February 2020 | Blue Donkey

The value of referrals and reviews for generating b2b leads

Posted on 24 February 2020 by bluedonkey

We all know that a personal recommendation from someone we trust is more powerful than almost any other form of advertising. Whether it’s a film, restaurant, or book, when friends endorse it, we’re likely to act. Also known as word of mouth sales, referral marketing is an effective sales tool in generating b2b leads because we instinctively trust a business that someone tells us they’ve had a positive experience with. These days reviews can work as well as referrals, in fact, a handful of 5 star Google reviews can make all the difference if you’ve shortlisted a bunch of suppliers who look similar on the face of things.

Referral selling and reviews

Referral selling is not new, it’s actually one of the oldest marketing techniques. Unsurprising, therefore, that it’s as effective for creating b2b leads as it is for consumer sales. One of the best ways to improve a company’s performance is to offer an outstanding service in a sustainable way. This means charging appropriately and having happy, engaged staff on your front line who reflect everything that’s good about your business and its objectives. This turns clients into long term advocates, who respect and champion your business leading to word of mouth referrals, as well as good reviews. According to a study by Harvard Business School, reviews have a direct impact on revenues. They go on to say ‘a one-star increase in a Yelp rating leads to a 5% to 9% increase in revenue’. Simply put – the better (and more) reviews you have, the higher your chances are for building a reputation that is trusted and has a loyal following – inevitably leading to referrals.

Selling is only one of your success measures

Although generating b2b leads that convert to sales may be the ultimate goal of marketing, moving the emphasis away from selling can actually help you to sell more in the long run. Not selling at every opportunity will help you to build trust with your customers and will show them that you’re putting their needs first. Instead of always looking for ways to make a sale, ask your customers if there’s anything that you can do for them. The more you can find out about their needs and their requirements, the easier it will be for your business to offer a relevant and high quality service.

Listening skills

Although it can seem counterintuitive, listening is an important part of the selling process, especially if you’re trying to build long term business relationships. Ask about your customer’s long-term goals and the challenges that they face in achieving those goals. When creating b2b leads try to remember important facts about the industry and the individual business and add to your knowledge bank regarding all aspects of your customers’ requirements. The more genuinely interested you are in their business and their world, the more you’ll be able to adapt your products and services to suit their requirements. The happier your customers are with your products, services and performance as a whole, the more likely they’ll be to tell others about your company.

Seek out new ways to help

One of the main benefits of listening to your customers and taking an interest in their industry is that it will give you the perfect opportunity to show how you can help. Explain to your customers exactly what you can do for them. Don’t exaggerate. Be honest about the products and services you offer. Customers are much more likely to respond well to a realistic sales pitch than to one that promises them the earth and stars. If your company offers a high-quality service, competitive prices and great products, customers are likely to refer your business to other potential clients. To find out more about how to generate b2b leads, sales or effective marketing techniques, take a look around our site today.

Sell the sizzle, not the sausage

Posted on 18 February 2020 by bluedonkey

One of the mantras we use with our client family at Blue Donkey is We sell the sizzle; You sell the sausage. This is important in b2b telemarketing. It’s key to why people come to us for expertise and forms part of our identity as an agency. So what on earth do we mean by sell the sizzle, not the sausage? We’re not sure where the expression originally came from as many lay claim to it, the version we like is Elmer Wheeler’s from the 1920s. He urged salespeople to focus on the experience around a product, rather than simply on the object itself. In b2b telemarketing, we translate that as the familiar concept of benefit selling, where instead of using features to sell (“it has xyz Mr. Prospect”) we use benefits (“which means it does abc”). One is basically what it has – its features or properties, for example, the other is what you get by having it – in other words, the benefit it delivers.

People never buy a product or service because of its features, they only ever buy a product or service because of the benefit delivered. So you won’t buy toothpaste because it contains fluoride, you buy toothpaste because you want clean, white teeth. The fluoride is the feature, the benefit is what you get from having this feature.

Mmm yum!

You’ll notice that sausages sizzling in a frying pan are appealing, often more so than actually eating the sausage (or not!) The sound and smell of the sizzle represent the promise of something nice to come.

