Category Archives: Business advice

The 14^th century truism, mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, reminds us that sometimes a single humble act or effort can lead to something big, strong, and significant in our lives. It’s designed to encourage us to keep going with the small steps we take. This is never truer than in the world of marketing where hundreds of tiny routines collect together in a way that builds sales, customers, brands, and creates jobs. Sometimes that big flurry starts with a simple call. B2B lead generation companies are often the source of those tiny actions and efforts that collectively sew the acorn for those amazing big oaks to grow.

Now more than ever, the sentiment that we should all just keep going matters. It helps to be reminded that great things can come from small, apparently insignificant beginnings, like selecting a record, or the making of a phone call. For B2B lead generation companies like Blue Donkey, growing successful projects starts with simple data selection, understanding what’s special and interesting about a client business, creating vibrant and engaging messaging, then using that to propagate buyer trust. These actions are the essence of growing strong, productive campaigns.

Choose the right terrain

Selecting the right place to grow a brand is as important to its success as the product or service itself. One of the first questions we ask potential clients at Blue Donkey is, who are you aiming to target with your business. This is because B2B lead generation companies understand the importance of targeting, and how complex the targeting question can be. For example, you may have a business with broad appeal, which can ostensibly sell something relevant to any organisation, irrespective of size, type, sector etc. However, the question of targeting isn’t as simple as, who can you sell to. It’s actually more about, who you ‘should’ sell to. The answer to this is that you should target customers who will convert to higher-value sales, longer-term relationships, faster sales, or maybe a combination of all. The point here is, there should be a targeting strategy underpinning these decisions.

Sunshine is good for growth

Creating the right conditions for a business to grow is of course one of the key functions of marketing. Building messaging that resonates with the right target buyers, and then ensuring the prospect experience is good enough to convert sales is something B2B lead generation companies do every day. However, the good work doesn’t stop once the lead is generated, that’s really just the beginning. Once the lead has converted the bigger task begins, to transform them into customers for life. Sunshine and care aren’t just for buyers though. If you want your business to make happy and satisfied customers, you need happy and satisfied staff. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to pay them lots of money. So many employers pay good and treat bad, this is just danger money. It’s high risk for high reward and generally not sustainable for a business that seeks to grow with pride. Creating a genuine happy factor is about the simple food of the soul. Saying thank you, recognising achievement, and catching people doing right, not wrong.

Nourish with the right feeds and be patient

It can take years for the mighty oaks to grow. Sunshine and happy thoughts help. Taking a genuine interest in what potential customers need, taking the trouble to work at their pace, timely follow up calls, gaining opt-in consent and then respecting the privilege that allows. These things are all part of the story. Regular plan – act – review cycles and careful measurement of metrics will be mission-critical. To understand what works for a particular audience, asking questions and listening carefully to answers, and diligently managing data flows. All these things help build momentum and measure the effectiveness of your project so what happens tomorrow is guided by today. These robust routines are relevant to B2B lead generation companies but actually, they are just as important to any business.

Do you ever feel like your telemarketing campaign is competing with a million other voices out there? If like us you dial call after call, day after day, it can be hard to get past that emotion. It doesn’t help that most markets are in some state of saturation. So we have many competing brands chasing our buyers for attention. These things are, to some extent at least, a reality. An unavoidable one.

At Blue Donkey, our work as a telemarketing agency is very much defined by the fact that organisations outsource their telemarketing campaigns because it’s too difficult to do them successfully in house. So how is it that a business that lives and breathes their product and services can struggle to promote it consistently in house, but a bunch of strangers in another part of the country can? Making your product, service and business stand out in a crowd of others, is the secret to creating telemarketing campaigns that not only win new customers, they build momentum, so your brand resonates in the minds of buyers every time they are making relevant buying decisions.

Don’t be a Me Too

So how can you create a telemarketing campaign that makes your business stand out from all the others in your market? Well first things first, be clear about why you do what you do. You might work for the organisation you work for because you see real potential there. You might have a genuine interest in the problems your product solves, or the opportunity it helps your customers capture. There may be a myriad of reasons why you work where you work but it’s really important those reasons help drive your attitude and behaviours. If you genuinely believe your product, service, or business is a ‘Me Too’, that is, just another player in the market, it will be nigh on impossible for you to produce a telemarketing campaign that’s able to win over the hearts and minds of prospective buyers. At best you’ll dial loads and get the odd one over the line, but volume is not a good strategy for survival in B2B marketing.

