July 2019 | Blue Donkey

B2B telemarketing works! We’ll help you through the maze

Posted on 31 July 2019 by bluedonkey

B2B telemarketing works! It cannot ‘not work’ because there is nothing more profound and effective than human to human contact. But whilst the fundamental principle of telemarketing is fairly straightforward – call a target client, deliver a compelling business proposition and ask for the meeting/sale; the reality may not always be as easy as it seems.

B2B telemarketing is one of the main challenges salespeople face. Most will encounter a whole host of barriers or problems when making calls and some dread or altogether avoid them, buts it is how we choose to deal with the challenges that determine whether B2B telemarketing calls will be a success or flop.

Often businesses come to Blue Donkey because their previous telemarketing campaigns have failed. Whether they’ve attempted to run them in-house or have outsourced them to another telemarketing agency, businesses often find their first forays into telemarketing don’t produce the results they were expecting. To help improve a telemarketing campaign’s chances of success, and explain why a campaign might have previously failed to produce results, we’ve identified some of the most important steps we need to take to ensure projects prosper in our hands. Keep reading to find out how to make sure your B2B telemarketing works.

No scripts please!

You’d never use a script when speaking to a person face to face, so why do it on the phone? Scripts make calls sound mundane, robotic, and uninspiring. They can create a distance between the telemarketer and the decision makers they are speaking with. At worst they will irritate professional buyers and dramatically lower the call’s chances of success. At Blue Donkey we never use scripts. We believe there’s no substitute for training, knowledge, and experience, so focus on using staff who are committed to communicating a brand to customers and potential customers.

Stay away from techie language

As we’re based within the Cambridge technology bubble, we’ve become used to working with organisations in fast paced industry or innovation. In our 22 years as B2B telemarketing experts, we’ve learned that cramming technical jargon into a telemarketing call is counterproductive. Overwhelming for the person receiving the call and daunting for the person dialling, specialist IT, pharmaceutical, or marketing language is a big turn-off for professional buyers and decision makers. What’s more, with these industries moving at lightning pace, the specifications we’re using are often out of date before the pitch has even begun.

Remember the WIIFM principle?

Customers will always be asking themselves What’s In It For Me. Years ago Henry Ford missed the WIIFM mark when he said, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black.” As communication experts, Trade Press Services said ‘that’s easy to say when you are a manufacturer with a monopoly on the market. But in today’s customer-centric marketplace, organizations need to be in the businesses that customers want them to be in. If you don’t offer the products, services, and solutions they seek, they will go elsewhere’.

This is never more so than in B2B telemarketing. When making a telemarketing call, we always recommend speaking in terms of the business benefits delivered by a solution, rather than going in-depth into its features. As well as being easier for a decision maker to understand, a targeted overview should naturally lead to a face to face meeting where more detail can be discussed. Give too much information over the phone and it could leave you nothing to talk over in person, negating the point of a meeting.

Make connections with the right people

When making a telemarketing call, it’s essential you speak to the most senior decision maker available. Though it may take more work to get hold of them, speaking to the person who has real decision making powers will give your pitch a much better chance of success. Never ask for the ‘person who deals with’, instead ask for the person who makes decisions about…

Have the right objective

In our experience, getting good quality meetings takes time and effort. You can’t expect to cold call a company and get a meeting instantly, nor would you necessarily want to, since a fast-close often leads to a quick loss. Instead, you’ll need to start slow, nurture the relationship and work towards a face to face appointment and meaningful interaction. If you have had previous contact with a company, and so are working off warm data, it shouldn’t take you as long to obtain a meeting, however, you’ll still need to put a bit of legwork into building strong links if you want the relationship to be successful.

To find out more about running telemarketing campaigns that produce real and productive results, or to learn how we can help you improve the quality of your calls, take a look around our site or contact a member of our team.

