Category Archives: Business advice

If you Google the term ‘cold call’, most of what you’ll see is a negative or distasteful account of the telephone being used for unsolicited selling. No surprise then that it’s not seen as something ‘nice’ people do for a living. If on the other had you get a business call from a bank manager at your local branch, about a new account, you’re probably not going to think of that as a cold call. What’s the difference? Well largely, it’s the perception of those two activities that’s different. In fact there are more similarities than differences. You didn’t ask for the call, you don’t know the caller, and you don’t ‘want’ a new account, it’s the job of the caller to stimulate your interest.

At Blue Donkey, we think a cold call is only one that leaves you feeling cold, so we do our best to make nice, warm, snuggly calls instead! Whether you’re a first timer, or a seasoned cold calling aficionado we have a few suggestions to help you shake of the shivers.

Fear is not always bad

Fear is an emotion or sensation we get when we are worried that something bad will happen. In cold calling terms that amounts to being hung up on, humiliated, or undermined in some way. We describe that fear as irrational, because logically, it’s not likely to happen.

At Blue Donkey, we’re dialling calls all day every day, and it’s pretty rare that anyone gets hung up on. And if someone does get a bad reaction to their call, they’ll usually ask for a manager to listen to the call to establish if they did something wrong, so they can reduce the chances of it happening in future. By looking at the factors that cause you fear, you can arm yourself with the knowledge and ability to counter them, so you can make cold calls that are informative and well received. Like anything, the better you get, the more you’ll enjoy the experience.

Be curious

Fear of cold calling can be reduced by knowing your product well, and being very clear about what you have that’s special, and how you can provide something to improve the lives, or at least the business life, of the people you’re calling. When you think about it, if something great happens, you are compelled to tell people. When you’re genuinely excited about your product or service, the feeling of wanting to shout about it is the same.

Have some clear graphics or diagrams to hand that help remind you what you’ve got to offer that’s special. Use stats, case studies, or client experiences, and data to add proof points to your messaging and remember to ask open questions. Being curious about your business and its successes, as well as having curiosity and interest in the people you’re speaking with will help place your cold calls on a much stronger foundation. As your results improve, so will your attitude to cold calling.

Irrational fear

Most people have a fear of cold calling and usually it’s an irrational one. Yet we can all cite at least one or two of our best business relationships that originated with a thoughtful call placed out of the blue. More than ever, companies are choosing to outsource their cold calling to professionals like Blue Donkey. Whilst that’s a great idea, and we’re always delighted to hear from new clients, as purse strings inevitably get tighter, now might be a good time to dust down your headset and start honing the skills for yourself.

Visualising is one way to help reduce the fear of cold calling. Seeing a person in your mind and speaking with them, rather than a stranger, will help put you on a better footing. Visualising success is also important for helping us break unhelpful cycles of negative belief, where you think you can’t do something, so you underperform. According to meditation and wellbeing experts Insights Timer, we need to have more self-belief. They say many people follow negative thought patterns which become an accepted part of their life, preventing them from achieving their true potential. Have a listen to their guided meditation here.

If you run a team of lead generators, or if you’re a lead generator yourself, you’ll know that staying positive and motivated are essential for achieving any kind of success. Unfortunately, however, it can be hard to remain positive and upbeat all the time, especially when the whole world seems discombobulated. And when one person is a little down, it can have a Mexican wave effect that spreads across the team.

Some natural ebb and flow of mood are, of course, normal, but for professional lead generators, it’s important they don’t allow productivity to fluctuate. So what can you do to give yourself or your team a lift? At Blue Donkey we have a few strategies to help our amazing team of aficionados get back their mojo and fly through their day.

Mindful breathing

Mindful breathing is helpful, deep breath in, hold for a few seconds, and out sloooooowly. Mindfulness is a powerful technique for managing stress, it focuses on bringing our mental state back to the present, and centering in the moment. According to experts at Positive Psychology, setting aside a few minutes each day for mindful breathing can make a big difference to your day. Mindful breathing is a tool you can use to bring yourself back to the present in stressful situations, and who wouldn’t appreciate having such a valuable tool on hand for those times in the day when you need it.

