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Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing. It involves talking to potential or existing customers on the telephone.

Telemarketing can help you to promote your products or services, build your customer database, generate leads and appointments, stay in touch with existing customers or generate new ones.

Planning your telemarketing
When planning your telemarketing campaign, you should:

• Decide if you want to outsource. You’ll need to choose whether you will carry out the telemarketing in-house or use the services of a specialised marketing company. See outsourcing.
• Make sure you know who your target audience is. You need to know what your product or service is, who it is aimed at, and who is most likely to purchase it. See define your target market.
• Make sure your marketing lists are reliable and up to date. This will allow you to focus on your target audience, ensure your lists comply with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR). You must not include people or organisations that have opted out of receiving unsolicited sales and marketing calls.
• Anyone you contact must have consented to receive that type of communication from you. Read more about privacy and data protection in direct marketing.
  Identify key personnel at target businesses. Speaking to the right person will increase your chances of making a sale.
• Consider how you will pay your telesales staff. You could, for example, provide sales incentives. See the right pay package for your salespeople.
• Have a script in place. Having a simple, professional, and pre-prepared script allows you to sell and respond to queries more effectively. Make sure you explain who you are and what your business does.
• Think about the relative costs. It may be more cost-effective to use an outside marketing business. The initial costs may be outweighed by increased sales.

Automated telemarketing
Automated telemarketing uses interactive voice response (IVR) to effectively process high numbers of telemarketing calls in an inexpensive way.

Outbound IVR telemarketing can be used to generate leads and sales and alert customers to new offers, product or service changes and product recalls. It can also be used to conduct meetings, conference calls or business surveys. You can only make automated marketing calls to people who have specifically consented to it.

Inbound IVR can be used to offer helpdesk services, handle incoming calls or to provide disaster backup in case of emergency.

Since IVR campaigns do not require actual telemarketers, they are often less expensive than traditional telemarketing campaigns. The results are also easy to measure, flexible and can show immediate results. On the other hand, consumers may perceive IVR as less personal and more intrusive.

All automated calls must include your name and a contact address or freephone number. You must also allow your number (or an alternative contact number) to be displayed to the person receiving the call.

Strategies to increase sales revenue
Your sales revenue can be a key profit driver in your business. To increase your profitability, you should develop a strategy to grow your sales. You can look at things like:

• increasing your prices
• finding new customers
• selling more to existing customers
• offering sale promotions to boost the volume of sales
• developing new product or service lines
• selling in new markets

You should examine the products and services you offer, your target market and your pricing strategy to see if you can make improvements.

Review your product or service pricing
It’s a good idea to review your prices often. Changes in your marketplace could mean that you can increase prices without losing sales. However, you should test any price rises before you make them permanent. See how to price your product or service.

Use the Pareto principle to target the right customers
It’s not just your prices that affect your profits – the type of customers you’re selling to can have a big impact. You may be able to increase your profit margins by targeting your most profitable customers, even if you lose the less profitable ones. To find out the most profitable customers, you can apply the Pareto principle.

Often known as the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle proposes that around 80 per cent of your profit is gained from 20 per cent of your products or services. Similarly, 80 per cent of profit is often also gained from 20 per cent of customers.

Review your product and service offering
If you offer a range of products and services, examine the profit margins of each. You can work out what individual products cost by you using activity-based costing.

When you look at your current offering, you may find that some products do not deliver good returns. Consider concentrating your efforts on your more profitable offerings.

Carry out regular market research to identify products and services that are in demand. Keep up to date with market trends, as this will help you to identify new opportunities to generate profits.

Generating sales leads
One of the hallmarks of a successful business is being continually on the lookout for new business. Generating leads in a proactive way will increase selling opportunities and help to keep your order book full.

Mapping your territory
Before you start sourcing leads, decide where you are going to base your search, and in which industries. If your product or service could be widely used, start locally and target particular geographical areas. If you have a niche product or service, focus on specific companies.

