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Monthly Archives: September 2019

Lifetime value in B2B sales and marketing

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Lifetime value in B2B sales and marketing

How do we know whether a particular B2B sales and marketing activity is worth doing? Some managers will judge based on sales metrics following a campaign, others on how many new clients or customers were added to the pipeline. These barometers are often based on short-term impacts, such as, did the company hit targets following a telemarketing campaign, or which group of customers responded to certain key messaging. While these statistics are important, they don’t always paint an accurate picture of whether something in marketing is worthwhile.

To get a clearer understanding of the value customers bring to a company, and to improve customer loyalty, B2B professionals will need to look at the lifetime value created by customers that choose the business over their competition as a result of a particular B2B sales and marketing activity. The Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) metric is usually defined as the revenue that a business will generate from each particular customer over the length of their relationship with the company, considering the cost of acquisition and retaining that customer.

Why is it important to calculate the LTV of a customer?

Calculating the lifetime value of a customer (or LTV) gives us some unique insights about the average value generated for the business by a certain customer over the course of time. Not only does this create a picture of what satisfies certain customers, it also helps with decisions about how much it’s worth investing to ‘win’ and manage customer relationships.  This can help inform marketing campaigns in relation to target segments, choice and cost of channel, and customer profiling, especially when it comes to high-value sales, and long service commitments.

LTV calculation

The formula to calculate the LTV of a customer will vary depending on the business and the products and services they offer. Often, marketers use a formula like this:

(Average Value of a Sale) X (Number of Repeat Transactions) X (Average Retention Time in Months or Years for a Typical Customer).

According to growth experts Business.com the LTV metric can also be split into actual and potential to illustrate possible growth dynamics of a relationship. As it is about predicting future earnings, it belongs to predictive analytics that forecasts the future value of any particular customer relationship. By definition, LTV can’t be a constant, hard number, and different businesses are likely to adopt different variables for its calculation. Hence companies need to analyse their own customer base in order to create calculations that provide insights about their customer spending patterns.

What to do with LTV calculations

A good reason for calculating LTV is that it offers marketers guidance about where and how much to invest in different areas of their B2B marketing. Often, high ticket sales involve a significant investment, so a company will need to be confident that winning key clients is worth the investment required. Analysing LTV allows marketers to more carefully guide budgets and helps them invest in the areas that bring the biggest results. For example, the cost per lead may be higher using a certain type of high-quality marketing. However, if it brings in several high-ticket sales and long service commitments, the investment will be well worth it over time.

Improving LTV for B2B marketing

There are a number of ways to improve the LTV of the average customer. Targeting companies that are similar in type or size to their biggest customers will certainly help. Alternatively, marketers can increase customer spend using devices like volume agreements or customised offerings, or they can simply work to secure larger numbers of high-value B2B customers by doing more to penetrate their markets systematically. All of these techniques require excellent customer service and communication as well as a comprehensive marketing strategy.

To find out more about improving customer communication and boosting business, explore our site or contact a member of our team.

Telemarketing selections

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Telemarketing selections

Identifying the best companies and buyers to target your message to is one of the toughest gigs in telemarketing. At Blue Donkey we’re a little intimidated by projects where clients say, “we can sell to anyone”. In such circumstances, our sage advice is always: let’s find the ones who will spend more, will be happiest, or that you can convert in the quickest time possible!

Which one’s your favourite favourite?

Even a talented and passionate sales team won’t have much success with a telemarketing or lead generation campaign if they’re targeting everyone, or simply the wrong group of prospects. You need to ensure you’ve done enough market research. It’s important to have clear goals and reasoning about which selection suits you. If your criteria is simply too vague, you may not have a clear enough idea about who your customer is, what they want, and what you have to do to survive competition in your market. In such circumstances, your telemarketing campaign may not achieve its full potential. Yes, you may get sales, but they will cost more and take longer than they might otherwise.

Choose the right potential client selection on the other hand, and your campaign should see real results. Every call your team dials will secure a greater chance of growing your sales pipeline, and they’ll be more likely to connect with companies and individuals who have a genuine interest and want to talk about what you’re offering. Additionally, the companies you target will be appropriate buyers who are able to make the required investment.

