B2B Lead Generation: 3 Points to Consider

Marketing to fellow entrepreneurs (or B2B marketing) presents unique challenges to businesses. For companies that sell highly sophisticated or technical products and for firms that offer unique services, it can be difficult to meet the expectations that a business owner or manager has toward their suppliers, subcontractors, and associates. It’s also more challenging if you don’t have your own marketing pros.

Getting leads in the first place can be a taxing task already, so here are three points that you need to consider before you engage in B2B lead generation.

Training: Top Priority for Healthcare Call Centers

With information being freely offered and highly accessible, consumers are being more educated and sometimes more confused. When it comes to the health products they purchase or the wellness-related services they pay for, the first place they go to for research would be the Internet, instead of their doctor or any healthcare professional. The information they get can be conflicting or complicated at times, enough for them to become hesitant or even discouraged with purchases.

A Strong Call to Action: Key to Capturing Leads

How does your lead generation strategy look like? Does it start strong and maintain momentum as it reaches the call to action (CTA)? No matter what the pattern and processes are, the CTA must always be clearly stated. It must be the highlight, the main draw, and the big finale. It should be an effective lure to capture your leads.

What a Call to Action Contains

Typically, a CTA asks for customer information in exchange for something the customer would be interested in. You might ask for their contact details, so they can subscribe to your newsletter or so you can reach them. Oftentimes, you use various images or texts that mainly say, “Sign up now!” or “Contact us!” In a lead generation call center, your agents may probe the prospect for his/her preferences and lifestyle and eventually promote your product or service. The question is: are these tools effective?

Make a Call Center Service Work for You

Enlisting a call center service to handle your company’s customer service or lead generation campaign is an ideal business solution. Unfortunately, when things don’t work out, businesses are all too quick to blame the call center. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango, and for this option to work, you also need to do things from your end. Here are tips to keep in mind:

Dedicated Plus: Growing Your Sales Team, the Smart Way

Depending on your business, the key ingredient to making the sale will be different. Maybe you need to be the first one out of the gate to attract the customer; perhaps you need to offer the most extensive package options to meet the needs of every prospective client; or maybe your sales pitch just needs to have that personalized touch.

The latter can be difficult to achieve with a small workforce when attempting to reach a larger audience. There simply aren’t enough manpower hours in the day to form a personal connection with each and every client.

So, what’s a business to do with a small sales team that has big dreams?

TeleDirect offers a program that may be just right for you. With our Dedicated Plus program, we pair you with Account Managers and sales agents whose sole job is to be YOUR account representative. Your business will be their only project, which allows them to devote their entire 40-hour workweek to helping your company succeed.

By combining this service with our 24/7 call center, your sales team will be stronger than ever. Not only will this result in an increased return on investment, but your overall efficiency will increase and customer satisfaction levels will skyrocket.

Most customers and clients just want to know that they’re being heard and that their company cares about them. With TeleDirect’s help, customers won’t slip through the cracks or get lost in the crowd.

If you want to increase your ROI, efficiency, and customer satisfaction levels with the help of Dedicated Plus, head to www.TeleDirect.com and drop us a line. We look forward to hearing from you!

How Important Is It to Generate Strong Leads?

If you are new to sales and marketing, you might be unfamiliar with the terms cold calling and warm calling. Cold calling is when you call people for the first time to deliver your pitch, hoping they would buy your product or get your service. Warm calling, meanwhile, is when you call people and directly ask if they would be interested in your product or service; it’s not up to you to deliver the pitch or close the sale.

Both techniques are important to any business that hopes to win over new customers. However, while cold calling works for some, you’ll find that warm calling has more advantage in a lot of ways because it allows you to qualify leads, build strong leads, and do away with the weak ones.

How to Improve Your Telemarketing Tactics

Are you failing to achieve your goals in telemarketing? You may be employing the wrong tactics for lead generation and outbound marketing calls. If you are experiencing these issues, you have to reform your plan into one that will more likely increase your sales.

Base Your Strategies on Research

You have to be prepared to reach out to your customers and back up your sales pitch with accurate information, especially during cold calls. Embrace technology and innovative trends such as software to collect and analyze data on prospects. That way, you can better understand your target market.

Align Your Techniques to Your Other Marketing Campaigns

As other marketing methods are still integral to your business growth, you have to make sure that they’re made with unified principles. Your brand has to be consistent wherever your customers see or interact with you, including print advertisements and digital marketing materials. Your telemarketers (and other marketing providers) should have one voice: yours.

Engage Your Customers

Your prospects should never feel that you are wasting their time. Instead of rapid-fire sales pitches, your representative should be able to converse naturally with potential customers, assess their needs, and present them with solutions. It would be advisable to outsource these tasks to an established outbound call center, so you won’t waste your resources on personnel that lack the proper training in telemarketing.

Three Lead Generation Mistakes You Must Avoid

Think you’re ready to find prospective customers or leads? Be careful because lead generation is very easy to screw up.

One mistake you must avoid is focusing only on “hot leads” or people who you think are very likely to do business with you. While it’s certainly important that you give hot leads greater concern, your other leads may turn out to be a good catch in the future. Rather than ignore them altogether, follow up on these other leads until they’ve given a definite answer.

Another lead generation mistake you must be wary of is relying only on one lead generation tactic. Surveys and sales calls are used by a lead generation call center, but other methods like email, special promos, and loyalty programs must also be employed. Even small talk with potential customers can help you “find” leads, which is why you must instruct your employees to be courteous and friendly at all times.

One more mistake you must watch out for is poor planning. When it comes to lead generation, you should never look for immediate results because most people need a lot of convincing to have them do business with you. Instead, stretch out your efforts over a span of months so that you’ll have enough time to monitor and improve your lead generation capabilities.

Skills Call Center Agents Bring to the Table

If there is one reason to be better off relying on call centers rather than creating a separate customer service department for your business, it’s because call center agents already possess the skills that you’re looking for. Customer service, after all, is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Doing it right hinges on how well you grasp the essentials of modern communication.

Proper speech and grammar is just the tip of the iceberg because call center agents are also chosen for their multitasking abilities. Not only do they have to answer a call in real time, they also have to monitor the call, take down notes, and notify the personnel needed to resolve the call, all while referring to their client company’s communication protocol at all times for consistency. All of these require good software and hardware skills and familiarization with the latest communication technologies used in the industry.

Call center agents are also chosen because of their patience and levelheadedness, which will prove useful if they receive a call from an angry customer. It takes a lot of effort for your own people to resist shouting back at a person who badmouthed them over the phone. Call center agents are trained to keep their cool, understand the caller’s situation, and approach him or her accordingly with utmost respect.

Three Productivity Hacks for Your Salesforce

Business competition these days seems to be getting more fierce. Now more than ever, sales professionals need to be on their toes and at the top of their game. This goal has led to an all-encompassing obsession with enhancing productivity and achieving peak performance levels. These productivity hacks can keep your sales force, whether in-house or outsourced, highly efficient.

Promote good time management skills

Coaching your outbound sales team to manage their time better can be key to better productivity. See that they plan and prioritize their day, and that they know how to avoid distractions. Remember: When your reps become more productive, your company becomes more productive as well.

Create a resource library

Having a resource library available saves time, as you won’t need to explain the same concepts to your reps over and over again. A resource library should typically include folders of the following: best practices, sales processes, customer service scripts, and new employee resources.

Have them take their breaks

Studies show that taking a break from a mental task increases both productivity and creativity. Encourage your sales reps to take a nap, go to a nearby coffee shop, or read a book during break time. These things should allow them to recharge and stay sharp throughout the day.