B2B telemarketing and segmentation

Posted on 30 July 2019 by bluedonkey

B2B telemarketing has long since left behind the idea of scattergun marketing where everyone was a target, and there was a direct relationship between how many prospects you touched and how many sales you’d get. At Blue Donkey, we developed the concept of intelligent B2B telemarketing some 22 years ago and we’re still always looking for ways that we can improve our technique, adapt our approach and find solutions that really benefit the clients we’re calling. This customer-centric philosophy has helped us to excel in our field, bringing our team continued success and helping us to improve standards within the telemarketing industry.

Similarly, this approach of reflective cycles of learning and improvement meant several years ago some bright marketers discovered an idea that has served to change the face of B2B telemarketing and B2B lead generation. Called the segment-of-one, mass marketers discovered they could narrow their focus and create products for specific customer segments that can be understood and trimmed down to a single individual. By using segmentation marketers can look for common characteristics such as shared or homogeneous needs, business activities, or demographic profiles, with the aim of identifying high-value segments, or those which are likely to have the best growth potential and can, therefore, be placed in a selection that warrants special attention.

By implementing segmentation, marketers can focus on particular customers that matter to them. They can tailor and adapt the marketing approach so they dovetail with each segment and homogeneous customer type. Not only can segmentation help to provide an insight into the market and specific customer requirements, it can also help marketers to find new opportunities, connect with their target market and grow their knowledge of key prospects. Marketing and customer experience experts like Qualtrics suggest market segmentation must be the first step in determining who your marketing should target. They propose segmentation helps us understand which groups to identify and target in our marketing

Sadly, a recent report from B2B Marketing has revealed that a surprising 25% of marketers say their organisations aren’t customer centric. What’s more, the report showed 43% of those surveyed admitted their sales teams interacted with senior decision-makers without having a clear enough idea of their specific business challenges or needs.

What is segmentation?

Before a telemarketer picks up the phone to someone, we expect them to think about the potential buyer, the business, the market and industry of the person they’re connecting with. By using segmentation information they can consider and plan aspects of the call to give themselves the best chance of building a more focused marketing interaction and can tailor the products and services in a way that allows them to uncover new opportunities.

Segmentation allows for a more targeted approach

When telemarketers take the time to find out a little more about the prospect they’re speaking to, it gives them the opportunity to adapt their message to make it as relevant and on target as possible. It also helps to ensure that telemarketers are targeting relevant prospects and that all calls they make are to relevant businesses and individuals.

Improving B2B telemarketing success rates

This targeted approach and increased understanding of customer needs should result in a higher success rate for your B2B telemarketing. By focusing on the right segments of an industry, you can ensure every call you make has a better chance of hitting its mark and delivering real results. What’s more, by focusing calls on prospects that have a real interest in the products and services you’re offering, you can boost customer loyalty, drive revenue and improve your business’ marketing ROI.

By adopting a customer segmentation strategy, businesses can dramatically increase the value of their marketing, tailor their products, services, and message to suit their target audience and strengthen their relationship with their customer base.

To find out more about segmentation, or any other intelligent telemarketing approach, explore our site today.

B2B Telemarketing can build warm relationships

Posted on 29 July 2019 by bluedonkey

B2B telemarketing thrives on a reliable, consistent flow of new relationships being nurtured and added to the marketing mix. Cold calling prospects is an excellent way to create new, warm, productive business relationships, but as ever, it’s one of the challenges that telemarketers find hardest to overcome. Good B2B telemarketing is an acquired skill that takes patience, humility, and genuine care because unless you really want to meet a potential buyer’s needs, it’s virtually impossible to get under their skin in a genuine two-way conversation. However, as the benefits of building strong business relationships are so pronounced, at Blue Donkey we believe it’s well worth putting the effort into developing the right techniques for training your staff.

Relationships take time

B2B telemarketing works wonders for turning a good company into a great one by connecting salespeople to potential clients efficiently and effectively. If you really want to cultivate a warm relationship from a cold call, you may need to begin by changing the objective of your initial contact.