Marketing Strategy

Identifying and selecting the right customer segments to target, is core to a good marketing strategy. In turn, if you know exactly what you want to achieve from your telemarketing campaign because it’s consistent with your company’s marketing strategy, it will be easier for you to decide exactly which demographic or segment is most relevant for your call list. Decide if you’re trying to raise brand awareness, create lead generation, or develop existing relationships; think about the needs of the businesses you’re contacting and make sure everyone on your team knows exactly what your goals are and what metrics will be required to reach them. According to Cranfield University, a clear marketing strategy focuses on the customer. Unlike a business plan, it will help you to clarify who you should sell to, what you should sell them, and why they should buy from you rather than a competitor.

Database

Your database should be reliable and complete with the information needed to make a value judgement and set targets around potential conversion rates. If your database has been carefully put together and your sales team has taken the time to keep adding or appending up to date information, it should be infinitely possible to build a target call list using relevant selection criteria. As the database will form the foundation of your telemarketing campaign, ensuring the information you’re using is up to date, well put together and correct is essential. If you don’t think your database is up to scratch, it’s well worth investing time and resources in bringing it up to date. To make the best use of your database, we can help you to refine it and make it work for you.

If you’d like to find out more about choosing the right customer selections, or if you want to know more about market research, we can help. Give us a call today, to speak to one of the expert members of our team – or take a look around our site.

Meeting needs in B2B lead generation

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Meeting needs in B2B lead generation

It probably goes without saying that buyers are important to every company. Understanding and meeting their needs is, therefore, one of the most important aspects of sustainable business, especially now when most markets will have some level of saturation. Only those organisations that can get to the heart of what their customers want, will survive the often aggressive market forces trying to steal their revenues away. In turn, by continually working to improve buyer experience and meet customer needs, companies can grow their market share and ensure their customer base is as loyal as possible. To help organisations get the most from customer relationships, we’re sharing our most important insights on meeting buyer needs.

Communication

One thing that’s crucial to meeting buyers’ needs is good communication. Buyers want to know that they can speak to someone directly when they’re buying, or when they have queries. What’s more, good communication will help to develop your relationship with your customers – give them a good impression of your company and help give your business a personality.

To ensure your company is able to communicate efficiently, your inbound call handling needs to be just as good as your outbound telemarketing. No matter if you’re getting 5 or 1,000 calls – your team needs to be able to answer them all consistently, but treat each call individually. For example, calls should always be answered within 3 rings, customers should be asked what they would like (as opposed to being told what will happen) and companies should be prepared to flex around an individual’s needs. If your company doesn’t have the resources to handle the volume of calls you receive, it may be worth investing in a third party company to manage your inbound communications or simply take overflow calls, but do insure your brand is communicated to the same high standard.

Expertise

When buyers have a query or a complaint, they want to know that the information they receive is accurate and reliable. The better trained your staff are and the more familiar they are with the service you offer, the more likely it is they’ll be able to offer customers the information they need. If you don’t feel like your team is currently able to offer the standard of service you’d like, it’s well worth investing in extra training to bring them up to standard.

Happy makes happy

Many workplace experts and academics have found an important link between the notion of External customer satisfaction and Internal customer satisfaction. They maintain that where Internal customers (they mean your staff) are happy and engaged, External customers will be better served and therefore happy. According to analysts Emerald Insight “In the Eighties, U.S. business learned important new skills for identifying and satisfying external customers. Inevitably, this experience led to a recognition that the needs of internal work processes and internal customers were critical to external service delivery.”

Know your buyers

The better you know your buyers, the more able you’ll be to meet their needs and offer them the service they really want. As far as it’s possible to do so, try to familiarise yourself with their buying process, their business requirements and their industries. If you have the time and the resources, talk to your existing customers about how you can improve your service and how you can make their lives easier. Commissioning Market Research by professional researchers like Blue Donkey will provide you with a detailed analysis of what your clients or customers consider your strengths and weaknesses, and their unique experiences of your brand.  By making your company as customer-focused as possible, you can help to make your company one of the most attractive and approachable around.

To learn more about Market Research, or improving your communications, contact a member of the Blue Donkey team today.

The good B2B telemarketing database

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The good B2B telemarketing database

The database sits at the heart of any successful B2B telemarketing campaign, not to mention the general mission-critical role the company database plays in generating new business and developing existing relationships. A well-managed and maintained database can deliver impressive growth outcomes and a community of happy, satisfied clients and advocates.

In order to get the most from the B2B telemarketing database, organisations need a carefully managed set of disciplines to ensure the unique potential of each database or record is fully exploited. The team at Blue Donkey has clocked up an impressive 22 year experience of working with databases. From identifying the best target decision makers to understanding what messages resonate with whom, we’re able to use our skills to refine a database and ensure we get the most out of it. Keep reading to find out more.