Love is all you need

To really understand and feel the love for your business, you’ll need to see it in the context of the competitive forces in your market as a whole. Who are your direct competitors? How can you differentiate your messaging from theirs? What do clients say about your business that gives you a sense of pride and achievement? What are the great things about the work you do as a business? Where do your features outperform your competition? What benefits do you offer your clients? The answers to all these questions will be the source of your energy and the enthusiasm that comes across in the voices of you and your team. You don’t have to be the biggest or the best in your market to drive telemarketing campaigns that work. You just need to make sure your business is dialling calls that have passion, energy, and a genuine love for the work your business does.

Build your army of brand advocates

At Blue Donkey, our precious family of clients deliver a simple brief that contains data such as the features of a product or service, and what it does for customers that’s helpful. We use that brief to extract every positive factor possible and build this into a narrative that celebrates the organisation and their abilities. So when we dial calls, they don’t fail to infect buyers with the zeal and passion that drives our telemarketing campaigns and teams. As the calls build over weeks and months of follow-up activity, where you speak with a buyer, gain consent to speak again at a timely point, one by one all those separate interactions in the broader telemarketing campaign build to win trust, and grow an army of advocates, that not only buy from you, they go on to recommend your business to others.

It’s also really important to remember that you can only build an army of external advocates if you celebrate and value your army of internal promoters. At Blue Donkey, the most precious and valuable resource we will ever have, is the dedication, care and skill of our people. If you respect and treasure the role your people play, your brand will benefit by sheer virtue of the discretional effort your people inject into their work. Only then will your brand and your telemarketing campaign really stand out from the crowd.

Working from home is becoming a drag for most of us now. The walls are closing in, and the days, weeks and months are merging into one another. We need some peopling. After almost a year of unspeakable boredom, anxiety, uncertainty, and grim news, we’re ready to scream. Now more than ever, our emotions will impact how our calls resonate with buyers and prospects, most of whom are experiencing the same kind of frustrations. It’s reasonable to suppose that office dress codes are not something anyone should bother about just now. However, our clever army of workers think differently. The Blue Donkey team, like all lead generation agencies, have to make calls that come across well, whatever happens in the world outside our door. So we have a few simple thoughts when it comes to clothing and dress.

How you feel is who you are

How you look on the outside impacts how you feel inside and therefore your performance. This is something we’re all subject to and very much how humans tick. On the days when you’re feeling sharp, you’re more likely to be confident about how you look, and the tasks you take on. Lead generation agencies are making call after call. They are trying to build something precious from a database record and a client story. They’re also quite literally measured and benchmarked every moment of every day. It’s pressure that drives achievement and fuels adrenalin. Whether the work is taking place at home or in the buzzing office environment is irrelevant to how output is measured. Results still need to be consistent with day on day, week on week, year on year comparisons. Dressing to impress is an easy single step to better calls and good outcomes. Looking good helps people feel more positivity, and that’s magic if you’re cold calling strangers and trying to impress them.

Maximising call rates

There’s no let-up just because we’re coping with the effects of a horrible pandemic. In fact, if anything, lead generation agencies like Blue Donkey have to work harder because budgets are tighter. So they make sure they’re delivering value and client spend goes as far as possible. That’s a big ask when everybody seems to be working from home. In fact, where receptionists were once viewed as gatekeepers, who stop you from getting through, they’re now a blessing, as they facilitate your reaching the appropriate decision makers. So after all the hard work of finding and reaching the right buyer, the impression a call gives is critical. To get the most from every call, take care to continue the same disciplines and routines you have in the workplace. If you look and feel like every day is a Sunday, you’ll get the same results you get on Sunday. For most of us, that’s a long snooze in front of the telly.

First impressions last

Confidence comes from within, but most of us agree that looking the part helps us feel and perform better. We all make judgements about people based on their appearance and general demeanour. One of the most important aspects of personal appearance is it reveals how we feel about ourselves. You don’t have to work for a lead generation agency for your calls to matter profoundly to the success of your business. Self-confidence is critical to that success and being well-groomed is a vital part. If you want to make a good impression with others, you need to feel good about yourself, even when you’re on the phone and people can’t see you. They still very much get a sense of how you feel, it’s there in your voice and your words. Even in your little home office, you can’t run away from your own truth. When you feel relaxed and languid, you’ll communicate that to others and make them less likely to engage with you. So away with the pyjamas and slippers, from now on it’s your best heals and lippy every day.

In normal times you might choose outsourced professional database services to clean and qualify data for you, so you can get it working faster. However, as many of us are working from home currently, we thought we’d share some of the steps we take to build some of the best database services around. So now you can while away the odd hour here and there, on the cathartic task of making your own shiny and magical database at home for free.