Most B2B telemarketing activities are tasked with the unrealistic goal of getting an appointment or achieving another key objective from every call. Of course, this hunger may help with the hitting of targets in the short term, but it’s less likely that enduring business relationships will develop from such targeted, determined sales calls. Even where the objective is achieved the potential buyer will sense the self-serving determination of the telemarketer and will feel suspicious of the brand and its people. Instead, we suggest that for the best B2B telemarketing results, try to make the relationship the focus of the call. Think about how you can engage the person you’re speaking to, build a genuine connection, and develop trust. If you can do this, you’ll be well on your way to creating a meaningful business relationship.

Start a two-way conversation

B2B telemarketing calls so often begin with a long one-sided barrage of dialog on the part of the telemarketer. Instead of simply talking at the contact with a ‘pitch’, or delivering a pre-planned presentation, turn your interaction into a two-way conversation. Taking the care to engage the person you’re speaking with will show you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say and that, to you and your business, they’re more than just a record on the database.

Open questions

Open questions are an excellent tool for starting conversations. Instead of asking something that can be answered with a simple yes or no, at Blue Donkey we take care to ask a question that requires some deep thought on the part of the contact. Ideally, this question should also give you an insight into the needs of the business and provide you with the information you need to ask an engaging follow-up question. Most of us recoil at the idea of people telephoning and simply talking at us, where interestingly human relationships thrive on the sense that someone is interested enough to listen.

Intelligent B2B telemarketing

In general, people buy from people they like and companies that can help them. Intelligent B2B telemarketing is all about finding the right key decision maker, uncovering their needs, and putting something sensitive and compelling on the table that really addresses their needs. If you can talk to the contact, find out their needs and requirements, and demonstrate how the product or service you’re offering could make their life easier – it will show you care about their company and that you’re really listening.

The right database

For B2B lead generation to be successful you need the right database. And in data terms big is certainly not beautiful. A target list that’s been carefully selected using up to date insight and an intelligent approach is much more likely to yield success. Ideally, the list will be qualified based on their homogeneous characteristics to increase the likelihood of them having an interest in the products or services you’re offering.

If you think your B2B telemarketing could benefit from more lead generation, or if your team needs extra training when it comes to cultivating warm business relationships, we can help. Get in touch with Blue Donkey to find out more.

B2B lead generation in 3 easy steps

Posted on 24 July 2019 by bluedonkey

B2B lead generation can be painful, especially the necessary but dreaded telemarketing element of B2B lead generation, since most of us would rather do yesterday’s washing up than cold calling.

However experienced we are in dialling telemarketing calls, and however confident we may be in our product or service offering, picking up the phone to cold call someone we don’t know, who are not expecting the call, and where we can’t read body language, will inevitably be daunting. However, with telemarketing continuing to top the leader board of marketing methods that consistently succeeds in B2B lead generation, by building the right relationships and nurturing sales, it’s a business tool that no one can afford to neglect. Furthermore, cold calling allows you to speak to infinitely more companies than you can possibly connect with face to face.

At Blue Donkey, we understand all about transforming cold calls into warm relationships. How do we do it? Keep reading to find out.

First: Take pride in your products and services

Confidence and pride in your products and services will come across as soon as your prospective client puts the phone to his ear. Enthusiasm is infectious and makes us easier to talk to, so to help yourself propagate the right enthusiasm, and pride, write down 10 excellent features that describe the product or service you’re selling. These are the things that differentiate and define your offering, and which will excite and enthuse your target audience.

Think about how your 10 features will benefit the company you’re calling. Consider their objectives, their business, and their company challenges. If you can demonstrate how your product or service can save time, money, make life easier, or improve the quality of their work, you’ll be successful in your B2B lead generation.

Second: Use the human senses

The more senses you can use when making a business call, the better B2B lead generation activities will perform. Whilst it’s true that the telephone removes a number of the human senses from our communication, using visualisation techniques will help us perform as if we were face to face. For example, next time you make a cold call, visualise the face of the person you’re speaking to. When they answer, talk to them as if you were speaking face to face. These techniques take a bit of practice but like most B2B lead generation techniques, they become second nature after a while and will help to make the conversation flow more naturally and will make the next call less daunting. Professional sports people often use visualisation techniques to improve their performance in big competitions. As well as helping them to focus on their ultimate goal, visualisation helps to build confidence, and create an expectation of success, two things that are incredibly important when making cold calls.