How to source new sales leads
There are many ways to find new leads, such as:

• initiated leads – from prospects who fill out a website form, visit your stand at a trade show, or respond to an advertisement or mailshot
• profile fitting – using market research tools to identify potential customers who are likely to be a match for your company’s products
  market monitoring – monitoring media outlets, such as news articles, internet forums and corporate press releases
• canvassing – cold-calling in-person, by telephone or by email
• data mining – looking for possible leads in information (for example, a corporate database) that your company has previously gathered
• personal and professional contacts – asking for or incentivising referrals from existing customers, suppliers or acquaintances and through networking
• promotions – using free gifts to encourage potential leads to provide contact information or attend a sales meeting

Qualifying sales leads
Deciding whether a sales lead has the potential is known as qualifying. There are many reasons why some leads may not be successful, including:

difficulties in meeting the needs of some prospects – their needs may be too great, or expensive
needs already being satisfied – prospects may have already purchased a similar product
lack of finance – someone may need a product but be unable to afford it
prospects lacking authority to approve the purchase
Using databases to keep track of leads
Storing information on a database allows you to keep track of who you have already contacted and spot patterns where you have been successful. See benefits of databases.

You can also buy a database of business leads from a variety of suppliers. These can be expensive, and you may need to employ staff to help manage them, depending on the size of the list.

Your existing customers are important assets to your business. They have already chosen you instead of your competitors. Keeping their custom costs far less than attracting new business. It’s worth taking steps to make sure that they’re satisfied with the service they receive.

You can use techniques such as:

• providing a free customer helpline
• answering frequently asked questions on your website
• following up sales with a courtesy call
• providing free products that will help customers look after or make the most of their purchases
• sending reminders when services or check-ups are due
• offering preferential discounts to existing customers on further purchases

Existing customer relationships are opportunities to increase sales. Your customers will already have a degree of trust in your recommendations.

Sell more existing customers

Cross-selling and up-selling are ways of increasing either the range or the value of what you sell. They work by pointing out new purchase options tocustomers. Alerting customers when new, upgraded or relevant products become available is one way of increasing sales. You could do this through regular emails or newsletters.

To keep your customers’ trust, never try to sell them something that doesn’t meet their needs. Remember, your aim is to build a solid long-term relationship with your customers rather than to make quick one-off profits.

Satisfied customers will contribute to your business for years, through:

• purchases
• recommendations
• referrals

Before looking at new markets, think about how you can get the most out of your existing customers – it’s usually more economical and quicker than finding new customers.

Perhaps you could sell more to your existing customers, or look at better ways to retain key customers.

Focus on the market

Take steps to find your most profitable customers:

• Analyse the different needs of different groups of customers.
• Focus on a market niche where you can be the best.
• Aim to put most of your efforts into the 20 per cent of customers who provide 80 per cent of profits.

Don’t forget the follow-up
Monitoring, evaluation and review are key to success:

• Approach a third party for feedback about your strategy – they may be able to spot any gaps or weaknesses that you can’t see.
• Put your marketing strategy into effect with a marketing plan that sets out the aims, actions, dates, costs, resources and effective selling programmes.
• Measure the effectiveness of what you do and be prepared to change things that aren’t working.

Pitfalls to avoid

Watch out for these common mistakes:

• Making assumptions about what customers want.
• Ignoring the competition.
• Trying to compete on price alone.
• Relying on too few customers.
• Trying to grow too quickly.
• Becoming complacent about what you offer and failing to innovate.

Be sure to follow up all of your marketing and promotional strategies with a marketing plan. This sets out clear objectives and lists the actions you will take to achieve them.

Direct marketing allows you to generate a specific response from targeted groups of customers. It’s a particularly useful tool for small businesses because it allows you to:

• focus limited resources where they are most likely to produce results
• measure the success of campaigns accurately by analysing responses
• test your marketing – you can target a representative sample of your target audience and see what delivers the best response rates before developing a full campaign

A direct marketing campaign can help you to achieve the following key objectives:

• increasing sales to existing customers
• building customer loyalty
• re-establishing lapsed customer relationships
• generating new business

There are many different approaches to direct marketing. These include mailshots and telemarketing, email marketing, SMS marketing and social media. The method most appropriate for your business will depend on who you are targeting, the message you want get across and response you want to generate.

