Having now looked at the the realities of telemarketers: 99% of telemarketers don’t have the ‘Magic Touch’ and the importance of good briefing: The importance of clear definitions and briefing we arrive at the guts of the matter:

What to expect from your Business to Business telemarketing?

As always, there is no simple answer.

Want a quick fix? Jump straight to my tips

The key factors are:

Your Objectives - How much commitment are you looking for from contacts?

At one end of the scale if you are refreshing and qualifying your database, you may simply be looking for confirmation of information you already have. You should expect 70-80% of contacts to give you this. Even here you will find some people who claim to have a company policy wherby they will not even confirm information you already have!

At the other end of the scale, you may be looking to arrange an initial sales meeting, or even sell something over the phone. In these cases, only 1 or 2 ‘successes’ per day might be the norm – but don’t despair, as discussed below, simply resassessing what you are doing might improve things.

Your Propostion – How strong is your offer?

I have mentioned the importance of a strong offer in earlier posts. There is no question that if you can offer clear and unambiguous benefit to contacts it will make things easier and more productive.

It doesn’t matter how good you think your offer is, it is all about what your target contact thinks.

To say you can reduce a company’s monthly phone bills by 25% may sound good but there is no question that phone call costs have all come down in recent years. If you are talking to a small business who only spends £25 per month on phone calls than the £6.25 reduction may not be worth the time and effort for them to switch. It really is about genuine value.

Your Target Market – How well do you know your target contacts?

It may sound obvious but the better you know your target contacts, the more likely it is that your telemarketer(s) will get a good hearing. As most SME telemarketing involves a majority of cold calling, simply getting people to listen can be a big issue – this is where a good telemarketer will definitely show their stuff.

Remember your briefing

Probably the single most common objective in SME Business to Business telemarketing is to generate leads and for most people, this means appointments. As I say above, this normally means that 1 or 2 ‘successes‘ per day at best. If you see more than this then check your briefing! A telemarketer who says

‘We just want to pop in while we are passing and drop off some literature...’

may manage to justify this in their head as a booked appointment but clearly not what you are looking for!

Don’t forget the longer term

This brief case study will hopefully give you some food for thought….

I was talking to a client who had recently set up as a freelance accountant offering services to SME businesses. They engaged a telemarketer to call local businesses to try to set up appointments.

The accountant started to see a slow trickle af appointments. Not as many as they had hoped but a few.

It turns out the feedback they were getting from the telemarketer was simply the appointment details – name, time, date. They knew nothing of the calls where no appointment was forthcoming.

I suggested that they ask the telemarketer to report back on all contacts and to make sure that even where there was no appointment they asked for an e-mail address and checked it wsa OK to ‘keep in touch’ – most people are happy to agree to this.

This added no cost to the telepmarketing work but signifucantly improved the benefits. As well as the appointments, the accountant was now building a qualified target market database of local businesses as a valuable marketing asset that could be used cost effectively on an ongoing basis.

Could you do something similar?

A few other points

How many contacts a day? Normally depends on the target contact level.

Speaking to senior staff in large companies (with many layers of hierarchy!) can be most difficult and 10 contacts a day can be a good result.

As a guide, 20-25 contacts per day can be used as a benchmark.

If you are simply qualifying an existing database (name, address etc) then 70-80 checked records per day should be achievable.

Don’t assume big numbers=good performance! If you are expecting 20-25 decent conversations in a day and your telemarketer claims 6 in the their first hour, check them – and check your brief is being followed.

All telemarketing projects have a learning curve. It can take a couple of hours or so for a telemarketer to get up to speed. I’d suggest giving them at least half a day to start to perform – but if you are not seeing what you expect after a day, it is time to review.

TIP 1: Make sure you get feedback on all contacts from your
telemarketer(s). Just because there is no appointment today doesn't
mean you can't keep in touch and try again in a month or 2. Also
feedback as to why you don't get an appointment can help you
refine your briefing and approach.

TIP 2: Don't fight with secretaries and other 'gate-keepers'. These
people have the ear of your ultimate target contact so keeping on
the right side of them can really pay dividends.

