June 2020 | Blue Donkey

Quality management frameworks to help the telemarketing company excel

Posted on 30 June 2020 by bluedonkey

For any business, performance is important. For the telemarketing company to achieve recognition in its market, it has to achieve better outcomes than clients could themselves. Not only does the achievement have to outperform the client, it has to do so in a way that underpins the very best practice. So databases, training, systems, and all customer touchpoints must be adding value in some tangible way.

It’s not just about picking up the phone

In the old days anyone could set up as a telemarketing provider. All you needed was a phone and a bit of pluck. Nowadays to survive, the telemarketing company needs a whole range of systems and processes for the making and taking of calls. Everything from processing data, to the transparent and seamless flow of information. For the client, the calls have to be special. And it needs to feel like the service is happening in the next room.

Blue Donkey is heavily subscribed to the notion that recognised quality frameworks and standards are the only way a small family business can compete. Having enjoyed both ISO:9001 and IIP for over 15 years, Blue Donkey has become the telemarketing company that blue chips come to because they know their precious brand is safe in our hands.

Quality management system

One way to demonstrate an unswerving commitment to quality is to have a formal quality management system (QMS). Coined in 1991 by British management consultant Ken Croucher, the term ‘Quality Management Systems’ refers to an organisation’s formalised approach to maintaining high standards of practice.

An effective QMS has to touch every single part of a business. It’s a set of policies, processes, and procedures required for the planning and execution of each core function of the telemarketing company. Anything that can impact the organisation’s ability to meet its service promises is analysed and documented. This then becomes the bible by which everything is done, measured, and reported.

A robust QMS is the best way for a company to demonstrate excellence across all areas of its business. One of its key benefits for the telemarketing company is that by developing a quality management system that everyone lives by, the organisation can define what exactly it is that makes it stand out from the crowd.

ISO:9001

ISO 9001 is probably the best known QMS around at the moment. An internationally recognised quality management system, it’s based on eight quality management principles. These principles cover all areas of management including customer focus, leadership, continual improvement, mutually beneficial supplier relationships, and fact-based decision making. By adhering to these principles, businesses can ensure they’re constantly improving and driving standards ever higher.

Defining a QMS can also help business leaders to focus on their company as a whole. This means they can move the entire organisation forward with all staff and stakeholders fully engaged and committed to the picture of excellence, as standard. According to the British Assessment Bureau, “Companies and organisations are now expected to prove competency across an increasing number of disciplines in order to win contracts in both the private and public sectors. A quality management system (QMS) is one of the best ways of reassuring potential clients that you can meet their projects aims and objectives”

Investors In People

The Investors in People standard (IIP) is a framework for improving business performance, and competitiveness through a company’s people. It’s ideal for the telemarketing company because it’s a planned approach to setting and goals and developing people to meet those goals. IIP is essentially a standard for people management. It provides recognition that an organisation cares about staff, links people’s welfare with performance, and customer satisfaction.

Companies that are awarded IIP are those with the highest commitment to improving and supporting their teams towards better performance. The telemarketing company adopting this standard will understand only too well, that to realise tough client objectives, the management, and development of staff is a critical success factor.

Externally audited

One of the most reassuring aspects for clients using an ISO:9001 and IIP B2B telemarketing agency like Blue Donkey, is that the business is audited annually by an external awarding body. These are independent, third party professionals who perform an impartial review of the telemarketing company. This quality audit is a process of systematic examination of a quality system to determine if the organisation complies with the defined quality system processes. This process involves a great level of detail and strictly follows international accreditation standards.

To learn more about how quality management has made Blue Donkey the telemarketing company that gets results, speak with one of our team today.

What do great appointment setting services look like

Posted on 29 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Appointment setting services can be an excellent route to achieving an important aspect of sales. Often this is the key to meeting broader business objectives. It’s all about putting your sales force and your potential new clients in the same room (all be it virtually these days). As well as being one of the most essential parts of telemarketing, appointment setting is probably one of the most difficult to master.

However, since few relationships in business can begin without first speaking directly to a prospect, Blue Donkey’s 22 years successfully delivering appointment setting services, means we understand what control levers work best.