The results of direct marketing aren’t guaranteed. A poorly planned or targeted campaign can be a waste of money. A badly designed mailshot, for example, could simply end up in the bin. And worse still, it may irritate recipients and damage your business’ reputation as a result.

It may not be popular but outbound telemarketing is one of the most effective strategies for growing a business. The good news is that this doesn’t have to be hard, and it doesn’t have to involve bullying potential clients into submission, either. Building an effective telemarketing strategy for business growth is all about learning to tap into the value that you bring your clients and potential clients.

Have a Plan

Before you begin telemarketing, make certain that you know what your objective is for the exercise. If it’s collecting e-mail addresses, you may well—for smaller and medium-sized companies—be able to obtain these from the first point of contact (whoever answers the phone). If it’s to talk to a decision maker, you’re going to need a way of convincing the first point of contact (and possibly the second if they have a secretary or Personal Assistant, PA) to put you through.

Have a Script

Once you have your objective in mind, you can create a small script or scripts that will help you achieve your objective. For example, if you want a few specific e-mail addresses—the script might be:

“Hi, my name’s Sally. I’m calling from logo design company XYZ. I’d like to send your marketing manager an introductory e-mail about our services. Could you tell me the name and e-mail address please?”

Your script is your guide to how you will conduct the first part of your call. It doesn’t have to be followed perfectly, and you will find that you’ll naturally vary the wording slightly from call to call – it’s just there to remind you of what you want to say, in case you get stuck.

Speak Slowly and Clearly

It’s normal to be a little nervous when you first start cold calling; unfortunately, that nervousness can often cause you to blurt out your script rather than relay it in a way the person on the other end of the line can understand.

Dropping your arms to your sides when you get through can create pressure on the diaphragm and help you slow down. With a more natural speed, you’ll sound more sincere. Sincerity works well in conducting business. And it feels good, too.

Be Prepared to Have a Conversation

The person on the other end may have questions for you. You should be prepared to talk through any issues or concerns they have. If telemarketing were simply a “make a call, get an answer, hang up” proposition, it would be a much faster form of marketing than it actually is, and we wouldn’t need to write much more about it here.

Be Prepared to be Told “No” or “No, Thank you”

Truthfully, sometimes the response will be even ruder. Don’t let it upset you. If you feel confident, you can try—politely—to argue your case, but sometimes a “no” really is a “no”. Imagine the shoe on the other foot, too—you don’t say “yes” all the time, do you? Let it go, thank the person for taking the time and try again another day. Telemarketing requires a lot of persistence to produce good results.

Always End a Call Politely

Whether you get what you wanted or not, always thank the person on the other end for his or her time. It may take many calls to get what you want, and you’ll be remembered, and not in the way you want to be, if you’re not polite. You’re only as good as your last call, and first impressions last. Of course—it almost goes without saying—you should be polite throughout the entire call, too.

Always Take Action on Your Calls

If you say you’re going to send some marketing material – send it. Ideally, send it right there and then. Never leave it longer than the end of the working day—the sundown rule. If you waste somebody’s time or leave them dangling, waiting for undelivered promises, they won’t be likely to buy your services in the future. And they can tell others about you.

Practice Makes Perfect

It can take a little while to get comfortable with telemarketing; don’t give up if the first call isn’t perfect. Remember that the worst thing that can happen is that someone will say “no”, which leaves you no worse off than you were before you made the call.

Obey the Law

Most countries have no laws governing telemarketing to businesses. However, before you start telemarketing, check with your legal representative to ensure that’s the case where you live.

You need to be particularly careful if your clients are small home-based businesses; telemarketing to consumers (which is how this could be interpreted) is governed by strict rules in many parts of the world. Ignoring this can burn a telemarketer—there may be legal repercussions, i.e., fines, etc. Always get legal advice on this subject before moving forward with your telemarketing efforts.

Telemarketing can have immense impact on any business. It is that area of marketing which provides access to the widest market without having to spend a fortune. Telemarketing services can be started as an internal process of the company or they can be outsourced to the numerous telemarketing companies that are available

There are many pros and cons to hiring telemarketing services to boost your business’ sales. Not many business owners have large amounts of time to sit on the phone and start dialing up prospective leads. This is where telemarketing services come in. Telemarketing services have employees who will literally spend hours on the phone for you, drumming up leads or attempting to sell the service that your company provides.