Buyers in b2b telemarketing need to know what your product or service can do for them, rather than how it works. To us at Blue Donkey selling the sizzle is all about selling the particular business benefits of a product or service over the telephone. Our job is to connect with the right prospects, find out about their needs, and deliver strong benefits relating to those needs. We build an appetite for a particular way of improving their business or its performance and then critically, we pass that interest to our clients as a lead generated.

As the b2b telemarketing team, we do the first stage of the sales process by connecting with the right person and building rapport and desire (the sizzle), then our clients get the second stage of the process (the sausage) by way of the lead generation. If we go too far on the phone and try to sell the sausage, it negates the point of a meeting, and the lead is lost. This is one of the reasons why technical people sometimes struggle to make a success of b2b telemarketing, they try to take the call too far. According to business publisher Entrepreneur.com The best way to understand the true benefit of your product or service is to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question.

What’s a benefit (or a sizzle, or a sausage??)

Blue Donkey takes the interaction to the point where we have established need, interest, trust, and rapport with the prospect, this is the sizzle – the benefit selling. The sausage is passed to our client in the lead generation process as a sales lead for them to convert by taking the interaction with the prospect further and turning them into customers.

In b2b telemarketing, a benefit is something that helps you, an enabler. For businesses ‘a benefit’ is always associated with time, effort, money or security.

No business purchase is ever made unless it delivers against one of those four benefits. As a consumer we buy for all sorts of different reasons, as business purchasers, we only buy for one or more of those four business benefits.

Time – so reduces the amount of time required to do a certain task
Effort – so it makes the process easier or reduces the amount of effort required
Money – saves money or makes money
Security – reduces risk, or increases the sense of security

Sizzling hot sales leads

When we sell the sizzle in b2b telemarketing it’s our job to get the prospect interested, understand how we can help, and once ready and committed to speaking to us further, we ‘close’ – so we ask for a meeting. Sometimes the close can feel awkward. Overcoming this can be as easy as saying “from what you’re telling me, it sounds like there are a number of ways we can help you, throw some dates at me and I’ll have somebody come and show you how we can help”.

More and more companies are finding the task of lead generation and b2b telemarketing specifically challenging for their internal teams. Outsourcing has become a popular choice especially for organisations that can make better use of their resources by concentrating on core tasks and outsourcing non-core activities to specialists like Blue Donkey. To find out more about the work we do, or to discuss a project of your own, get in touch with Blue Donkey today.

5 Things you should know about B2B Market Research calling

Posted on 17 February 2020 by bluedonkey

Market research companies may well be busier than ever this year, as changes in the economic and political landscape reflect on B2B buyer behaviours. It’s no great secret that uncertainty affects business. However, what happens when uncertainty starts to lift and B2B purse strings gently begin to stir? Do all our clients return to their hungry selves, or can we expect the competition to sweep in and tempt some away.

Often the folk called in to ask these questions are market research companies like Blue Donkey. Our task is to seek out buyers and delve deeply enough to understand the motivations and triggers that will keep them loyal, or have them jumping ship to the competition. Here is what we’ve learned in our 22 years at the coalface.

1. Objective

Market research companies set out with a defined plan about what they want to understand. Often a problem, opportunity, new product idea, or threat has been identified and the questionnaire will be designed to throw light on it. Research with a flimsy objective such as ‘What’s the next big thing’ (yes that happens!) will have vague outcomes at best.

2. What are you really thinking

Unwitting messages are really important. These usually appear in the tone of voice, or are implied but not explicit answers to questions. Market research companies listen carefully for cues as to what a respondent is saying beneath their answers, for example, if a respondent answers a question then add the words ‘I suppose’, market research companies may gently probe to see if there is more to the response.

3. Objectivity

Market research companies can be objective, which is why organisations will usually decide to outsource. A company’s internal team will naturally have a cognitive bias in the way they understand and report answers, and they may feel protective or defensive. Market research companies won’t feel personally affected by outcomes so will be able to keep a professional distance.

4. Market research is market research. Sales is sales

Market research companies will never ever take sales leads from market research. Your calls must be either sales, or market research. It’s unethical and frankly rude to dress your call up as market research if what you are actually looking to do is find sales leads. Responses or respondent details are not be linked to the report, they should be completely anonymous.

5. Curiosity didn’t really kill the cat

It’s important to remember that every interaction with a client or potential client is a potential opportunity to learn something new. Market research should not start and end with market research companies, it should form a part of everyone’s role. Curiosity is good for business, how often did a question that you asked a client as an afterthought lead to tangible new opportunities, upsell, or innovations?