Look up

Posture is important for lead generators, on so many levels. It’s not by accident that granny used to say ‘look up’, and we use expressions such as ‘things are looking up’. Well, they are!

Looking upwards helps us to think more creatively, sit more upright, and therefore come across with better clarity. All of this helps people receive and relate to our calls in a better way, and therefore we get an improved response and a shot in the arm for our mojo. Try sticking a picture high above your desk, of a friendly face, or an inspirational image, that draws your eyes upwards and reminds you to look up and sit straight.

Visualise

See people in your mind as you’re speaking on the phone. Imagine them smiling. Use the feelings this conjures up in your mind to empathise and connect with prospects more deeply. This is a great way to create an instant lift in your lead generation results because if you operate on a more human level, you’ll be liked more. This will help you build rapport, trust, and warmer relationships; powerful happy factors for lead generating.

Create positive cycles

Notice the difference your improved mind-set makes to your results. Practice being grateful to people for the time they afford you (rather than being disappointed when they don’t have time for you). These behaviours are habit forming, so before long you’ll find yourself doing them naturally and creating a virtuous cycle. And the better your outcomes, the more you enjoy and find meaning in your work, the more you want to pick up the phone.

Carry good baggage

Lead generation teams often banter about the calls and situations that crash and burn spectacularly. This is healthy and humour is always good, however, do take care not to internalise the negative aspects. If you only remember the negative or the ridiculous, when you’re feeling low those stories will collect to make the job harder. If you make a point of remembering the great times, the big hits and the people for whom you made a difference, finding and restoring your mojo will be a piece of cake.

The world has changed a whole heap this year, things we once took for granted have been snatched away and we’re adapting. Whether you’re the CEO or one of your organisations frontline telemarketers, you can’t have failed to notice that the telephone is suddenly our main route to the outside world. Those who embrace the opportunity, hone the right skills, and hit the phone hard will be the superstars that bring a company growth, in adversity.

As expert telemarketers, we’ve gathered together a few of our favourite hints and tips about how you can improve your hit rate and feel great about your phone prowess.

Speak to a person, not a phone

Being on the phone is unnerving because you’re reduced from using your normal five senses to just two. When asked why people dislike telemarketing, they’ll often say it’s because ‘you can’t see a person and read their body language’.

Body language is important in human communication, academics have spent years trying to understand its hidden codes. According to career and management learning experts Mind Tools, body language refers to the nonverbal signals that people use to communicate. It includes posture, facial expressions, and hand gestures. The ability to understand and to interpret body language can help you to pick up on unspoken issues, problems, or negative feelings that potential buyers might have.

No surprise then that the absence of seeing someone’s body language unnerves us enough to make us avoid the phone if face to face is an option. So what can you do to get around the problem, well surprisingly, lots!

Firstly, when you’re in telemarketer mode, make sure you’re somewhere quiet and free of distractions. Take a deep breath as you’re dialling, and visualise a person in your mind as you speak. Most people are happy speaking by phone to someone they know, it is cold calling strangers that have a particularly hard edge. Imagining your buyer will help you direct your message in a way that feels more natural, and more congruent with your normal method of communication. Like most skills in the telemarketer armoury, this one takes practice, but its habit forming so it is well worth getting through the learning curve. Try it for a week – we promise it will pay dividends.

Stand up, look up, speak up

When asked about the problems people face in playing the telemarketer role, they often say it’s demeaning, no one wants to talk to me. These sentiments are not uncommon, in fact, it’s a problem professional communicators at Blue Donkey invest a lot of time and energy in overcoming.

Standing up will help you project your voice so you are understood and more likely to be listened to. People with good projection naturally speak up, have presence, and sound more important. Looking upwards will help you breathe more deeply, use the creative side of your brain so your messaging is more likely to pick up subtle signals, and make you better at overcoming resistance.