Third: Set clear achievable objectives

Goal setting is important in all areas of sales and B2B lead generation is no different. A useful acronym for goal setting is SMART. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed. By setting these parameters you can push yourself to achieve tangible goals and maximise your impact. If you can get yourself into the right mindset, use positive visualisation techniques and set yourself clear, achievable goals systematically, regularly and in a disciplined manner, you won’t only find your B2B lead generation calls are more successful, you may even find it empowers you.

At Blue Donkey we call this intelligent telemarketing. We’ve seen our client companies go from good to great by embracing the opportunities presented by systematic, intelligent telemarketing for B2B lead generation.

Talk to us today to learn how we can develop your in-house telemarketing team, or outsource your lead generation to Blue Donkey’s seasoned teams of expert communicators, and transform your business.

B2B telemarketing and getting past the receptionist

Posted on 23 July 2019 by bluedonkey

B2B telemarketing success and getting past the receptionist is reliant on some key skills. None of these is more important than the ability to get beyond the dreaded receptionist, whose brief is often to just say NO, especially to the B2B telemarketing community! Unless you’re lucky enough to have a direct line to every decision maker in your call list, you’ll need to learn how to get past the ‘gatekeeper’ for your sales pitch to find its target. As the person who controls which calls get through and which are blocked, winning over the receptionist is a critical stage in a B2B telemarketing call.

Almost every salesperson will have their own methods for getting past the receptionist or gatekeeper. Blue Donkey have created a well-practiced set of techniques for navigating our way around the receptionist and getting our B2B telemarketing calls to reach the people that matter.

Speak with confidence and authority

The more confident and positive you are when you make a call, the more likely you’ll be to get put through to the person who makes decisions. Speaking with authority and confidence will help your B2B telemarketing calls come across as if you know what you’re talking about, and like you have the right to speak to the decision maker, and there’s a fair chance your confidence will mean the receptionist puts you through without asking too many questions.

You can also use visualisation techniques to increase the chances of getting through. Build an image of the receptionist in your ‘mind’s eye’ and keep this picture in your head as you make your call. This will help your voice sound confident when you’re asking for the person you need to speak with and will help to prevent your call from being blocked.

Unwitting messages are very important in B2B telemarketing, so think about what the tone of your voice communicates; if it unwittingly says, “I’m selling something and this call is not important”, there’s a good chance you’ll be blocked. On the other hand, if your voice suggests you have something to discuss that the decision maker will want to hear, you’ll be much more likely to succeed.

It’s important in B2B telemarketing that we remain respectful and professional throughout this stage of the call. Don’t pretend you know the decision maker and don’t make your call out to be something it’s not, just to get through. Remember this initial call is designed to begin a business relationship, build trust and create rapport, so we always suggest you start as you mean to go on.

Don’t pitch

B2B telemarketing is generally more sophisticated and complex than other types of marketing, so even though you’ll probably need to give the gatekeeper some basic information, it’s important you don’t pitch to them. If you give them too much information, you could tempt them into making a decision on the buyer’s behalf, or even to relay your complex pitch to the decision maker instead of putting you through. As both of these scenarios lower your chances of success, keep the introduction brief and be clear that you need to be put through.

Don’t ask for the person who ‘deals with’

If you ask for the person who ‘deals with’ human resources, buying, accounts etc. you’ll probably be put through to the day-to-day administrator, rather than the decision maker themselves. B2B telemarketing only produces successful outcomes in the call is engaging the decision maker themselves. So, instead of asking for the person who ‘deals with’, at Blue Donkey we always suggest asking to speak to the person ‘responsible for’ or ‘in charge of’. This will give your pitch the best possible chance of success in reaching someone who can act on it.

Don’t leave messages

One of the key strategies in B2B sales, and telemarketing in particular, is retaining the element of control. If you leave messages on voicemail or with a receptionist, you’re giving the element of control away. If the decision maker doesn’t call you back – and the chances are they won’t – it’s that much harder for you to call again after you’ve left a message that hasn’t been returned.