According to one of the world’s foremost authorities on strategic marketing professor Malcolm McDonald, the first step to business success is all about understanding what customers value, and how best to deliver it.

To find out more about Market research, or to learn how we can help you to improve the quality of your research calls, take a look around our site or get in touch with a member of our team today.

How lead generation companies find the right Mr Right

Posted on 12 February 2020 by bluedonkey

Have you ever wondered why lead generation companies spend so much time obsessing over gatekeeper skills? If you use the telephone for new business, you’ll know only too well that getting past the gatekeeper or receptionist and finding the right decision maker is pretty mission critical. For lead generation companies this competence is one that can make or break a project or even a business. In our 22 years we’ve discovered that determining the right Mr. Right isn’t always a clear-cut thing. Read on to find out more.

Mr. Right

For lead generation companies to perform consistently, they have to be good at qualifying the right names at reception level. Call after call they must ferret out new items of information, and new influencers or decision makers. As most lead generation companies will have a large number of retained projects, they’ll be concerned with building a long-term pipeline of names, as well as those required to secure the objectives for that week or that month. Questions used for calls at reception level will have a large bearing on the success of the whole cycle of telemarketing, or even the whole marketing cycle, because if the wrong names go in, the entire marketing cycle will be impaired. Asking who is the person responsible for/in charge of / or who makes decisions about, rather than asking for the person who ‘deals with’, will help guard against spending time and wasted calls trying to reach the wrong Mr. Right.

Mr. Right-Now

At Blue Donkey finding Mr. Right, Mrs. Right or Ms. Right is very close to our hearts. Occasionally we find stakeholders that are helpful to our purpose because they are involved in the buying process in some way, for example, they may be end users of a product or service, they could be in the procurement division, they might be part of a broader function such as operations. These folk need to be engaged, and convinced, they form part of the process so they are effectively Mr. Right-Now. They’re affected indirectly but don’t have chief decision-making responsibility. The notion of a ‘decision making unit’ is quite an interesting one. Some organisations simply don’t have single decision makers they have a number of people who perform different functions. Often lead generation companies may need to speak to one, some, most or all of them in order to onboard them. The reality is, your competition probably won’t have the patience to see this through, so it’s worth the extra time and effort.

Mr. Right-Then

Once won, these organisational stakeholders or groups are often customers for life. Most lead generation companies don’t have 22 years under their belt, some never will. This is simply because having too much of an eye on today’s goals can sometimes obscure the future. For a small family business like Blue Donkey, over our 22 years, we’ve seen the value our strong connections and friendships bring. It’s not unusual for our client friends to return through several career moves. They trust us to deliver a dedicated service they can rely on to achieve their organisational and career goals, and in doing so we achieve ours. If you’ve developed a strong bond as a supplier, a colleague, or partner, chances are, you’ll be called upon again. So past customers are also fantastic prospects.

More than that, it’s great to work with people you consider part of your professional family. You already have trust, and belief in each other. Experts at Forbes explain that keeping clients for life takes high emotional intelligence. They add “don’t tell me business isn’t personal, and I won’t tell you finance is void of emotion. It’s okay to let the authentic, relatable human creep in. That’s when stuff gets real and relationships blossom.”

To understand more about the techniques used by lead generation companies, or to find out what Blue Donkey can do for you, contact a member of our team today.

What’s LOVE got to do with it?

Posted on 11 February 2020 by bluedonkey

For most of us, work is a rich mixture of things we like doing and those we don’t much like. It’s a detail that we’re happy to chalk up as the yin-yang balance of working life, and if we don’t spend Sunday night resenting the start of another work week (and we all know someone who does) we consider ourselves lucky. Among others, b2b lead generation is possibly one of the tasks people dislike, since the most effective method is still cold calling prospects. So what is it about b2b lead generation telemarketing that people dislike so much, and do you have to love something in order to excel at it? Read on to find out.

