nothing.

Contact Database. Telemarketers, through the works of the researchers can only make phone calls when there is a list of potential prospects. This telemarketing lists are placed in a pipeline for security purposes and easy retrieval. Information present in the contact includes personal profile of a customer, namely company name, position, contact number, address and so on.

Cold-calling. The fulfillment of having a contacts list is the start of cold-calling. Telemarketers, called cold-callers, dials the phone numbers of potential sales leads to confirm if a prospect is interested in a product offering or for a particular service. Then, they qualify them through further queries by professionally asking the BANT mnemonics, which stands for budget, authority, need and time. Once these four exist, prospects are deemed qualified.

Appointment Setting. The toughest part in any lead generation program is appointment making. Appointment setters call qualified sales leads and showcase product and/or service proposal to the latter. If the prospect approves, the telemarketer schedules a meeting between a sales representative and the said customer.