What’s a database?

According to tech specialists Lifewire “on the surface, a database might seem much like a spreadsheet; it has data arranged in columns and rows. But that is where the similarity ends because a database is far more powerful.”

In B2B telemarketing, the database is the comprehensive store of information you hold about potential and existing clients. Usually this will contain basic details such as company names, job titles, address details and telephone numbers for each business – as well as the name of a relevant contact. Ideally, the database should also include information on industry and any relevant areas each business is involved with. If companies have purchased products or services from the business in the past, this information should also be contained in the database.

Data should be gathered, added and appended as part of the normal cycle of marketing activities. Therefore, when a particular company contact is spoken with, pertinent details of that dialog should be gleaned and added to the database record to form a growing body of reliable insight about the decision maker, the business and their needs and preferences. Some database providers can offer you a ready-made list, or like most companies you can put your own database together by compiling information on prospects, and mining insight that’s specifically relevant to your sales operation.

Categorisation and targeting

A key part of using a database effectively is knowing how to categorise its contents and what headings should be managed. So an insurance broker, for example, may want to gather information on risk profile, or the number of sites, as well as existing insurer and policies held by a potential client. Headings and fields can be built into a database to contain this information, and provide a method of quickly searching and selecting the records for targeting. Where companies know there are key sectors that can benefit from their products or services, the database offers the opportunity to group and select based on these factors. This allows for certain messaging to be targeted at the clients and prospective clients that will find them the most attractive and who will be more interested in what they have to say. By focusing on targets that have the greatest propensity to produce results, you can minimise the time and money you spend on your campaign while maximising on results.

Defined criteria

When planning your telemarketing campaign, it’s essential you have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve. If you know exactly what you want from each call, it will help you to create defined criteria. You can then use these criteria to help refine your list and make your telemarketing campaign more effective.

Names, data, insight

Adding a little more information to your database can reap big rewards. Where records don’t already hold a contact name, taking the time to find out the name of a key decision maker, any other relevant stakeholders or key influencers, or simply checking the information held is still relevant and correct can make the difference between getting past the gatekeeper and getting knocked back at the first hurdle. Use the phonetic alphabet to ensure accuracy especially with the spelling of people’s names and avoid assumptions about the spelling of names like Steven and Stephen or Iain and Ian.

Make every dial count

In telemarketing, we spend a lot of wasted dials trying to get through to the right people, this time can be effectively used to check address and postcode information. Get the company’s website up as you’re dialling, check if there is an item of information that can be qualified with the person answering the call, and added to the database. This could include important details that might not otherwise have emerged in your discussions, such as the number of sites. Making the best of every dial will help build your database into a powerful body of information that can support company growth for years to come.

By building a comprehensive database, and learning how to use it, you can ensure your telemarketing campaigns are as productive and successful as possible. To find out more, contact a member of our expert team.

 

Growth strategies in B2B marketing

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Growth strategies in B2B marketing

A growth strategy is a set of principles companies use to increase their market share. A good growth strategy not only gives a company direction, it helps focus employees so that everyone in the business is united around the same goals.

Creating a coordinated and fitting growth strategy is, therefore, an important part of business. So what options are there and what do different strategies tell us about businesses and their goals?

Different growth strategies

Broadly speaking in B2B marketing, strategies for growth fall into two main types, Inorganic growth which usually involves partnering with another organisation to ‘get bigger’. Or Organic growth where companies work to increase market share by selling more. According to the business website Study, companies will invariably select from 4 strategic approaches in B2B marketing to grow their sales.

  1. Market penetration is increasing sales of current products or services to existing markets
  2. Market development is increasing sales into new markets using current products or services
  3. Product development is increasing sales by adding new products or services
  4. Diversification is entering new markets with new products or services

The Telegraph states that today, 60 percent of start-ups fail within 3 years and 20 percent fail within just 12 months. Of course, there are many factors that impact the viability of a new business, not least market forces, but one of the things that can make or break a new venture is choosing and expediting the right growth strategy.

What a growth strategy tells us

The path a company chooses will depend on the type of growth they want to achieve and this can tell us a lot about their long term goals and ambitions. For example, a business that wants to appeal to a broad swathe of customers may opt to diversify its product line, increasing the variety of services offered so they have something for everyone. Alternatively, a company that wants to earn itself a reputation as a specialist within its industry may focus on product development in the hope that they’ll create products that offer the consumer something different.

The growth strategy a company chooses tells both its customers and its rivals the direction in which it intends to go. Analysing the different directions that competitors have taken should give business owners an idea of their long term goals and could also inform a business’s own growth strategy.