If you already generate enough leads but need someone to handle a large amount of inbound calls, telemarketing services can help in this arena as well. We’ve all seen those late night infomercials that hawk everything from rug shampoos to diet pills. The number that you dial to order the product is usually not directed to that particular company itself but rather a call center service that handles inbound calls. Depending on how many calls you anticipate coming in, the fees charged by these telemarketing services may be well worth the expenditure. These particular telemarketers work out of what is typically known as a call center and may work for multiple companies at one time.

There are also outbound telemarketing services that will call people who may have an interest in your product or service. Many work off of telemarketing lists of potential clients that you may have to provide. Since hiring a telemarketing service allows potentially hundreds of calls to be made a day, even if only a small fraction of these prospects become actual clients, you may still see a substantial increase in the amount of sales profits that your company makes.

There are also negative aspects of hiring telemarketing services that you should consider. Not too many people enjoy getting telemarketing calls, particularly at dinner time or after a hard day at work. Many people just want to come home and relax or they have their after work chores to handle like getting dinner ready, checking their kid’s homework, etc. The last thing they may want is to pick up a ringing phone only to have a telemarketing service try to sell them something. There are services now available that allow calls to be prescreened to prevent telemarketing services from being able to complete the call. Many people have also placed their name on the national, “do not call” list. This is another hindrance to telemarketing services trying to do their jobs.

The internet has also contributed to the decline of successful telemarketing services. Instead of having to pay what could be exorbitant fees to telemarketers, many businesses have created websites and employ search engine optimization techniques to help them generate leads. This can be a cost effective way to boost sales because the website hosting fees can be much less than the fees required to pay a telemarketing service.

If you’re selling complex and expensive products or services, the telephone is a key marketing tool – with an emphasis on the word “marketing”. It’s not just for sales people anymore. Here’s what telemarketing can do for you:

Generate leads: Telemarketing along with direct mail and e-mail marketing is currently the best 1-2-3 combo for generating and maintaining awareness among business-to-business prospects.

Find hot opportunities: It’s the best way to find out what opportunities exist right now inside your prospects and clients companies. Telemarketing experts say they are almost always able to find active opportunities that the company didn’t know about — no matter how big or well-known the company is.

Communicate one-to-one: Telemarketing allows you to put a voice to your marketing and sales efforts long before the prospect is ready to meet with a sales person. It’s easy to customize the message and to adapt to special needs of the specific prospect.

Qualify prospects: Telemarketers can follow-up on inquiries from your website and other marketing activities and determine fairly quickly just how qualified the prospect is and whether or not – and when – this company is likely to become a customer.

Engage at the top:  Many experts agree that telemarketing is the best way to get through to and start a dialogue with top executives.

Increase sales team effectiveness: Telemarketers can take a load off your sales people. A Gardner study called Inside Sales: Selling More at Lower Cost found that adding a teleprospector to support a direct sales person can increase that sales person’s closing revenue by from 50% to 150%.

Advance the sale: Telemarketers are often able to identify hesitation in a prospect. By handling questions or objections that might not otherwise be voiced, telemarketers can eliminate friction and move the prospect along sales cycle.

Promote other marketing activities: Telemarketing can increase webinar participation, trade show attendance, white paper downloads and many other useful methods of interacting with your prospects.

Build and clean your database: With each call, a telemarketer can add to and confirm information in your marketing database. This is critical to reducing waste and expanding your reach within a given company.
It’s not uncommon to find companies assigning telemarketing duties – particularly cold calling – to the field sales team. This may seem to make sense; after all, sales people must be good on the phones, right? But in reality it’s a bad idea. Sales people get paid to close and that means they have little patience for finding and developing prospects who may or may not become an opportunity a year or two from now. That’s the job of marketing.

Once you’ve made the decision to try a formal telemarketing program, you’ll have to choose an implementation strategy. Some companies prefer to handle telemarketing with an internal staff. Others outsource it to one of many telemarketing services. Either approach can be successful, and the decision more often than not depends on the culture of your company.