Specialist skill

Like payroll, accounts, and IT, some business functions have become more and more specialist. Telemarketing is definitely one of those. You can do it inhouse, and actually, whether you buy in appointment setting services or not, you should always make sure your sales team is ready and happy to pick up the phone. However, systematic, effective, and efficient use of the telephone as a marketing tool is harder to achieve inhouse now.

GDPR, gatekeepers, and incoming calls are just some of the reasons why companies find it harder than ever to have dedicated telemarketers. Couple that with the need for complex systems, databases, and metrics, and the business case for staying inhouse looks weak. Furthermore, telemarketing is a tough gig, you need trainers on tap because, at some point, even your best contributor to success will hit the wall. And when that happens, they need the right support.

Align objectives

When working towards making an appointment, it’s important that appointment setting services resolutely put the customer experience at the centre of the call. For agencies with business models heavily reliant on results, if they don’t get appointments, they don’t get paid. For clients using these kinds of appointment setting services, don’t be surprised if your brand is damaged by over-goal seeking behaviours.

Ask the right questions

Agencies with a strong client list have the experience to protect and grow your brand. Best in breed clients will generally levitate towards best in breed appointment setting services so asking questions about their experience, client base and successes will provide you with the agency equivalent of ‘situational interview questions’. These are ‘what have you done’ and ‘how did you’. Rather than the more theoretical ‘what would you do’ or ‘what do you do’.

Compelling messaging

Telemarketers should be commercially savvy, and able to understand and articulate the benefits of complex products. They should know the product well and have excellent training around asking questions, using benefits, and meeting needs. Potential clients will be a lot more likely to make an appointment with the sales force, and the subsequent meeting will be fruitful for both parties if your appointment setting services are exceptional to begin with.

Calls will win over hearts and minds if they are geared towards meeting the prospect’s needs in a gentle, sensitive way that say nice things about your business and brand. And, as ever, ensuring the highest level of best practice, not just mere compliance will pay dividends for your brand’s security. Remember to keep an eye on the latest ICO rules.

Attitude to data is illuminating

Some appointment setting services use their own databases and data. This may seem attractive, after all, why would you pay for data if you can have use of it for free? However, let’s be clear, data costs money. An agency, like any other business, will want to exploit the full potential of anything they spend money on. But the database is one place where you really don’t want to ‘sweat the asset’. Having the same source of data used for every campaign means you can’t take advantage of the best data available. And since data is probably the cheapest component in your marketing cycle, it’s worth making sure you only put the best quality data in.

Plan act review cycles

Using an agency like Blue Donkey that research, audition, test, and buy data for you specifically, will mean your campaign will have a better chance of success. Appointment setting services that purchase profiled data in small segments like this, will ensure a constant cycle of plan, act, and review pre-empts for every record that your project is touched by. So this delivers good value while maximising the performance of your appointment setting services.

Furthermore, the ‘rights’ to the data should always revert to the client. So every piece of intelligence or insight that’s gathered on each dial, forms part of the intellectual property that’s automatically transferred to the client buying the appointment setting services.

It’s not entry level work!

Finally, it’s important to know that appointment setting services are really not entry level work. In the 80’s and 90’s you could get university or college leavers, wind them up with some exciting messages, and let them go! Many excellent telemarketers started very successful business development careers this way. Nowadays it’s too much to ask. It takes years of training to be good at delivering appointment setting services. The profile of callers is everything. And anyway, would you want your kids given that kind of baptism of fire after 3 hard years at uni? Probably not.

Appointment setting is a fine art and getting it right has huge rewards. So talk to Blue Donkey today about how our 22 years providing appointment setting services can help you.

Make a positive impression with telemarketing

Posted on 25 June 2020 by bluedonkey

A telemarketing campaign can sometimes be the first contact between a company and a potential buyer. So the tone, messaging, and success of the telemarketing call may well shape the relationship between a brand and its customer base long in to the future. So, telemarketers need to start things off on the right foot.

Getting things right on the phone can feel intimidating, especially for inexperienced cold callers. Being unable to see a person, read their body language or their expressions can be a barrier to success. As a result, people often become so consumed by nerves, pressure, or blindsided by thoughts about what to say next, that they forget to actually tune-in to what their prospect needs. Over our 22 years at Blue Donkey, we’ve developed some simple strategies that will help make your calls flow beautifully.