When making any B2B telemarketing calls, it’s important to respect the rules of the game. Always check your data against TPS (telephone preference service) or CTPS (corporate telephone preference service) lists and ensure that your calls are consistent with best practice not mere compliance, to ensure your brand is presented in the best possible light.

To find out more about how you can improve your B2B telemarketing, or to learn how the Blue Donkey centre of excellence can boost the quality of your calls, generate new leads, or improve your customer satisfaction scores, contact a member of our team today.

Dealing with rejection in B2B telemarketing

Posted on 22 July 2019 by bluedonkey

Sadly, dealing with rejection in B2B telemarketing is a reality of everyday life, and though we try to embrace a positive outlook, we accept that we’ll come across decision makers who don’t have time to talk, aren’t interested in the services or products we want to discuss, or simply don’t want the hassle of switching a particular supplier.

To help our team cope with these knockbacks, and to ensure rejection doesn’t impact on the productivity of our workforce, we’ve created a range of strategies to help ensure success.

Mindset

Any sales professional will be only too aware of the power of positive thinking. In fact, we believe a positive mindset can make or break a sales call. As well as helping our telemarketers approach each call in an optimistic and confident way, a positive mindset helps to convey the benefits and the appeal of the products and services we’re promoting, more compellingly and with more verve.

One of the techniques we practice to put our team in a positive frame of mind is to encourage them to recall the last time they had a really good conversation, or generated a B2B telemarking lead that they are truly proud of. For example, those rewarding, mutually beneficial exchanges, where the recipient is engaged and interested, and which result in the telemarketer feeling on a high, long after the dialogue has ended. These calls are brought to the front of the telemarketer’s mind, and reflected on regularly, whenever they pick up the phone. This helps fuel enthusiasm, reflect success, and gives each contact a stronger likelihood of achieving its objectives.

Creating the best chance of success

Often, an unsuccessful sales call comes down to bad targeting or a poor quality list. If a telemarketer makes a call and the recipient isn’t receptive to the sales message, they need to take a look at the type of companies they’re calling. If the product, service or sales message is unlikely to be of interest to the companies on the list, the telemarketer has a limited chance of success, no matter how enthusiastic they are. However, if the list is well targeted, and appropriate, it may be the positivity of the message or the timing of the call that need to be adjusted.

Even if the product or service isn’t right for the recipient at this moment in time, if the telemarketer can stay positive, engage the person they’re speaking to and have a meaningful discussion, there’s a good chance the telemarketer will be able to revisit the company in the future. As well as helping to line up potential customers, this will help to ensure the next time the telemarketer contacts the company, the call is warmly received, because the brand has been presented well in the past and was therefore memorable for all the right reasons.

Nothing personal

Often we feel rejected when we perceive that the person on the other end of the phone is dismissing us. In these instances, it’s important to remember that rejection, in a business sense, isn’t personal. Instead of feeling despondent, we encourage our telemarketers to put themselves in the buyer’s headspace and think about how their language or their explanation can be improved to better get their message across. Failing to win buyers on every call is not rejection, its life.

In business, no one can be successful 100% of the time. Instead of focusing on the negatives of rejection, it’s important to think about how you can create positives from the situation. As well as helping to improve your mindset and make the working day even better, this positive attitude will be reflected in your success rate and could help you achieve more than you ever thought possible.

To find out how Blue Donkey can help you achieve positive outcomes from your B2B telemarketing efforts, contact us on 01353 724880.

Successful B2B telemarketing must strike the right chord

Posted on 17 July 2019 by bluedonkey

For successful B2B telemarketing all elements of the call need to be carefully thought through and expertly sculpted. Calls, whether inbound or outbound, to existing or potential customers, using cold or warm data, need to take the appropriate shape in order to achieve a warm positive outcome.