Smile

It’s a fact for any telemarketer that feeling good about your work will help your message resonate in a more lively and compelling way. The simple smile will provide your calls with a fast and effective shot in the arm. The great thing about the idea of ‘smile as you dial’ is also that you can ‘fake it till you make it’. So even if you weren’t feeling happy to begin with, you soon will. Just painting a smile on your face does something to the voice that changes how buyers perceive you. Honest! Try it!

Know your stuff

The one sure fire method for coming across convincingly is to be really clear about what you’re offering. Take pride in your organisation, and the difference you make. Have diagrams, lists, pictures, flight cards, flowcharts, mind maps, or anything else that provides a visual cue of all things fabulous about you. Getting fuelled up with all this positive energy will mean you’re bursting to pick up the phone and tell someone about it. Pride and passion are powerful motivators. If you can get into a headspace where you’re continuously reminded how great your business is, it won’t fail to shine through in your manner and words.

The methods above will help you bring incremental improvements to every dial. Some will work for you better than others, but all of them need to be used mindfully and deliberately so you’re working at each call from an entirely new template. Do remember that even the slightest improvement in how you come across will make a difference to your collective outcomes. And like anything, the better you do, the more likely you are to want to pick up the phone and do more.

Long days dialling call after call can be a daunting experience for anyone. Especially under current conditions where face to face contact is so limited. Keeping yourself or your workforce productive and motivated is perhaps even tougher now than under normal conditions. For the average lead generation agency however, staying motivated is very much business as usual.

With a little concerted effort and support from their managers, most lead generation agency employees are able to find the energy they need to knuckle down and get their calls fired up and ready for action. Take a look at some easy and effective motivational techniques that will boost productivity and improve morale in no time.

Herzberg’s motivation theory

Frederick Herzberg, an American psychologist, became one of the most influential names in business management in the 20th century. Known for his two-factor theory of motivation, his book ‘One more time, how do you motivate employees?’ sold more than 1.2 million copies when it was published in 1968. His ideas may now be half a century old, but they still hold true. A reliable lead generation agency like Blue Donkey measures productivity right down to the last few minutes of each hour. In such environments, the motivation of teams can be the key success factor in differentiating a business. Managers looking to inspire employees and boost productivity can use this theory to enable motivation. Understanding how their teams think and respond to certain things can help create the mind-set and appetite for optimum results.

Two factors

Whether you run a lead generation agency or factory floor, Herzberg believed that motivation was driven by two distinct factors. These factors fell into two broad categories: motivators, and hygiene factors. Motivating factors were those that actively encouraged a better rate of work or ‘discretionary effort’. These are special things that gave employees the energy and the drive to put more into their role. Without motivators, employees would struggle to put 110% into their work.

Hygiene factors, on the other hand, wouldn’t necessarily motivate workers to be more productive simply by being present. However, the absence of hygiene factors would demotivate workers and reduce productivity because they are considered essential. Ensuring the presence of both hygiene factors and motivators, therefore, is critical. Especially where forces of competition are high. In competitive markets like the lead generation agency, managers absolutely need to get the very best out of their workforce.

Motivators

There are a number of motivators that Herzberg identified in his theory. Chief among them was the belief that by giving workers increased responsibility, meaningful and fulfilling work, and increased autonomy it would improve motivation levels. He also encouraged managers to reward achievement and recognise hard work among employees. For a lead generation agency, this might mean rewards like money or other incentives. However, Herzberg emphasised that money is not the only motivator, and for many, not even a motivator at all. So understanding the individuals on your team, and creating motivators that work ‘for them’, is key. For example, flexible work times, dress-down days, free fruit, may motivate more than financial rewards. For others, extra training, access to information, or a simple pat on the back might be a bigger motivator.

Hygiene factors

In Herzberg’s theory, hygiene factors are basic provisions that can demotivate a workforce by their absence. These include adequate pay, good working conditions, and fair and appropriate supervision. Although the presence of these important factors won’t necessarily motivate a workforce, their absence will significantly hinder productivity and sap employee morale in the process. Shared knowledge, training, free flow of information, and influencing ability are increasingly creeping into this category. Blue Donkey has implemented Investors in People as a tool to help support hygiene factors especially. For a lead generation agency, the nature of constant targets and deadlines places extra importance on motivation and its benefits.

