B2B telemarketing is a proven and successful method of sales that connects you directly with your target audience. It’s a chance to engage and build trust. To cultivate authentic conversations and to gain more qualified leads.
Knowing precisely what type of customer to target—and how to engage with them using B2B telemarketing—will lead to more qualified leads.
Industry Knowledge
It’s important that you know the ins and outs of an industry in order to understand market trends, and in turn, what solutions industry leaders might need. Being well versed in the industry—knowing its terms, nuances, and common problems—will help you build trust with your prospect.
Expect your prospects to ask intelligent, industry-specific questions, and be ready to answer confidently and knowledgeably. Maintain a high level of familiarity with industry terms, your prospects’ direct competitors, and your track record of providing effective and efficient solutions to businesses of similar caliber and design.
While preparing your outreach, ask yourself what pertinent information you can share with decision makers to demonstrate your competency when it comes to providing tailored solutions.
The B2B sales cycle can be long and complex. Trust is essential to keeping your prospect engaged and willing to take the next step. If a solid business relationship is established at the beginning of the cycle, there is a greater chance that the deal will result in a successful close.
With proper industry knowledge, a caller is likely to deliver a message that will resonate with a decision maker at a high level—generating a greater level of trust and a heightened potential to move a prospect along the sales cycle.
Consistent Calling to the Prospect List
Go down your prospect list and make the calls. Don’t rely on emails and voicemails to make connections and engage with your target audience. Call and keep calling. Aim to reach a decision maker and create a meaningful interaction.
An effective phone call is about asking question and then listening to a prospect’s responses. Cold calling is still the clearest and most streamlined method to create and maintain genuine and mutually beneficial business connections.
It’s great to leave voicemails and send follow-up emails, but multiple touches to prospects is ultimately how you will reach the decision maker and achieve sales success. And while electronic communication and digital tools are effective at raising brand awareness, the best way to establish yourself with a prospect is to go the more traditional route—and make a phone call.
Caller Experience
The experience of the caller determines the success of the call.
Complex B2B sales require meaningful interactions between high-level executives and experienced phone representatives.
The more experience and business acumen the caller has, the more comfortable and knowledgeable they will be when discussing industry issues and business needs with decision makers. Experienced callers know how to tailor the conversation to make the biggest impact, all while creating a meaningful relationship with industry thought leaders.
Professional callers demonstrate the most success when they understand both the inherent value of the product or solution they are offering, as well as the importance of uncovering a prospect’s business pains—giving them a greater chance of uncovering and qualifying sales-ready leads.
Even if a prospect does not show immediate interest in the services and solutions offered, an experienced caller will still view the conversation as an opportunity to uncover valuable business and marketing intelligence—ultimately leaving a positive impression on the prospect and enhancing the overall perception of your brand.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is a solid way to engage with prospects—whether they are current clients or dormant leads—and it’s likely a qualifying method your competitors are not utilizing, or at least, not utilizing to its fullest potential.
Contacting current clients who are already happy with your services often expends less of your valuable resources than it takes to convert a new prospect—and it’s possible that current clients are looking to other vendors for additional services not knowing that they are services you, as a trusted partner, already offer.
There is often a fear associated with reaching out to current clients, that doing so might be a bother. But reaching out to those who are happy with your services is an effective way to maintain a healthy sales pipeline.
Similarly, calling and reconnecting with warm or dormant leads that have expressed interest in your services in the past is proven, though often neglected, practice. The familiarity that these leads have with your brand allows you to get to the heart of the conversation faster and with more ease.
With all the technology currently at our fingertips, cold calling may feel like an outdated practice—but good cold calling is still the most effective way to qualify leads. It’s also one of the only ways to get more information, even when a prospect isn’t immediately interested. Ask them why. Dig deeper into the reasoning behind their response and uncover what’s at the heart of their business needs.
This is a great way to build marketing intelligence and use it to improve both product offerings and future sales initiatives. Just because a prospect says ‘no’ doesn’t mean it has to be the end of the call—and certainly not the end of that particular business relationship.
Research shows that it takes six to eight touches to reach a viable lead. When reconnecting with established contacts, the number of touches it takes to qualify a lead is dramatically reduced—you’ve already put in the majority of the upfront work.
Attention to Detail
In order to capture—and maintain—the attention of your target audience, you must pay attention to detail. You only have a few moments to set the tone and engage decision makers in meaningful conversations about their business needs, and in turn, how they might benefit from your solutions.
This means demonstrating your industry knowledge to cultivate a call that has heart and substance, remaining persistent in your calling efforts, re-engaging prospects that have gone warm or dormant, and utilizing your vast experience to make successful, complex sales—or outsource to those who embody these qualifying techniques.
When it comes to qualifying B2B sales leads, telemarketing is one of the most effective methods to engage with your target audience. Experienced callers who know how to leverage their industry knowledge into insightful and productive conversations will demonstrate the most success with cold calling and qualifying leads.
John