TIP 3: If a particularly important contact is proving difficult to
get hold of, consider trying to arrange a 'Telephone Appointment'

Following right on from our Marketing Planning Introduction the first step in the PIMMS process (and in any marketing initiative) is to set objectives.What, exactly, are you trying to achieve? If you don’t know this, how can you know whether you are gettiung anywhere!?

Objectives are not just for the business – particularly for your own, SME business:

1. Set your personal objectives
2. Set your business objectives
3. Set your marketing communication objectives

Personal objectives

In most small businesses, the success of the business is significantly influenced by the motivation of those running it, so understanding why you are doing it is key. Why do you get up every day and go into the office? What are you wanting to get out of your business PERSONALLY. A clear understanding of this will significantly influence your business objectives (the next step) and your motivation to make them happen.

Business Objectives

Once you have established what you are trying to achieve personally, the next step is to establish what you are trying to achieve as a business. This would usually be around Turnover/Profit or business direction. For example:

• To increase turnover by 50%
• To improve gross profitability by 30%

Again, these objectives will inform your thinking when considering Marketing Objectives

Marketing Objectives

Once you are clear what you are trying to achieve from a business perspective, you can start top consider your marketing objectives, as these should be 100% driven by the objectives of the business.

To take the examples above:

If your objective is to increase turnover by 50%, where will this come from:

• Selling more to existing customers
• Widening your customer base
• Increasing your prices
• or someting else

If your objective is to increase profitability by 30%, then how will you achieve this:

• Increasing prices
• Reducing costs

In reality ity is likely to be a mixture of things, but what marketing you consider undertaking will be driven by the answers to these questions.

For all objective setting the SMART test is useful. For the uninitiated a good objective is a SMART objective:

Specific
Measureable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely

If you want to know more, a quick Google for SMART Objectives will give you plenty of bed time reading.

To fail to plan is to plan to fail.

Hackneyed maybe, but definitely true!

I gave a seminar to an audience of SME business owners. Taking a bit of a flyer, I asked for a show of hands. “Do you have a live marketing plan that you actively use?“  Not a single hand was raised!

Over the next few weeks we are planning a series of blog posts to help address this situation. By following the ideas outlined in this series, you can develop and implement a sustainable marketing process within a modest and realistic budget.

We marketers love our acronyms and we really couldn’t launch a programme such as this without our own so we have PIMMS.

PIMMS is a model developed by BSA that takes you through the process of creating and implementing a marketing plan for your business.

You may find this PIMMS proforma document useful. We will be looking at 1 stage at a time but feel free to look ahead, I’m sure you will anyway!

The steps of the process are:

• P – PLANNING
  1: Your Objectives – What do you want to achieve?
  2: Your Proposition – What is so good about your business?
  3: Your Target Market – Who do you want to sell to?
• I – IMPLEMENTATION
  1: Get your message visible
  2: Don’t wait for people to find you – go out and tell them
• M – Monitor
  Use web tools to check what sort of impact you are having
• M – Manage
  Use market feedback to improve your marketing
• S – Sustain
  Stick at it. The best results come from INTELLIGENT PERSISTENCE

We are happy to help you if you wish but the entire process can be completed using common sense, internal resources & free tools available on the Internet.

If you would like to follow this series, then why not follow us on Twitter or sign up for our newsletter, and we will make sure we tell you when new posts in the series are added.

To get the ball rolling we are looking at the first step – Your Objectives – next time!

In my post about the realities of telemarketers: 99% of telemarketers don’t have the ‘Magic Touch’ I stressed the importance of having a clear understanding of what you wish to achieve from your telemarketing activity.

You should be able to deliver a clear and actionable brief to your telemarketer or telemarketing team.

Let’s have a look at these:

Your Objectives

In my experience, telemarketing is MUCH more prevalent in Business to Business marketing than telesales (where the goal is to take an order). How many times have your received a cold call where the opening gambit is “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you anything…”!

In essence, you are always looking to secure some sort of commitment from the people being spoken to but where you pitch your expectation for this commitment can make a big difference on the overall value you get out of the campaign. Take 2 different scenarios:

1. You want an appointment to go to discuss your services
2. You are happy where a person simply agrees to you keeping in touch about your services

Both of these are based on looking for people who are interested in you and your services – albeit at different ends of the scale. But think, there is a question that should go ahead of this:

Are you interested in them?