Trust, Honesty & Respect

Success in b2b lead generation is all about identifying the right potential partners for your business and then setting about building trust, rapport, and mutual respect. This isn’t an easy thing to achieve, which is why more and more companies are choosing to outsource cold calling to specialists rather than do it themselves. In some ways, however, using the telephone is actually easier to do, since creating human to human connection needs spontaneity. It relies on someone to speak and another person to listen, understand and respond. Imagining someone in your mind’s eye will help you overcome the feeling that you’re speaking to a stranger, by allowing you to build a picture of the person you’re speaking with, so your one to one becomes more like a spontaneous face to face discussion and you’re really able to get under the skin of what your prospect wants from the relationship. By asking the right open questions you can respond by honestly working through the things that are key to them, not to you.

Acceptance, Forbearance & Kindness

In b2b lead generation, success takes patience. You may need to have many conversations with a prospect before they actually convert to business written. Pushing someone too hard could break the connection and compromise your brand permanently. Instead, by approaching each individual on their terms, embracing a sense of kindness and benevolence in the way we respond to people during our b2b lead generation calls, we get meaning and value from our work.

By focusing on meeting needs, rather than hitting targets, we connect with people in a way that feels authentic and builds meaningful experiences with folk who could quite possibly become clients for life, as many of us take our family of clients from job to job. More than that, forming relationships that matter is a key factor in learning to love the work we do, and only by approaching b2b lead generation telemarketing from the viewpoint that we’re doing something that matters, can we truly get the best outcomes. Rescuetime, experts in workplace wellbeing, suggest an estimated 21% to 35% of our waking hours are spent at work. How we spend those hours can have either a negative or positive impact on the meaningfulness we feel. They go on to explain that doing work that matters, is key to feeling that our work has meaning.

What’s not to love?

Like anything in life, learning to get great results takes practice and commitment. Putting the needs of others first feels good, and the more people we add to our army of friends and advocates, the better we feel as human beings, and the more success we enjoy. It’s also true that whilst b2b lead generation telemarketing may not necessarily have been our primary career choice, winning the hearts of prospects, so they become our ‘gamechanger’ clients, or better still, partners for life is totally lovable.

If you would like to find out more about outsourcing your b2b lead generation telemarketing to specialists contact Blue Donkey on 01353 724 880.

Herzberg two-factor theory and Lead generation marketing

Posted on 10 February 2020 by bluedonkey

We’ve looked at how Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory can be applied to workplace motivation and sales. His thoughts on the elements that motivate workers by their presence and those that de-motivate by their absence can also be applied to lead generation marketing and can help managers of lead generation marketing activities get the best from their data.

Herzberg’s theory has broad applicability to any process or activity that involves people, so naturally, it can be applied to sales. However, by reflecting on the motivating factors and the hygiene factors he identifies in his theory, we can see how companies can motivate a customer to buy a product from their business instead of from a competitor, and how qualifiers can be used to differentiate in a noisy market.

We all want to believe we’re completely responsible for the decisions we make at home or in the workplace. However, anyone who’s interested in the workings of the human brain will know there is a myriad of subconscious factors influencing our psychology and therefore our decisions. According to brand specialists Clutch Marketing, understanding the psychology of your buyer is the secret of great marketers. They say Marketing is about persuasion, creating the impression you want to make, eliciting a specific feeling or response, and then enticing a person to take action. The keys to success are bound up in clever marketing which manages to create an alluring proposition, that stands up to competition, then surrounding it with compelling messaging that picks out its differences.

Hygiene factors in lead generation

In his motivation theory, Herzberg discusses the need for hygiene factors to be present in order to maintain entry-level consideration. They are the qualifiers, the basic must-have features. These hygiene factors are the essential things that a potential buyer will be looking for, and as markets evolve the list gets bigger, for example nowadays all mobile phones have cameras, and so all customers will expect to benefit from one.

When you translate this theory to lead generation marketing you can see that hygiene factors are essentially qualifiers – the features that buyers expect to be present in a product or service. Although the presence of these qualifiers won’t necessarily help to push decision makers into responding to your sales message, their absence will discount you from the selection process completely. Understanding these qualifiers can influence your potential buyers, and working this theory clearly into your sales messaging could help your business to improve the results of its lead generation marketing.

Motivators in lead generation marketing

Motivators are the second component of Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory. They are the extras that help motivate potential buyers to select a particular product or service above a competitor. Usually associated with benefits, these factors are designed to differentiate and position. For the purposes of B2B lead generation marketing, benefits are almost always to do with time, effort, money, or security. So again, building your messaging around the elements of your product or service that are exclusive to you, and which provide one or more of these benefits, will really help motivate buyers towards your product or service and power up your lead generation marketing.