Paint on your best smile

It’s absolutely true that smiling when you’re on the phone makes a difference to the quality of your call. In fact, if there’s only one thing you can do to perform better instantly, it’s a smile. There’s some good science behind this too! According to experts “Each time you smile your brain feels really happy. … When a smile flashes across your face; dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin are all released into your bloodstream, making not only your body relax but also work to lower your heart rate and blood pressure. Smiling activates the release of feel-good-messengers that work towards fighting stress”.

A smile not only makes you feel better, it improves your professional state. So, you’re more relaxed about asking questions and you have the headspace to listen and respond sensitively to answers. Furthermore (this is a biggie) you sound nicer; more cheerful, charismatic, and confident to the person receiving your calls.

Have the customer at heart

Telemarketing calls should be all about the customer. By placing them at the heart of the call, their needs and priorities can be probed with intelligent questions that draw them into a call quickly and effectively. Getting buyers talking is an excellent method for creating a positive impression because it puts them in the driver seat straight away. Once a buyer’s needs are explored and discussed, the telemarketer can begin to explain the features and benefits that can help them.

Sensitive targeting

Telemarketing works best when it’s built around an appropriately qualified target list, and designed to solve certain problems or exploit particular opportunities. It should never be a situation where anyone, anywhere is targeted. Where telemarketing teams reach the right buyers and show they value them, and are keen to meet their needs, a campaign will be a success. This strategy also provides telemarketers with the perfect opportunity to find out more and to handle any objections or questions the potential customer might have. By approaching calls in this way, telemarketers can create a positive first impression, build the foundations of a solid relationship, and get a real two-way conversation going.

People like to do business with people they like

As most professionals know, people do business with people they like. If telemarketers can create a positive impression, it will reflect well on the brand and make it more likely the prospect will do business with the telemarketer’s company. By being positive, compelling, and informative throughout a call, and by ensuring the call doesn’t become too pushy, telemarketing can help a brand to grow.

To find out more about Blue Donkey’s unique approach to telemarketing, explore our site, or speak to a member of our team today.

How telesales companies grow relationships

Posted on 23 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Telesales companies like Blue Donkey, use the phone to reach new potential buyers. They create a well profiled list of appropriate companies, find the most senior decision maker, learn everything that’s compelling about the product or service offered, and then they use this to engage in a positive, intelligent way.

Nurturing new relationships is an important part of survival and growth. The best telesales companies put time and resources into growing business relationships that their clients rely on, to get new sales, generate brand awareness, and improve corporate image. This empowers companies to grow, boost revenue, and achieve their business goals.

First impressions last

The basis of good business relationships is often a strong first impression. The initial contact between a company and a prospect should be friendly, insightful, and professional. This helps build credibility and trust from the get go. Good first impressions whether they’re from professional telesales companies on a client’s behalf, or from an in-house sales team, will help potential customers become more inclined to work with them.

Qualify

In most cases, prospects will want to know more about a business, its products, and services before agreeing to meet or transact. After the initial contact, telesales companies will carefully qualify the lead. They’ll ask intelligent questions and provide information according to the buyer’s answers to the questions. It’s important not to use a prescribed ‘patter’. The caller should be building a free fall dialog based on what the buyer says.

At this stage, telesales companies answer questions and deal with objections. For them, this conversation is an important part of growing a business relationship as it offers telemarketers the opportunity to build rapport and demonstrate understanding.

By uncovering the specific needs and requirements of the business they can gently probe what’s important, and provide information that’s robust. This needs to be capable of not only generating a sales lead but one that’s concrete enough to have a good chance of success when the lead is passed to the client.

Communication

Once a prospect has turned into a customer and has begun buying from a business, it’s up to that business to ensure they’re meeting their clients’ needs. The most effective way to do this is to develop clear and convenient lines of communication. If customers know that they can contact a business with a query and that the business will be friendly and informative, it will aid in growing the relationship and building trust between the client and the business. Telesales companies like Blue Donkey will provide a seamless service for inbound or outbound customer service. This will ensure that by maintaining communication, the trust they fought hard to win is nurtured to create lasting and personal relationships.

Customers for life

The notion of the job for life has been superseded by the customer for life. Social media, and the advent of LinkedIn among others, increasingly means that for professional sales people, it’s quite possible to take customers with them as they move through their careers.