Naturally you want to make sure your target list focuses on companies that represent potential for you but even the best list will have some irrelevant companies. Even if the companies fits your requirements, don’t assume that the person being spoken to can help further your cause!

An important element of any telemarketing call is to check that the person/company being spoken to is relevant and useful. Getting an appointment with someone who is just about to leave or a company that is about to close down is probably a waste of your time.

Right, back to our scenarios.

Once you have a company that is of interest to you, be careful of getting your telemarketer to focus wholly on making an appointment. While this may be what you want, the person on the receiving end of the call may not be ready to make that level of commitment.

In scenario 1, no appointment means no go so move on to the next call. You have already established that you are interested in them so potentially a lost opportunity.

In scenario 2, it is vital that the telemarketer has an ‘eye for the main chance’ If the meeting opportunity is there they should be able to see this and go for it – this is definitely a skill that differentiates the good telemarketer from the not so good. If the target contact is not willing to commit to an appointment, you have a fallback position – keeping in touch. Clearly this doesn’t benefit in the short term but over time you are building a highly qualified database of YOUR target market – an immensely valuable marketing tool.

Realistically, a good telemarketer working under scenario 2 would secure all the appointments that are available under scenario 1. All the additional marketing data you get under scenario 2 – plus the opportunity to build contact and relationships over time using lower cost communication such as mail and e-mail is effectively a free extra benefit!

The Telemarketer Brief

In a telemarketing call, only 1 thing happens – conversation. By definition, conversations are 2-way so, with the possible exception of highly structured Market Research by Telephone, having a rigid script is not terribly helpful. I know there are companies who will sell you a state of the art telemarketing system which can (allegedly) adapt scripts to match the flow of a conversation, for a typical SME telemarketing project there is nothing to beat a clear speaking telemarketer who is comfortable on the phone. To make he most of this ability they need 3 things which you should include in your briefing:

A good understanding of the product/service they are talking about

You can use product literature, your website and/or a personal introduction. All have been designed to explain your products/services so should work here.

A clear statement of the scope the conversation should cover

What questions do you want answered or what information do you want to gather? Don’t expect the telemarketer to remember all of this – particularly at first. Although I do not advocate a script, a ‘cheat sheet’ listing the core details to be covered is invaluable

Your expectation of what they might achieve

Giving an idea of what you expect can be done in (say) an hour is a useful guide – but be realistic. If you are looking for them to speak to senior people and have a decent conversation where possible, then 2-3 conversations in an hour may be a reasonable objective, maybe less for bigger companies.

On the other hand, if you simply want to check and update your database of e-mail addresses ahead of sending an e-mailing out then confirming/adding 12-15 e-mail addresses in an hour shouldn’t be too challenging.

Only with time and experience will you be able to fine tune what is sustainably achievable in your business.

Monitor and Review

Every hour of telemarketer time costs money and once it has gone, you can’t have it back again. During the first few hours of any telemarketing project, keep a close eye on how things are going. You don’t necessarily want to hover around the telemarketer all the time but make sure you don’t leave them working in isolation for too long. Once I have briefed a project and answered any questions,  I normally leave a telemarketer to get on with it asking them to come and talk to me once they have  3 completed  conversations. If they are back to me in 30 minutes I start asking questions. If I haven’t seen them after 3 hours…well, you get the point.

If they tell you they have spoken to X people but no-one was interested then, if they have been well briefed they should be able to tell you why – which should tell you how to tune the project to start to produce more useful results.

It is the job of the telemarketer to do what is asked of them. It is up to you to make sure they are!

TIP 1: Just because they won't make an appointment doesn't mean they aren't
interested. Some people take a bit of time to come around to your way of
thinking - or maybe the time you called just wasn't the right time for them

TIP 2: If a telemarketer can emphasise things differently, they probably
will! Do you really care that they made 50 calls in an hour if no one was in!
It is not about working hard it is about working effective.

Just before Christmas we undertook an e-mail marketing campaign on behalf of a client.