At Blue Donkey, we call this careful orchestration of the telemarketing process ‘mood music’. The style and rhythm by which the call unfolds, the dialog flow, and manner in which calls resonate with decision makers on the receiving end, all influence the success of the call and the likelihood of a long-term business relationship developing from the contact. As well as helping to boost the success rate of B2B telemarketing, getting the mood music right will maximise the customer experience and increase the chance of the call generating successful relationships and leads.

Tempo

Call tempo refers to the pace of the conversation. The speed of the messaging delivered, the quality of open questions and the responsiveness of the contact all have a big influence on the tempo. When the tempo is right, the call is more likely to generate the desired outcome.

When making sales calls telemarketers often dive into their pitch far too quickly. Nerves, fatigue or pressure to reach targets can sometimes cause people to start their calls off too quickly and speed through making it difficult for the contact to engage with them. Far from building rapport, this habit can serve to place barriers in the way of effective communication. A good tempo can be achieved by the caller using a natural pace, listening and visualising the person they’re speaking with, and responding appropriately. This helps the contact to feel like they matter and gives the call a far better chance of success.

Posture

(We saw you sit up straight then!) Posture is incredibly important when making a sales call, even more so than in a face to face interaction. This is because our posture ultimately creates the sound we use, it’s the ‘tool of the trade’ in B2B telemarketing. Often, when we’re tired, unmotivated, or in fear of making a cold call, we automatically assume a slight stooped position at our desks. This will cause the callers voice to sound suppressed or like they are lacking confidence. Like a wind instrument, the human body creates a clearer brighter sound along straight lines. Sitting straight or standing up and looking upwards will help telemarketers create a tone that’s clear and energetic so their pitch comes off more confidently.

Tone

When we talk to people face to face, we use our words, our body language and our tone to get our meaning across and engage our counterpart. As body language can’t be read over the phone, it’s left to the tone we use to convey subtle ideas and connect with the person we’re speaking to. The tone you use during a sales call can impact on everything from the perceived credibility of your words to the empathy of your message.

In general, high tones indicate excitement and enthusiasm. However too many high tones can come across as contrived. Low tones on the other hand are calming, welcoming and engaging, but go too low and your call could come across as boring. By using a combination of tones, and being mindful to avoid overuse of any particular pitch, you can engage your contact and draw them into the conversation.

Language

The way we use language will be an important success factor in B2B telemarketing. The words we choose and how they cascade are the key to our success, with positive words, descriptive phrases and easy to understand pitches helping salespeople to connect with their contacts and communicate their message. Removing words like ‘maybe’, ‘could’ and ‘might’ from the telemarketing vocabulary and replacing them with words like ‘can’, ‘do’ and ‘will’, makes a call more positive, more confident and more trustworthy.

Unlike face-to-face contact, talking on the telephone is a learned behaviour. By using the right tone, the right words, the right posture and the right tempo, you, and your team, can ensure your calls resonate with your potential customers and that your sales campaign gets the results it needs. If you need help honing these essential skills, get in touch with Blue Donkey to find out how we can help.

Top tips for recruiting B2B telemarketers

Posted on 16 July 2019 by bluedonkey

People are the key success factor that can take a company from zero to hero, more than any other resource a business has available. Recruiting B2B telemarketers who are dedicated, committed and talented can be pivotal to the success of such marketing efforts.

Richard Branson famously said, ‘Customers come second, employees first’. It’s a philosophy that brings benefits to both the company and its clients because happy staff deliver excellent service, and since customer satisfaction is bound-up in good service these days, making the right hires is a long-term win.

In addition to being better at engaging decision makers and communicating strong sales messaging, adept telemarketers will lay the foundations for long-lasting relationships, so they are an enviable asset. However, finding good telemarketers is no easy task. At Blue Donkey, we’re often asked how we’re able to find such exceptional telemarketers. Though there’s no single answer, we’ve had a long, hard think about it and come up with five steps a business can take to identify, attract and recruit the best telemarketers around.

Look for carer instincts, not sales-closers

We believe the best way to connect with a business decision maker is to have their needs and preferences at the heart of our calls. Sales professionals who are overly focused on hitting sales targets will sometimes fail to engage the people they’re calling, putting their sales pitch before a genuine two-way conversation. Though you need your telemarketers to be able to sell, we believe staff who empathise, and genuinely want to deliver an outstanding customer experience, will be more likely to ask the right questions and communicate the right message, two important factors for building trusting long-term relationships.