A two-pronged approach

Managers looking to boost motivation should, therefore, take a two-pronged approach if they want to improve productivity for good. Looking at both motivating factors and hygiene factors will help company managers provide the best conditions possible for their workers and increase motivation levels across the board. Additionally, something Herzberg won’t have foreseen, is that growing pressures of life have led to a global mental health crisis. Work is no longer just about work. A lead generation agency like any other business now has a duty to protect and promote staff wellbeing.

Experts at Very Well Mind (do subscribe to their daily newsletter – it’s excellent!) say motivation is the force that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviours. It is what causes us to take action, whether to grab a snack to reduce hunger or enrol in college to earn a degree. The forces that lie beneath motivation can be biological, social, emotional, or cognitive in nature….. While no single theory can adequately explain all human motivation, looking at the individual theories can offer a greater understanding of the forces that cause us to take action.

If you’d like to find out more about our amazing lead generation agency, get in touch with a member of our team.

Most of us have had times where we need our B2B telemarketing to do great things. We know leads that come from telemarketing endure, we know the best relationships often start with a cold call. However, despite this, even the best of us have days where we just can’t summon the motivation to phone strangers.

So what do you do if you have a whole team of people on the phones? When the sole purpose is creating B2B telemarketing leads, it’s worth knowing about the tools you can use to help. At Blue Donkey, our managers have some great ways of keeping our family of eager beavers motivated to go the extra mile.

1. Get a bit of friendly competition going

Getting a little of the right sort of competition going is a great way to inject some energy and fun. League tables, sharing team achievement in bulletins or a whiteboard or having a table of treats for small milestones. These will all help raise the spirits of your B2B telemarketing people and inject a bit of friendly fun.

Do incentivise and reward the right behaviours. For example, at Blue Donkey we reward the number of dials, decision makers reached, or number of completed surveys. And feedback from a client, about an individual’s good work, is big news, we stop the bus for that!

Leads, sales, appointments – in other words, the objective of the project, are not heavily incentivised. They may have a small element of reward but this won’t on its own make people hungry to achieve it. This is because it’s important to manage the message you send out. Over incentivising B2B telemarketing teams can skew thinking, making people more determined to sell. This presents a risk of excessive goal seeking behaviours creeping into your team. The moderate reward for all-round performance is far more likely to result in team achievement, customer satisfaction, and fun.

2. Catch people doing things right

Ever had a manager who appears as if by magic, every time you stumble or make a gaffe? And the boss who, no matter what your achievements, will manage to find something to nit-pick in your review. These managers have an extraordinary superpower – they always catch people doing wrong.

Ken Blanchard bestselling author on management, motivation, and ethics said managers should catch people doing things right. “Catching people doing something right is a powerful management concept to use with direct reports. It can also be a great way to build trust and camaraderie with others. Think about the last time you were recognized for your efforts. I’ll bet you felt pretty satisfied and encouraged to keep up the good performance. No matter what your role, you have the power to ignite that same reaction in others”.

The managers that stick in our hearts and minds through our careers are those that helped and believed in us. Helping and supporting others, especially B2B telemarketing teams, given the effort that entails, is a great way to give back.

3. Create a learning and caring atmosphere

Graphic tools, flow diagrams, and cartoons are a good way to inspire and propagate learning in B2B telemarketing. Providing someone with a script or prompts for what to say tells them you don’t trust them. It’s disempowering and serves to knock confidence rather than build it. Visual tools get people thinking creatively. They help inspire teams to use their own unique resources and thinking. After all, these are the reasons you hired them in the first place.

Additionally, asking about people’s family, remembering a special occasion, or taking a moment to sit and chat as you’re passing. All these tiny touches, and sentiments, help make yours the team that people want to be a part of. They also help managers win respect, support, and become their genuine authentic selves at work, not automatons.