It was particularly interesting because the list was split into 3 distinct target groups:

1. Existing and Past Customers
2. Prospects and Enquirers
3. Other Contacts (including some ‘bought-in’ data)

The content of the message was similar in all cases but the outcome statistics were remarkably different:

Open Rates

Your customer is king

Customers: 28%
Prospects: 17%
Cold Targets: 15%

Click-Through Rates

Customers: 1.4%
Prospects: 0.8%
Cold Targets: 0.45%

Unsubscribe Rates

Customers: 0%
Prospects: 0%
Cold Targets: 0.5%

It’s perhaps not surprising that Customers came out on top – they are the contacts with the strongest relationship with the sender; but look, open rates nearly double and click-through rates nearly treble those of the cold targets. Yet most people thinking of e-mail marketing look at it as a tool to target new contacts.

 TIP: Your customers are out there and are keen to keep in touch with you!

Let’s face it, most people don’t like cold calling yet many have this niggling thought that there are loads of potential customers out there and that if they only find someone with that ‘magic touch’ to make the calls…..

How hard can it be?

With over 20 years experience of Business to Business telemarketing with companies small and large I thought it might be interesting to dispel some of the myths with a series of posts. Over the coming months I will look at various aspects of telemarketing which will hopefully help you if you are considering telemarketing in your business.

First I am looking at the telemarketing engine – The Telemarketer:

99% of telemarketers don’t have the ‘Magic Touch’

Most telemarketers do a tough job professionally and conscientiously but they do not have the personal motivation and silver tongue to sell sand to Arabs or ice to Eskimos (or should that be Inuit). They need to be managed like any member of staff and rely on good briefing and a strong message.

Every now and again I have come across someone really special who ‘has it’. The problem is they have always fallen into one of 2 types:

Type 1

They are young (normally) and talented. Their skills go way beyond being good on the phone. They are good at telemarketing but their sights are set higher. Basically they don’t stick around as telemarketers for very long so if you find one – make the most of them.

Type 2

They are good telemarketers – probably more focussed on telesales with good commission where they can make more money – but can be unreliable individuals. They are great when they are working but keeping them on track can be challenging.

Sometimes you find a so-called telemarketer (possibly with an extensive CV) who is truly useless. Normally they don’t last long!

TIP 1: Don't assume that taking on a telemarketer (or a 3rd party
telemarketing company) will solve all your problems. Properly managed and
with a strong message they can do a good job for you but you (and they)
will work for it!

TIP 2: An average telemarketer working with a strong and well-targeted
message/proposition will always outperform a top-notch telemarketer working
with a weak message and a poorly selected audience.

NOTE: Most of our case studies are real-world examples of BSA clients. This is an exception where I want to show how a bit of thought can help you make daily deal marketing work for you -and how to avoid the horror stories.

See here how some minor changes can turn a horror story into a goldmine:

Many people have heard the story of the local Cupcake baker who nearly went bust when their deal on Groupon swamped them. Clearly daily deals can give a real boost to your business but how do you make sure you get the maximum benefit and don’t let the success backfire….

Here are 4 key tips – the anatomy of a great deal….

1. Don’t over commit yourself

• Get some idea of what response you might expect. Ask the deal site for stats on how many users they have and typical numbers/percentage of deals taken up in your sector.
• Think carefully about your capacity to delver on the deal.
• Put a limit on the number of deals available. If you sell out it makes for great publicity and you can normally rerun the deal later.

2. Price your deal carefully

• The deal site will give you advice on the levels of discount you should be offering.
• Be clear about your objectives. Are you looking to make meaningful profit on the deal or using it to build your customer base where your real benefit comes from repeat business?
• Make sure you know your real costs and be VERY careful about offering a deal price that doesn’t at least cover these.
• How much do your customers normally spend with you? If you set the value of your deal below this amount you can realise significant overspend on the deal – more revenue to you.

3. Get your timing right

• Let your deal redemption run for a reasonable time so that you don’t get everyone coming at once.
• Don’t let redemption run forever. A time limit puts more focus in your customer’s mind.
• If you have busier and quieter days, set the redemtion to finish when you are normally quieter in case there is a last minute rush.

4. Think about terms or restrictions you could impose

• Limit the number of vouchers that can be purchased by one person.
• Limit the deal to new customers only.
• Only allow redemptions during times when you are normally quiet.
• Require voucher customers to complete a registration card.

Hopefully these tips will give you some focus on how Daily Deals may work for you.

And finally, here are a couple more thoughts:

Remember that the Deal Site will take a significant commission from your deal price – don’t forget to include this in your costs.