Ask the right questions

The best way to get an accurate idea of the character of a potential hire is to ask the right questions. We believe that situational interview questions reveal the most about a candidate’s personality and aptitude, by asking about real situations and past interactions. Usually beginning with a request such as ‘tell me about a time when….’, situational questions require candidates to talk about actual achievements and talents as opposed to how they would achieve something in theory. So questions such as ‘how would you go about doing X’ will be replaced with ‘tell me about a time you had to do X’. If you simply ask an interviewee to talk about how they would hit their targets– it’s likely they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear.

Don’t sell the role as a stepping stone to something ‘better’

All too often, telemarketing roles are portrayed as a stepping stone to a ‘better’ position. And though it’s true that the skills employees learn working in telemarketing will make them attractive for a wide range of sales jobs, it’s crucial potential employers don’t describe the job, or set an expectation of a job as being a low level position in your organisation with the pathway to something better in future. If you want to attract the best people, and you expect them to take pride in the job they’re doing, you’ll need to show pride in it yourself.

Look for the right mindset

With the telephone being their primary work tool, it’s no surprise that most telemarketers spend their days making call after call. In order for someone to be a successful telemarketer, they need to have the energy and mindset to put the same stamina, enthusiasm, and passion into every single call. Look for signs of a determined mindset, and stamina in the candidate’s CV. Look for signs of enthusiasm and keep an eye out to see if their energy levels decline or drift during the interview process. Ask questions that help you uncover whether or not they will put 100% into each call they dial.

Personality, passion, persistence

These three qualities are essential for a truly successful telemarketer. People with personality, passion and persistence will stand out immediately at the interview, filling the space with their confidence and charisma. As well as being great at their jobs, these people lift the room, helping to motivate and inspire your workforce and giving your telemarketers the passion they need to achieve their goals.

If you can find people who are naturally positive, engaging and enthusiastic, and who enjoy being part of a team, you’ll be well on your way to building an unbeatable telemarketing force. To find out more, or to learn how we can help supercharge your team, contact us today.

How to get B2B prospects talking

Posted on 15 July 2019 by bluedonkey

There is nothing more painful in telemarketing than the challenge of picking up the telephone and getting B2B prospects talking. In fact, getting strangers talking to us is potentially one of those life skills that defines high achievers from non-achievers. So it’s no accident that the first lesson in sales starts with getting a prospect talking. Most of us find that once the conversation is flowing it’s easy to get our points across and create a comfortable, natural and flowing discussion.

But what happens if the person we’re calling is uncommunicative and cold, does that mean our chances of creating a relationship are diminished? Even though these experiences are an important part of B2B telemarketing, many people are still baffled by how to get prospects talking. While some are held back by fear or nerves, others just lack the human skills required to break down barriers and make meaningful connections.

The time between getting past the receptionist and waiting for the decision maker to answer the phone is important. During these moments you’re taking a breath and are poised to make your call opening. The success or failure of your call is often determined by how well you perform in those seconds. If they go well, you’ll glide effortlessly into your call and connect with the prospect you’re speaking to. If you make a mistake however, you could end up fluffing your pitch, making the call awkward or even crashing out altogether.

To ensure disasters like this don’t happen, we’ve developed a range of techniques to guarantee a great first impression, every time. Keep reading to find out more.

KISS

The old adage ‘keep it simple sweetie’ is definitely a principle worth noting here. Make your opening introduction as quick and as straightforward as possible. Who you are, where you’re calling from and the reason for your call is the means by which you should introduce yourself. The sooner you can get this bit over and done with, the sooner you can ask your opening questions and get the prospect engaged with the call.

Use open questions

An open question is a question that can’t be answered with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Your question should be relevant to your call, so you glean useful insight from the answer. Avoid pointless questions like ‘how are you?’ as these are not relevant or sincere since you’re calling someone you don’t know so they won’t further your call, they may even irritate your busy prospects and serve to undermine your call.