How to develop a growth strategy

Almost all growth strategies rely on customer interaction and market research in one form or another. In order to develop new products, move into new areas and boost brand awareness, businesses need to understand their market base, communicate with their customers and listen to feedback.

The most effective way to carry out this research, and keep lines of communication open, is to invest in a telemarketing campaign. A fast and reliable way of gathering important information and boosting brand awareness, telemarketing can help you to achieve your long term growth goals.

To learn more about growth strategies, or to find out how telemarketing can help your business to achieve its goals, contact a member of our team today.

Adopting a gratitude attitude in B2B telemarketing

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Adopting a gratitude attitude in B2B telemarketing

Lots of things in life make us happy or sad. Telemarketing is one of those workplace activities many people will actively seek to avoid. Why? Because the knock-backs hurt, speaking to strangers feels uncomfortable, being unable to see the person we’re talking to compromises our senses, or because we’re afraid of saying something silly and embarrassing ourselves. Sadly, those people who dislike telemarketing often have bad experiences fixed in their mind, and since our fears are made up of negative experiences, it colours our perception and expectations of the world. Put simply, if you expect unpleasant outcomes, they will probably happen.

On the other hand, for those of us who do enjoy telemarketing, or at least link the activity of telemarketing to success and achievement, unsurprisingly, we see things a little differently! Read on to find out how.

Carry good baggage

To make a success of B2B telemarketing, instead of fixing the negative aspects in your mind, we suggest you focus on the positives. Keep good experiences front of mind as you move through your calling and keep reminding yourself of successful interactions and fun calls. Remember the great stuff: the time you called someone and had such an effective conversation that they went on to become your best client. Remember the person who gave you some vital information that led to you taking some good new ideas to your boss. Or how about the time someone said they were actually in process of reviewing and you got to the table just in time to take the business away from the competition.

Have courage, Show care

Most of us will have examples of great occurrences, yet many chose to remember the odd time they were hung-up on, or where they made a gaffe and felt silly. Carrying good baggage in your mind and through your calls will help you retain a healthy, positive mindset that’s great for your well-being, brings joy to your work, and ensures greater success. Having the courage and confidence to move through call after call, taking time to treat everyone with care and respect takes energy and passion but the payback is invariably worth the effort. Not just for performance metrics but for the satisfaction our jobs afford us. It’s not by accident that the happy, fulfilled and optimistic folk are the nicer to be around.

Be grateful

At the bottom of all this feel-good power is the ability to adopt an attitude of respecting and being grateful for the time people give us over the phone. We call them out of the blue, they’re not duty-bound to take or respond to our calls, they could be under pressure, unhappy, in the middle of something important, or maybe they just don’t feel like speaking to a stranger. Whilst at Blue Donkey we know it’s easy to feel frustrated if someone you call isn’t responsive, we also understand that we are competing for attention. Happify the workplace mental health specialists explain how the effects of gratitude can last longer than you might expect, they go on to say feeling and expressing gratitude can make you happy in the moment and contribute to far more rewarding work. So simply thinking in terms of being grateful to people who spare us their time and expressing those thoughts with a simple thank you can make all the difference to our work, our lives, and to the people around us.

Don’t judge

We’ve all been in the room when a colleague expresses an opinion, or just plan anger with someone they’ve just spoken with on the phone. Good B2B telemarketing relies on discipline and competence to engage with decision makers in business, on their terms. Tempting as it may be to express or even feel judgement for those who’s manner or words don’t please us, its healthier and far more professional to resist and move on.

To learn more about simple, but effective telemarketing techniques, contact a member of our expert team or explore our site.

Benefits sales techniques

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Benefits

In B2B sales, getting your message right is key to making the right impact on prospective customers. It’s easy to get bogged down in the technical detail of what your product or service offering can do, however, at best this can come across as a list of meaningless features, rather than capture the imagination of the person you’re trying to engage.

When making a sales call, it’s important to get the balance of features and benefits right, if you’re going to achieve your goal of drawing someone into a discussion. One of the best ways to ensure your call comes across as interesting and informative is to focus on the benefits your service delivers to the people who use it. Instead of listing features the best telemarketing professionals will explain how something will deliver benefits in the light of how buyers answered their open questions. Not only will this help to illustrate how your service can apply to their situation, it will also demonstrate you’re listening, something that can go a long way to laying the foundations of a productive business relationship.