If you are looking to build your customer base don’t forget to record customer details when they redeem their vouchers. We have seen a client assume they would be given a list of all voucher purchasers by the Deal Site only to find out, when it was too late, and this was not the case. Their deal was offered at pretty much cost price so they ended up with a great deal of work for nothing.

To demonstrate our approach, I have put together a (dummy) case study showing how the Cupcake company could have made things work out better. Click here to take a look

Here is a link I found to a site listing lots of UK Daily-Deal sites

Networking is a real growth area in business development. If you want to get to know more people relevant to your business (whether as customers or suppliers, or both), networking, where you meet people regularly, can be very effective – and the key to networking is not just the people you meet but the people they may be able to link to you to as well.

There’s no getting away from it, one thing that challenges most newcomers to networking is the idea of standing up and telling your fellow networkers who you are and what you do.

But actually, networking is a great place to develop these skills. You are amongst like minded people who have all had to face their ‘first time‘ too!

In a recent meeting of 4Networking there was a great talk highlighting some key do’s and don’t's:

1. Be yourself – networking is about building relationships with like-minded people.
2. Be specific – your message probably won’t ‘click’ with everyone in the room but it may just really strike a chord with some.
3. Don’t just talk about you – show how you have helped & benefited others.
4. Connect with others in the room by saying thank-you for help or support you have received.
5. Keep to time! – It can be a good idea to plan, practice and even work to notes – particularly as you start out.

Networking is not just about meeting people. It can also help you develop skills that you can take out and use everywhere!

Network groups come in all shapes and sizes and are aimed at a dazzling array of different markets. Whatever your business, it is likely that there is a group that fits your target market – all you need to do is look. Don’t assume all networking groups are the same. If your first experience doesn’t feel right, look further. I’m sure you can find the group that is right for you.

If you want to talk further about how networking can work for you, please give me a call

This is a subject we have covered in the past, but a situation that arose this week and this post on the e-consultancy Blog made me think it is a subject worth revisiting!

If you are serious about using the web as part of your marketing then your domain name is key. If you are starting out in business, the availability of a .com or .co.uk domain name (and yes, I would HIGHLY recommend that you go for at least one or prefereably both of these domains) that fits with your company name is vital. The availability of a suitable domain should be a significant factor in naming your business. If neither .co.uk nor .com for your preferred domain are available, I would recommend you seriously consider a different name, or at least a different trading name.

If, as is more common, you already have a business and own the domain name, then make sure that you hang on to it. Domains need to be renewed on a regular basis, and if they are not websites & email will go off line and the domain will become available to other web users & once taken, it is virtually impossible get it back without their consent. Some domains can be renewed for up to 10 years and there is a view that a domain registerd for a longer time can perform better in search rankings.

We take the issue of domain retention seriously. We ALWAYS set clients domains to autorenew so by default domains will renew until we are requested to cancel them. This can occasionally mean we end up with a domain that a client no longer wants. Even so, we are happy to stand the cost of this to ensure that domains are NEVER lost by mistake.

It may seem obvious but think of where your domain is the primary route by which people can contact you:

• Letterheads
• Websites
• Business cards
• Advertising
• Leaflets & Fliers
• Sign written vehicles

And the effort you may have taken in developing a presence for the domain across the web:

• Registration with web directories
• email addresses
• Search engine listings
• Your website

Lose your domain name and you will need to start from scratch and potentially someone else can pick up the benefit of all your hard work.

Here are key points to make sure your domain is safe:

1. Make sure you own the domain – A simple Whois search using the free tool on www.dnsstuff.com will tell you the name of the registered owner. If this is not you then you need to get it changed. We and any good Internet company should be happy to register the domain in your name. Then  if the worst happens & you fall out or loose contact with the company hosting the domain, you can always retrieve it via the registrar. This will be nominet for .co.uk domains. A Whois search on www.dnsstuff.com will tell you the registrar for .com domains
2. Make sure that your key domains are set to auto renew – Again any good Internet company should be happy to do this, and even if it means you have to pay for an extra year should you no longer need the domain, the cost of this is insignificant compared to the cost of losing your primary domain name.

Follow those 2 simple steps & you should never be in the position where you lose control of your domain.

If you are concerned about the security of your domain, give us a call and we would be happy to talk things through.