Show and create interest

People like people who are interested in them. Ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. Probe relevant details, and be ready to illustrate how your product, or service, aligns with their needs. Rather than listing off the benefits of your products and services all at once, prioritise the information you give, according to your prospect’s particular requirements, preferences or business.

Enjoy the ride

Though your call should always be professional and on point, as a skilled communicator you should also be able to inject an element of enjoyment into the conversation. If you’re confident and charismatic, then this sense of fun will automatically enter your call as most people get a lot of enjoyment from doing a job they’re good at. The more success you have, the more you will enjoy yourself, and the more your enthusiasm will be communicated to the person you’re talking to.

At Blue Donkey, we’re always looking for ways to improve our techniques and our success rate to ensure our telemarketers are doing a job they find meaningful and rewarding. To find out more, or to learn how we can help boost the success of your telemarketing team, get in touch with us today.

For effective B2B telemarketing engage your whole brain

Posted on 11 July 2019 by bluedonkey

The divided brain

At Blue Donkey, we believe that engaging both sides of the brain makes us better communicators and is essential for effective B2B telemarketing. Allowing us to apply creative ideas to our rational process, it’s just one of the things that helps us to stand out from the crowd.

We already know the human brain is remarkable and holds everything from facts, memories, learning, and imagination. The brain can manage, decipher and rationalise about a myriad of different subjects. We use the brain to make important connections with the world and one of the most fascinating things about the brain is that it’s split in two unequal sides. The right half is believed to control and manage our creativity, while the left is thought to be responsible for facts, data and logical thought, such as understanding science and numbers. Though we might not realise it, most people rely more on one side of their brain than the other, in fact some vocations value or encourage one side’s attributes more than the other. For example left brain activity, with data, metrics and facts is important in the world of business, or computing.

We came across an excellent Ted Talk – renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our ‘divided brain’ has changed human behaviour, culture and society over the course of evolution. Well worth a watch, you can find it on YouTube.

Taking sides

Although scientists aren’t sure why we’ve evolved to have two such distinct hemispheres, research has focussed on identifying the different functions each half of the brain is responsible for. This suggests that, as well as managing the right hand side of our bodies,the left hemisphere is where logical, sequential, rational, analytical and objective thought takes place. The right hemisphere, as well as managing the left hand side of the body, is thought to be in charge of random, creative and subjective thought. It’s where our intuition comes from and it’s the area of the brain that allows us to take in the bigger picture and come up with imaginative solutions to a problem. However, the two halves of the brain are not independent of each other and we of course need to draw on elements of both hemispheres for creative and analytical thought.

The whole brain

Although business people rely heavily on the left side of their brain, for recalling important information, the creative right side is a valuable resource when making telemarketing calls and engaging with prospective customers or decision makers. By using our intuition, imagination and creativity, as well as our logic and reasoning, we can bring a holistic approach to telemarketing and get great results in the process. Being creative and imaginative on the phone, also helps us to get more from our interactions by allowing us to be more sensitive to buyers’ needs.

Right brain marketing

One of the techniques we use when making telemarketing calls is ‘visualisation’. By using your imagination to ‘see’ the person you’re talking to in your mind’s eye, you can overcome some of the communication barriers talking over the phone can present. Many of our highly skilled telemarketers also use the right side of their brain to help them paint pictures with their words and bring a product or service to life.

Another technique we use is the ‘benefit star’. A useful way to map the attributes of a product or service, the star works out from open questions at the centre, to key features and benefits relevant to what the decision makers have told us are important or unique to them. Conversely, when we try to help people grasp the intricacies of a new product we use facts, numbers and proof points. Drawing more on the left hand side of their brain, this analytical approach helps to give prospects the full picture.

By using both sides of the brain in our communications, we’re able to better empathise with buyers. This helps us to understand their mood, their needs and their motivations, something that’s crucial for a successful telemarketing call.

To find out more about our training, techniques and high quality services, take a look around our site today.