This fabulously entrepreneurial feature of our work lives means that investing in excellent relationships has lifelong payback, both personally and commercially. After all, it’s a privilege to work with people you care about. Accomplished telesales companies begin with that very goal in mind from the first dial.

According to Forbes, “If you can turn a one time buyer into a life-time customer, six things happen and all of them are good”. Your sales go up. The competition is hurt. Customers stay longer. Loyalty builds a barrier to competition. You can get customers to buy more. You get better margins.

Every telemarketing call is an opportunity to nurture the relationship between a business and its customers. This will help buyers to feel invested in the brand and valued by their supplier. Find out more about one of the best telesales companies around, talk to a member of Blue Donkey’s expert team today.

What does paid market research tell you about being a market leader?

Posted on 22 June 2020 by bluedonkey

When companies aspire to be the market leader in their sector, they’re usually thinking of things like growing sales, improving service, and innovation. Paid market research, however, paints a picture that’s a lot more profound than the simple nuts and bolts of selling more.

Understandably company owners work towards increasing their market share to the point that they’re selling more products or services than any of their competitors. The number of sales places them in a dominant position and helps ensure the long term survival of their company. And yes, sales are of course important, but paid market research tells us market leadership isn’t necessarily just about who can sell the most or make the most money. In fact, leadership is increasingly less about sales and more about influence, something that’s changing the way businesses relate to other companies in their industry.

Market leadership

Traditionally, the market leader has been the company that sells the most, makes the most money and adopts new technologies and techniques ahead of their competitors.

However, this is no longer necessarily true. Small start-ups and family-run enterprises can now have an impact on their industries without big marketing budgets, creating a name for themselves purely through the use of clever marketing techniques, excellent communication, and innovative strategies.

Why pay for market research

Market research that’s done inhouse, picking up the phone, and speaking with customers and prospects will always be absolutely vital to success. This is not really market research, it is sales. Paid market research offers something entirely different. It’s unbiased, easier for customers to say what they think without offending, or jeopardising relationships, and paid market research will put an emphasis on what others in the market are doing. These comparisons are mission critical for identifying whether a market leader leads on price, product quality, service delivery, or something else.

Authority and influence

Rather than focusing on the bottom line, when talking about market leadership, professional market research companies like Blue Donkey provide paid market research that examines important aspects of a business such as its influence on their industry. Small or niche B2B companies that take the time to build strong relationships with their customers often have more influence than much larger companies.

Robust questionnaires will deep dive the answers offered by respondents, to understand and report on features that make a company’s resonance in its market more meaningful. These ‘thought leaders’ can influence everything from the accessibility of their industry to the demographic they appeal to. By promoting best practice and being actively involved in developing their sector, they can earn the respect of both customers and competitors, something that will help to boost brand awareness and market share.

Becoming thought leaders

Experts at Grow Your Influence tell us that “The success of your business can be directly attributed to the people who work there. Your senior leadership team, technical experts, and heads of operations are real world influencers – their work actually shapes the future of your business and the customers who use your products and services. Leverage the impact of superstars on your team by sharing their knowledge, experience, and expertise with a global community of professionals on social media”.

To find out more about paid market research, becoming a market leader, or to find out how we can help you to improve your customer service, contact a member of our team today.

The difference between inbound and outbound telemarketing

Posted on 17 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Outbound telemarketing is essentially the process of making cold calls to generate new relationships with target buyers. It’s one of those tasks where you have to get to know your product and service passionately enough to ‘want’ to tell people about it. If you select data intelligently and compliantly your calls WILL be a success. But you have to make lots of them, concentrate on a person in your mind’s eye – so you don’t sound like a robot, and you have to be prepared to make lots of dials. Contrary to urban myth, dealing with rejection should not have to be a necessary key skill. If the calls you make are good, and your data selection is right, at worst, your prospects won’t be interested now! As opposed to not interested full stop.

Inbound calls are different to outbound telemarketing in two big ways, the obvious being that the potential customer is calling you, you’re not calling them. The second is that the selling relationship has to have begun before the call, so some form of desire must be created in order to make them want to pick up the phone to you.