4. Ask people what they want

You’ve heard the expression; with every hire, you get a free brain. This is as true in B2B telemarketing as it is anywhere else. Accepting help is not a weakness, it’s a strength. People get more satisfaction and growth from being given an element of control over their work life. It’s also more enjoyable being in a team that feels included and important in the making of decisions.

Of course, leaders must lead, but asking staff what their preferences, ideas or views are, can only be positive. It helps highlight hidden strengths in team members, that might otherwise have remained untapped. The team share power and responsibility for their work, which is great for building pride and managing positive mental health.

Our 22 years make Blue Donkey one of the most established B2B telemarketing companies around. Talk to us today about how our expert teams can help you reach your next gamechanger client.

Contact centres have a reputation for providing mundane or entry level work. In years gone by that may indeed have been the case, however, things have changed. The two reasons they’ve changed are unlikely to revert back any time soon because they are deep-rooted, global and industry wide.

Brand image and the contact centre

One of those reasons is to do with the complex area of brand image. How your brand touches your customer, or potential customer matters more now than it ever did. Most markets are to some extent saturated, so if you’re not providing great service, you’ll get found out pretty quickly. Contact centres and their staff sit at the heart of that customer experience. This means that how your staff feel, will impact how the customer feels. Reviews are playing their part. If we don’t like the way we’ve been treated, we’re empowered to tell the world. Power indeed, since reviews have become an intangible company asset, and brands can rise or fall on the back of them.

Changing conditions

Contact centres are also becoming increasingly important to companies with the new lack of face to face contact. Since the pandemic, the way we work has adapted so more of us have become desk based and habits change. The way companies resource their teams will change too as we adapt to the new normal. Car sales have already seen a dramatic decline and this is expected to continue as fewer companies and consumers invest in cars. According to ABC News the pandemic might change the car business for good. “The Great Recession nearly brought the automotive industry to its knees. A decade later, carmakers are reckoning with a new threat: the novel coronavirus, an unforeseen force that has halted production, disrupted sales and caused financial pain to an industry that was able to bounce back from its nadir in 2008”.

So how do we get more from our phone based workers? In previous posts, we’ve looked at how Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory can be applied to boosting motivation in the workplace. His thoughts on the elements that motivate workers by their presence and those that de-motivate by their absence can be applied to companies around the country. And it could help managers in all industries to get the best out of their employees. However, as well as being relevant to motivation methods, Herzberg’s theory can be applied to the contact centre. By looking at the motivating factors and the hygiene factors he identifies in his theory, we can see how contact centre staff can gently motivate a customer to buy a product from their business instead of from a competitor, and how qualifiers can be used to help.

Hygiene factors in sales

In his motivation theory, Herzberg discusses the need for hygiene factors to be present in order to maintain a certain level of motivation. These hygiene factors are essential provisions that all employees should expect to benefit from when in the workplace. These include things like adequate pay, safe working conditions and fair treatment from supervisors. When you translate this theory to sales 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 buying from your business, their absence could put customers off. Understanding these qualifiers can influence and motivate your potential buyers, and working this theory clearly into your sales strategy, could help your contact centres improve the results of their telemarketing campaigns.

Motivators in sales

Motivators complete Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory. It’s these extras that can help to motivate workers in your contact centres to push themselves that little bit harder. This ‘discretionary effort’ is infectious, so can help stimulate your whole team to become more productive and dedicated. Motivating factors include recognition of achievements, fulfilling and meaningful tasks and increased autonomy and independence in the workplace. In contact centres, these motivating factors can be directly compared with Order Winners. These little extras help to make a product or service more compelling for the decision maker and can easily swing a deal. If salespeople know how to use these Order Winners correctly, and how to combine them with qualifiers, they will make their calls more persuasive. The level of staff satisfaction in your contact centres make a huge difference to the experience your customers will get from your contact centres. As ever, happy staff make happy customers, so it’s worth taking the trouble to get those little extras right.

To find out more about one of the best contact centres around or to improve the quality of your sales calls, get in touch with a member of our team today.