Don’t be a catalogue

If you simply list the features of the service you represent, you won’t be providing any information the decision maker can’t get from a catalogue. This may make your contact feel like they’re wasting their time by talking to you and probably won’t go a long way towards getting them on board.

Instead of simply relaying basic information about technical features, use the opportunity the call affords to really go into the benefits of the service you’re calling about. This is your chance to help prospects see how the benefits you’re offering could suit their unique situation. As you describe the benefits, take the opportunity to make the service really come to life for them and give your brand a personality. This will help to make your call memorable and will help them to feel a connection with you and your business.

Tailor benefits around each buyer’s needs

A good telemarketer will always try to tailor the benefits they discuss to the needs of the business they’re contacting. Bring up their website as you dial and use your opening question to find out a little more about the business and their needs.

Rather than make assumptions that certain features will be interesting, ask about the challenges their business faces and see if you can work the benefits you’re offering into the call that way.

Be clear about your benefits

Becoming flustered during your call can cause you to fall back on listing the features of your product or service. To ensure this doesn’t happen remind yourself of the top five to ten benefits before you pick up the telephone. As well as helping them to stay fresh in your mind, this should boost your enthusiasm and ensure you come across as passionate and positive.

If you’d like to find out more about improving your telemarketing technique, give us a call and speak to one of the expert members of our team or have a look around our website.

B2B Sales pipeline creation

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B2B Sales pipeline creation

In B2B marketing we devote a lot of time to creating not just todays sales, but a winning strategy for growing orders well into the future. This is because unlike consumer marketing, companies in the B2B arena tend to rely on a lower number of large spend orders, rather than lots of transactional smaller spends. In B2B sales pipeline creation, the focus is usually fairly narrow and specific, where consumer marketing tends to be broader in scope. Popular business theorist Michael Porter described this strategic difference in 1985 in his book, “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.”

Porter identified three different strategies which companies will adopt to succeed in their market. These are Cost Leadership, where they are the cheapest by adopting means of production which generates the most sales at a lower value than the competition. Differentiation, where a product is highly differentiated, feature rich and therefore costs more, so appeals to fewer. And finally, the Focus Strategy where companies concentrate on a particular niche, with a view to serving the unique needs of those customers within it, making their particular market segment less attractive to competitors.

The key to making a success of any of these strategies is to ensure that our marketing identifies and targets the right prospective clients, and that when these buyers are reached the interaction does a good job of communicating the benefits offered, nurturing a relationship, and gaining permission and interest for further contact. Hence the pipeline grows and strengthens with time. Understanding exactly what a sales pipeline is and how the process relates to your business is crucial if your company is going to achieve its full potential.

Lead generation

The first part of the sales pipeline is lead generation. This is where we find new customers, who are interested in your products and services – or reconnect with existing customers if you’re going to boost sales. One of the easiest and most effective ways of doing this is via the telephone. Run a telemarketing campaign to raise brand awareness and generate good quality leads. By using the telephone you’ll be able to cover much more ground than you would through face to face meetings or direct mail, plus – the telephone gives you the opportunity to lay the foundations for a productive relationship and solid customer base.

Follow up

Once you’ve got new customers interested, you’ll need to follow up on your initial conversation if you want to take the sale further. In some cases, you’ll be able to do this in your very first call. However other contacts may take more cultivation. In some cases, you’ll need to call back a few times to ensure you speak to the right people, answer queries and bring your relationship to the point they’re ready to make a sale. As follow up can be a delicate part of the sales pipeline, it’s important you have your most capable members of staff handling it.

Customer support

Customer support is an important part of the sales pipeline. If customers feel well looked after in the run up to making a purchase – they’ll have greater confidence in your company and will be more likely to invest in your services. Again, a lot of customer support can be carried out over the phone. Make sure your team is always on hand to answer customer queries and that they’re well informed about their subject if you want to make a good impression and come across as a leader in your field.

Converting leads

The final step in the sales pipeline is converting leads into sales. If you’ve managed the process in the right way, a sale should come as the natural next step. If customers aren’t quite ready to make a purchase, make sure you’ve answered all of their queries, check there’s no one else you can speak to and finally, ask to contact them again in the future.

A well-oiled sales pipeline will help your business to run more efficiently and more productively. To learn more about other powerful sales and marketing techniques, contact a member of our team today.