Understanding the benefits of each approach and the relationship between the two helps your company to connect with its target audience and run successful outbound telemarketing or inbound campaigns.

Inbound telemarketing

With Inbound campaigns, by the time the telephone rings, the potential customer is already familiar with the brand. However, in order for these calls to be successful telemarketers still need to warm up the relationship as quickly as possible. In most cases, customers making inbound calls will have spoken to rival companies before picking up the phone so they will be sensitive to what’s available. Differentiating your product or service at this point is the main challenge, so the telemarketer has to make their brand stand out from the start.

As with outbound telemarketing, a good way to do this is to ask questions in order to identify a customer’s needs and requirements. Listening and understanding are a big part of inbound telemarketing.

Outbound telemarketing

Telemarketing is a professional discipline and finding success in telemarketing takes skill, experience, and systems. Telemarketers need to make an impressive impact and create rapport if they are to engage potential customers successfully. This means they need to begin to lay the foundations of a productive business relationship within moments of picking up the phone.

Creating this connection is challenging enough but if you rely on scripts and prescriptive formulas, building rapport will be almost impossible. No one enjoys speaking to a person reading from a script – you might as well talk to a robot. Instead of using scripts, Blue Donkey creates outbound telemarketing that produces intelligent free flowing dialogue that will produce results again and again.

By putting a bright, charismatic, and intelligent personality on the front line of outbound telemarketing, and ensuring they are supported with strong products, campaigns will engage buyers positively and powerfully enough to win their confidence.

Outbound telemarketing doesn’t hurt

Making outbound calls is an important part of telemarketing. However, the challenges of connecting with a potential customer and creating a rapport are even greater when your call is unexpected. Outbound telemarketing is often known as ‘cold calling’ and as branding experts marketingmo say “the phrase cold calling sends chills down the spines of many business people. It’s often viewed as an intimidating, difficult, and boring process”.

At Blue Donkey we believe that an outbound cold call is only ‘cold’ when it leaves the customer feeling cold. Rather than using scripts and formulaic questions, we use natural conversation and a two-way dialogue to leave potential customers feeling warmer about the brand and the opportunities it provides.

Inbound and outbound telemarketing can be incredibly powerful. It helps businesses to connect with their customers, boost brand awareness, and find out a little more about their target audience. To find out more about the benefits of telemarketing, or to speak to our expert team about your business’ telemarketing needs, get in touch today.

How a lead generation business uses influencer marketing

Posted on 16 June 2020 by bluedonkey

It’s no surprise that a good lead generation business will always be looking for ways to improve their marketing techniques and technology reach. Where once adverts and directory listings helped to determine the success of a lead generation business, these days we care very much about what people think or say to others. This ‘influencer marketing’ is especially popular online, where direct links, reviews, and mentions can grow the success of SEO in a big way.

For a lead generation business like Blue Donkey, the part played by data is still critical for achieving impressive outcomes for our clients. In fact, by combining the right data with influencer marketing we can make your strategy more rounded, more comprehensive and more powerful.

What’s influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing takes many forms, but in essence, it involves individuals recommending a product, company, or service to friends, family, and associates. This can be done through direct word of mouth recommendations, Google reviews, posts on social media, and brand endorsements. One technique that’s becoming increasingly popular is the use of individual ‘influencers’ in marketing. These are often people with large social media followings who agree to work with a particular brand to increase awareness of their products and services. The influencer might post a related video on their YouTube channel, take a photo for Instagram of them using the product, or write a blog post featuring the brand in question. A lead generation business might consider this kind of activity for a manufactured product, or scientific instrument for example.

How can influencer marketing benefit a brand?

A brand can benefit from influencer marketing in a number of ways. If an influencer has a large social media following, the company will be able to boost brand awareness among a particular demographic. The brand will also benefit from its association with the influencer. This will help the lead generation business mould a client’s brand identity since target customers will begin to think of the company through the prism of the influencer.

Combining influencer marketing with data marketing

If an organisation isn’t completely clear who they’re aiming their product or service at, any attempt at influencer marketing is unlikely to have much of an impact. The lead generation business will be able to select and use data to help identify the best target audience and assess which digital avenues may help. Data can also be used by companies to identify new trends emerging within the market. This can help brands to stay ahead of the competition and allow them to corner the influencer market in their particular niche.