Motivating factors include extra guarantees, the number of customer service touchpoints, endorsements, testimonials, and accreditations. In lead generation marketing, these motivating factors can be directly compared with Order Winners. The little extras help to make a product or service more compelling for the decision maker and can easily swing a deal. If marketers know how to use these Order Winners correctly, and how to combine them with qualifiers, they should be able to make their lead generation marketing more persuasive and encourage a higher number of decision makers to opt for their brand.

To find out more about sales and telemarketing techniques that really work, or to learn how we can help you to improve the quality of your sales calls, take a look around our site or get in touch with a member of our team today.

Importance of Closed questions for a lead generation agency

Posted on 7 February 2020 by bluedonkey

For a lead generation agency, it’s critical that telemarketing is designed to maximise every tool in the armoury. Some of these tools are not ones you would normally associate with successful telemarketing, and probably won’t be ones your lead generation agency will wax lyrical about. Closed questions fall into this category. It’s true we all love an open question, at Blue Donkey Intelligent Telemarketing we like to be a bit sassy though, so here’s our take on the important role played by the much-maligned closed question.

What is a closed question?

A closed question in lead generation agency speak is one that can be answered with a simple yes or no. In telemarketing, you need to get people engaged as quickly as possible. The faster you can get someone talking, the easier it will be for you to build a rapport and begin laying the foundations for a business relationship. Consequently, closed questions are a definite no-no at the beginning of a call, especially since asking a closed question to someone that you haven’t yet built a rapport with will almost certainly attract a negative response. However, there are a lot of points in the call where closed questions work a treat. They usually begin with would you, could you, type prompts and for a lead generation agency they are the main tool used to pre-close, where you test the waters for whether a decision maker is willing to proceed. For example, ‘would you be willing to have someone come and see you about x’.

No need to go on about it

Closed questions are also excellent for helping control the flow of a conversation. It’s hard to believe perhaps but a good lead generation agency will find getting people off the phone is sometimes as hard as getting them on it. Decision makers love talking about their business, and for a charismatic, skilled telemarketer, getting people engaged won’t be too much of a problem until they start over-sharing or going off on a tangent. The closed question can help gently rescue such situations by steering the call to its conclusion.

So controlling

Another way they help with controlling a discussion is that closed questions can be used to gain agreement, and encourage the next steps, for example by asking the decision maker can we come and see you about that. In some cases, several closed questions might be used by a lead generation agency to successfully establish the appropriate criteria for a lead has been met. It’s important these aren’t fired out at speed like a machine-gun, but used carefully they can help ensure that the right boxes have been ticked before you close for a meeting, sale or whatever the objective of your call.

What we need is facts

Finally closed questions are a great way to establish and confirm facts. An open question is a question that generally begins with the words what, when, where, how, and they are designed to encourage expansive and informative answers. They’re also great for building relationships because we all like to talk about ourselves or our business. But once you’ve been showered with information you need to ensure you’ve established the facts correctly. A lead generation agency will have a quality management imperative here, as the database and the insight gained will be a measure of their ability.

Growing assets

However, whether you work in a lead generation agency or not, the database should be seen as a business asset. If possible, it should contain a searchable drop down menus to allow your marketing department to select and segment based on homogenous features – marketing speak for prospects who are similar so they can be targeted with marketing just for them. For example, a database might have a drop down menu for organisation size, the lead generation agency will populate this field as they go along, so small companies can be contacted with products that are relevant to them, and large ones can be targeted specifically with products designed for the larger organisation. This reduces wasted marketing budget and enables your messaging to be better targeted. According to Professor Malcolm McDonald, one of the world’s foremost authorities on strategic marketing, market segmentation and the concept of the ‘segment of one’, segmenting at key decision points is the bedrock of commercial success. It consists of splitting the market into groups of people who are likely to behave in a similar way

Using the database to carefully build this insight will overtime enable far better use of resources, reduce wastage and deliver success measured in the same robust way a lead generation agency uses metrics.

Closed questions are a simple but powerful telemarketing tool. To learn more about improving your telemarketing technique, or to find out more about what we do, contact a member of our team today.