Objection handling in B2B telemarketing

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Objection handling in B2B telemarketing

Despite the myriad of strengths your product or service no doubt offers potential buyers, you’ll still experience some push-back. In sales, we call these objections, and no amount of innovation or so-called USPs can help us avoid them. The manner and confidence in which we deal with objections, however, will play a key role in determining whether our calls fail or succeed. In fact, handling objections well can turn your call into memorable interactions that make your call even more compelling.

Don’t dismiss objections

It’s really important that telemarketing calls cover off all areas of doubt in a potential buyer’s mind. Hence one of the keys to handling objections during a telemarketing call is not to be dismissive. Simply brushing over a query, or skirting a question, will make you seem ill-informed, evasive or untrustworthy. It could also serve to confuse the buyer and give them the impression you and your business are vague, or veiled, making them much less likely to work with you. Instead, take all objections seriously – no matter how small, or insignificant they may seem to you. Take the time to ask questions in order to understand them, and counter them comprehensively to address specific questions.

Don’t take offence

Some buyers will raise several objections, it’s important to welcome their feedback and don’t allow yourself to feel offended or respond in an aggressive manner. Stay calm and deal with each point they raise in turn. If you can transform a negative situation into an opportunity for a genuine two-way conversation, you’ll be a lot closer to achieving your telemarketing goals, and building a powerful skillset.

Treat objections as a sign of interest

Instead of seeing an objection as a sign the decision maker is pulling away from your call, try to see it as a sign of interest. Your contact wouldn’t be raising objections if they weren’t curious about the services you’re offering, so use the opportunity to expand on what you can offer and what makes it truly unique. Try to keep a few relevant facts or proof points to hand to back up your claims and convince your contact you’re the real deal.

Don’t be disheartened

When you come up against objections, it’s very important not to be disheartened. Occasionally you won’t be able to change the decision maker’s mind, no matter how hard you try. In these cases, it’s often best to chalk it up to experience, ask if you can contact them in the future and then move on to your next call. Remember, the more you come up against objections, the easier they’ll be to handle. This makes even the toughest call a great learning opportunity, giving you the chance to flex your persuasive powers and get your message across.

A large part of telemarketing success is skill and experience. By learning to handle objections and turn them to your advantage, you can considerably increase your impact and ensure all your calls are as successful as possible. To find out more take a look around our website or contact a member of our team.

Size matters!

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In sales and marketing circles there has always been a temptation to think that when it comes to

prospect databases, big is beautiful. More data, more potential customers, and more sales: what’s not to love?

Using data

As personalisation has become more important in consumer sales and marketing, it has also become key to effective business to business marketing. Our personal data is precious, and marketers now understand that building trust and rapport with a receptive, respectful community is only made possible by our meticulous use of data. Conversely, poor use of data causes poor customer experience and untold brand damage. In fact, organisations in the UK have been hit by over 10,000 data breaches since GDPR in May 2018, a study finds.

Data selection

In B2B telemarketing terms, size definitely matters when it comes to the database. It’s not how big but how small that really makes a difference to successful outcomes. At Blue Donkey we’re convinced that a simple selection of homogeneous, well targeted, segmented prospect records is mission critical to the success of B2B telemarketing, because only then can each call and communication be uniquely designed around the needs of the individual buyer and their organisational objectives.

For example, a medical device manufacturer has an innovation for a particular type of procedure; let’s say a cosmetic treatment. The innovation is available to purchase from a dozen distributors in major towns. Good B2B telemarketing practice would be to select and purchase a slice of test data within a given drivetime of each distributor, to research the data, (in this case beauty clinics) and establish decision makers names. We’d then carefully implement a program to call them, engage them about the innovation, carefully record metrics and anecdotal information, then use the insight gathered to adapt or scale up. This process of plan, act, reflect, and adjust helps to optimise the chance of a successful outcome with buyers for whom the innovation could be important. In other words we take care to create a great customer experience.

Build trust

The DMA’s customer engagement survey ‘How to win trust and loyalty’ maintains that whilst the nature of customer loyalty is shifting against the tide of faster information and more accessible media, customers still have brands they love and respect. So, the notion of customer loyalty is more complex and counter-intuitive than ever. They tell us “For marketers, the message remains the same: add value to your customer’s lives and stay relevant to their interests, or risk losing their business altogether”.

Taking the time and trouble to plan, target and test allows us to gather and use only the data that’s relevant to a project, and that which has obtained the appropriate consent. If as marketers, we are careful to ensure that each connection made does a good job of sounding like the important single call made that day, we’ll be far more likely to build trust, rapport and generate goodwill.

Talk to Blue Donkey about data cleaning, lead generation, or market research to help you maximise your sales and marketing efforts.