According to Influencer Marketing specialists at Reachbird, 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 33% trust ads. Retention rates of customer-generated by word of mouth marketing are 37% higher than those generated by paid ads, 20% of internet user’s time is spent on content, and 74% of internet users rely on social networks to guide purchases.

Talk to Blue Donkey about how our lead generation business can combine these two powerful marketing techniques, in a telemarketing campaign to generate impressive results or explore our site today.

Common buzzwords to avoid in B2B marketing

Posted on 15 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Few things annoy decision makers more than the constant sing-song use of slogans, catchphrases, or buzzwords. Not only does it expose a person’s lack of experience, clichéd, repetitive and meaningless language also shows a decision maker that the person they’re speaking with is not equipped with the genuine knowledge to become a reliable supplier.

B2B marketing aimed at senior executives should come across in an intelligent and informed manner. Its fine to not know everything, and marketers who try and use jargon and buzzwords are often doing so to appear more sophisticated or knowledgeable than they actually are. Far better to grow and cultivate knowledge by asking questions and listening carefully to answers. This will win more respect for sure.

Plain English in B2B marketing

According to the Guardian newspaper “The Plain English Campaign says that many staff working for big corporate organisations find themselves using management speak as a way of disguising the fact that they haven’t done their job properly. Some people think that it is easy to bluff their way through by using long, impressive-sounding words and phrases, even if they don’t know what they mean, which is telling in itself” Read on to see some they don’t recommend for your B2B marketing.

Helicopter view – Need a phrase that means a broad overview of the business? Then why not say “a broad view of the business”?

Idea shower – Brainstorm might be out of fashion, but surely we can thought cascade something better than this drivel.

Touch base offline – Meaning let’s meet and talk. Because, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to communicate without a Wi-Fi signal. No, really, it is. Fancy a coffee?

Get all your ducks in a row – Be organised. Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street had an obsession with rubber ducks.

Thinking outside the box – This is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to the process of creative thinking in B2B marketing. We say it’s a fairly unconstructive way of telling people to come up with a new, unique idea, the phrase should have been ditched years ago.

Touch base – A favourite phrase of networkers and people trying to show a light touch in management, ‘touch base’ has been winding up B2B marketing executives for a few years now. It’s recently been joined by the even more unnecessary ‘touch base offline’ which is a roundabout way of asking someone to meet face to face.

Reach out – A lot of people in business seem to think the phrase ‘reach out’ is friendlier and less intimidating than ‘contact’, ‘get in touch’ or ‘call’. This has led to the phrase finding its way into countless B2B marketing dictionaries. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before it finds its way out again.

Let’s action that – Instead of saying, ‘let’s action that’ at the end of a meeting or discussion – why not just say, ‘that’s what we’ll do’?

Synergy – One of the most meaningless buzzwords out there at the moment: ‘synergy’ seems to have a huge number of meanings in the world of business. From ‘balance’ to ‘combination’ and ‘collaboration’ to ‘cooperation’, the word is thrown into the mix whenever someone wants to sound like they know what they’re talking about.

Going forward, whenever you touch base or reach out to your customers, you’ll be able to action removing buzzwords and jargon from your sales pitch. This should help to create synergy and allow your idea shower to flow freely!

To find out other ways to improve your communication skills, or get more from your B2B marketing, explore our site, or contact a member of our team.

How market research companies uncover value

Posted on 12 June 2020 by bluedonkey

When analysing sales statistics or determining the success of a brand, market research companies look for robust ways of getting behind the top line numbers. Companies that focus on short-term results can sometimes fail to spot the quiet heroes on their balance sheets. These are customers who spend with them rain or shine. So while the big spending current superstars can be pivotal, after all, short-term gains are important in business, they don’t always give us the full picture of where valuable relationships lie.

In order to get a better picture of the value customers bring to a company, and to improve understanding of customer loyalty, market research companies like Blue Donkey invest in analysing the lifetime value customers represent to their client business.

Why’s LTV of important?

Calculating the lifetime value of a customer (or LTV) is vital for market research companies and the reports they produce because it offers a better idea of how much money the average customer brought to a business over the course of their association. Companies can then decide how much it’s worth investing to ‘win’ that kind of customer their future marketing strategy. This can help to inform marketing campaigns, especially when it comes to high value B2B sales and long service commitments.