Most of the fastest growing B2B companies do not rely solely on just one sales lead generation method. They have a complete arsenal of sales lead generation tools at their fingertips, that they can use at ay given time.

Here are my eight proven B2B sales leads generation techniques gleaned from helping over 170 B2B companies reach their sales prospects:

1. Sales lead generation using relationship marketing   Relationship Marketing is the approach underlying all of the “sales-lead-generation-success” methods. Relationship marketing simply refers to cultivating a personal, sales-winning relationship with your prospects. It’s about developing longer-term relationships with customers rather than individual transactions.

During my 20+ years of experience in B2B sales lead generation, I’ve discovered the key to picking up sales others leave on the table is to keep in touch with your prospects via a series of ongoing communications and offers throughout your prospective customers’ consideration processes.

2. Sales lead generation through complementary partner referrals  By joining forces with complementary partners, you can instantly multiply your sales lead generation pool and make it easier for companies to engage in doing business with you. Out of all the sales lead generation programs available to you, complementary partner referral programs can generate the highest qualified B2B sales leads.

3.  Sale lead generation using search engine optimization and Internet marketing strategiesBusiness buyers are more sophisticated and getting harder to reach than ever. Studies show that about 90% of business buyers start with research on the Internet, therefore it’s critical to have a well-tuned sales lead generation program that includes search engine optimization (SEO)/Internet marketing strategies to attract prospects at the beginning of their buying cycle.

4. Sales lead generation via telemarketing Even though many people despise the thought of telemarketing, when executed properly it is a very effective sales lead generation tool. Telemarketing is a personal marketing and sales lead generation technique that offers a cost-effective, efficient alternative to field selling. However, it can be significantly more expensive than direct mail or email.  By including telemarketing in your B2B sales lead generation marketing plan, you can reach up to thirty decision-makers a day at a cost of $15 to $20 per contact.

In contrast, with field sales you can reach only four or five decision-makers a day at an average cost of $392 or more per contact.

Direct mail may cost as little as a dollar, and email is often much less. However, if you consistently prospect and nurture leads via phone, you will consistently generate qualified sales leads.

5.   Sales lead generation with email publications By creating your own email newsletter, you could send out industry news and tips to suspects in your market. Since you will be on your prospects’ minds more often than your competition, eventually, your sales leads will turn into actual sales.

If you subscribe to my e-newsletter, Sales Lead Report, you will see an example of an email publication that keeps my name and business in front of over 8,000 people every month.

6.   Sales Lead Generation With Direct Mail There is an entire industry of people like Dan Kennedy, Bob Bly, and Bill Glazer who are dedicated to business-to-business selling through direct marketing. Sales letters can be an excellent sales lead generation method. But, most sales and business professionals do not know how to use this lead generation technique effectively and efficiently.

The complaint is a common one among B2B companies that depend on direct mail and direct response marketing as their only sales lead generation program: “I’m sick of spending a fortune to send out thousands of full-color catalogs and direct-mail pieces only to get a measly 1% response rate. How can I cut costs and find a more practical way to get my target market to respond to my direct mail or catalogs?”My clients have found that the best place to start revamping their direct response marketing is by determining who their best customers are, then trying to target their database marketing efforts at companies and individuals who are similar in nature.

7.  Sales Lead Generation Using Print Advertising When done correctly, print advertising can be a highly effective sales lead generation activity. When using print advertising as your B2B sales leads generation method, you must remember to focus your advertising’s message on the benefits and applications of your products or services. Then let the layout and design of your ads enhance your company’s image. And, don’t forget to only use publications that deliver messages directly to your targeted audience.

8. Sales Lead generation via Event Marketing Whether you do it live, through the telephone (teleseminars) or via the Web (webinars), seminars and workshops are a great sales lead generation tool. People who attend your seminar have an interest in the information you are presenting and a need for your product or service.

The goal: Connect with customers in a meaningful way By using these eight proven B2B sales leads generation methods gleaned from helping over 170 B2B companies reach their prospects, you will capture more sales-ready opportunities for your salespeople to turn into new business, meaning greater sales revenue and profits for your company.