Where LTV comes from

According to solutions provider Corporater “The first client to develop this metric was a large chemical company that sold pigments to companies like the big three auto companies, as well as paint companies, and others. They found that while customer satisfaction and loyalty were steadily improving, margins were declining at a faster rate. After some analysis, they discovered that some of their most loyal customers were their worst customers. These customers paid lower prices for the products, made frequent changes to orders, expected lots of perks like sporting event tickets and golf outings, and in general, were a pain to work with”.

Since then LTV has become a standard metric that excites market research companies and clients alike by helping organisation’s point their resources at the right customers.

Average LTV

The formula a business uses to calculate the LTV of their customers will vary depending on their business model and the type of products and services they offer. Often, market research companies 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). Individual businesses using this measurement need to analyse their customer base in order to create calculations that provide valuable insight into customer spending in their context.

What to do with LTV calculations

One of the most important reasons market research companies calculate LTV is that it offers businesses guidance on how much to invest in sales and marketing. Often, high ticket sales involve a significant investment, so businesses need to be confident that winning these high value clients is worth the money. Looking at the LTV of the average customer can, therefore, guide the marketing budget and help marketers to invest in the areas that bring the biggest results. For example, the cost per lead may be higher using telemarketing than online or social media. However, by bringing in longer relationships, higher value sales, and long commitments, the investment will be worth it over time.

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

Choosing the right target for your sales lead generation

Posted on 11 June 2020 by bluedonkey

Even the most talented and passionate sales team won’t get much success from targeting their sales lead generation at the wrong kind of company or buyer.

Aiming for the right target or customer segment can however be a tricky endeavour, especially if you have the kind of product or service that’s helpful to everyone.

At Blue Donkey, we occasionally receive enquiries for sales lead generation from marketing managers who know their products have wide appeal, because by and large everyone needs one. That’s great news but for targeting purposes, can have mixed blessings. Those marketers need to make decisions about how to reach buyers, and where to put resources, and like most companies, those resources are precious. So what to do?

Market research

Market research is a good way to find out who a product or service will be attractive to, and therefore where the sales lead generation activity should focus. It’s also helpful for defining potential spend levels, volume or duration of sales and many other things beside. Market research is usually most effective if it’s outsourced to a specialist like Blue Donkey who understand the rules around market research, and who are able to gently probe potential buyers about the things that are important to them and their organisation.

A specialist outsourced company will also be able to distil the output into a comprehensive report that validates their findings and provides a roadmap for who to target and how. This means marketing managers don’t have to risk their professional reputation by going out on a limb with their sales lead generation decisions.

Pick up the phone

If using an outsourced provider of market research is too expensive, it’s infinitely possible to pick up the phone and do some research yourself. You should never refer to sales lead generation calls as market research, and if the purpose is sales, go right ahead and say so. Taking the trouble to speak with a potential customer about what they need, and how they want to purchase it, could help iron out costly mistakes from the get go.

There are lots of excellent resources around to help marketers understand lead generation marketing and how to find and build the right customer base. Of those we’ve come across, there’s none better than Malcolm McDonald. His work on Key Account Management takes a step-by-step approach to improve the way value is created between an organisation and its most important customers. His books are accessible, excellent and fun

Fast or big

Often your targeting decisions will boil down to the kind of sales and sales lead generation you’re after. Do you want small sales quickly, or are you willing to invest time in building relationships that generate bigger, longer term sales?

A good way to define this might be to ask yourself, do your products or services require a relationship to be built. Examples might include capital equipment, or long term financial service products. Alternatively, do you need faster sales lead generation for a number of lower value sales? This might be appropriate for consumables or components.

Data

Organising your data according to the type and quantity of sales required is a good way of making your sales lead generation leaner. So you can target the higher spenders using disciplines like telemarketing, as this involves intelligent professionals to make calls one by one, so is naturally more expensive. The lower spending quicker turnaround sales could be targeted using social media, or email where the message is drip-fed regularly and could include offers.

If you know exactly what you want to achieve from your sales lead generation telemarketing campaign, 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, 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.

If you’d like to find out more about choosing the right customer, or if you want to train your team on using databases effectively, 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.