1. Standardise

Organising your data into a standard format will help you get the measure of what’s going on. If your data is organised so salutation, name, address field, sectors, turnover and any other field you hold are all in one standard format, you’ll easily be able to spot and remove duplicates, identify gaps that need appending, or records for companies that are no longer active. Bought in database services can include electronic append for missing addresses, but these won’t replace the task of calling each record and asking the right questions.

2. Homogeneous segmentation

Putting all your data into small groups that you can target with particular messaging or offers is an important first step for maximising the potential of your database. It’s not unusual for a client to say they sell to a broad range of companies, with a marketing strategy aimed at anyone and everyone. Ignoring the distinct needs of individual segments is described as undifferentiated targeting and is more common in B2C sales. In B2B sales it’s almost always a bad decision to treat every company as if it represents the same value. Professional database service providers will look to group organisations into segments based on their potential needs. We call this homogenous segmentation, where records are grouped into smaller sets based on certain characteristics which define their needs, such as size, sector etc.

3. Dropdown menus

You should build a dropdown menu into your database for every value that you might want to select on. For example, if turnover is a field that’s useful for you, perhaps you sell different products based on company size, build a dropdown menu in so you can easily select companies with bigger or smaller turnover. That way you can treat each individual segment in a way that’s right for their particular needs, instead of treating everyone the same. Additionally, a professional company will add these fields into their database services to provide callers with a number of standard options to choose from as they are whizzing through their calls. This helps with reporting as over time the data will yield a mosaic of information about buyer behaviour.

4. Good housekeeping

When agencies provide database services they will typically have several people accessing and cleaning the same dataset, so the task is completed in the shortest time possible. It’s therefore super important that anyone using the data is following a strict protocol about how new data should be entered and existing data treated. When the data is handed back to the client they will follow the same protocol so the data continues to improve with time. So if you’re cleaning your database in-house it’s a great idea to follow the same discipline and make sure that every time anyone in the business touches a record, they do something to check it for relevance or make it better than it was.

5. Phonetic alphabet

The Alpha, Bravo, Charlie of great databases is to check and qualify everything carefully. Emails, surnames, and even common first names like Ian and Iain, Jane and Jayne, Fatima and Fatma may have a variety of different written forms. To account for these differences spelling should always be checked. The phonetic alphabet is a well-known set of words that represent letters of the alphabet. It is used to make sure spellings are accurate, and it’s especially useful over the phone where communication has to be quick and clear.

The modern phonetic alphabet was created by NATO as a way for airmen around the world to make themselves understood and recognised because characters like M, N, D and B can sound the same, even when said by someone standing right next to you. Providers of database services need to be accurate quickly, so spelling things out using the phonetic alphabet saves the heartache of getting vital details wrong.

6. Permissions

Always make sure you are generating the necessary opt-in consents as you go along. Make yourself aware of GDPR and ensure you follow certain courtesies as you go through the process of dialling call after call. This includes aspects of your calling such as using redial. Never just keep stabbing at your redial button. Calling the same number over and over again is considered nuisance calling. A company that provides decent database services for a living will have control levers in place to prevent over dialling the same pool of records, you won’t. So even if it’s well intentioned, resist the temptation to shortcut best practice. The telephone is a magical tool where just one phone call can deliver career and company changing rewards. It can also work in reverse. So do use the power to reach anyone anywhere, with respect.

7. Look for your M.A.N

When you are cleaning your database, you’ll come across people that have moved on, and you’ll need to replace them with new prospects. When a database service provider is working through this stage of the call they need to be very careful that they qualify the information being added to the client database carefully. You should do the same. Before adding a new name to your database, make sure they are the right MAN. This will be the person with the Money (or Means), Authority, and Need to make a decision. Then qualify them in and out. That’s when you ask ‘what is the name of the XXX?’ This will be a job title such as Finance Director, take the name, check it phonetically, and then qualify out. That’s when you check ‘what is their exact job title?’ If it’s Finance Manager, you’ll know they may not be the senior decision maker you’re after. Rinse and repeat with every record one by one.

Every item of data that you add should be compliant with GDPR so again, please check the best practice protocols in the same way a database services company would. Remember your brand is a precious thing, so build best practice and good karma into it as you go along.  You need to check and add any new data with the mindset that it must be Factual, Accurate, Relevant, and Timely (no acronym for that one). That way your nice new database is up to date and full of promise as life springs back into action for us all.

Did you know that active workers take 27% fewer sick days a year? If you factor in the mental health benefits of regular activity, that number goes up significantly. We generally recognise that being physically active is good for our bodies, we may not be so aware of the positive impact on our mental well-being. Physical activity reduces depression, helps us manage stress, improves mood and sleep, and reduces anxiety. It’s also great for inducing the release of happy hormones like dopamine.

The big surprise is that you don’t have to be a gym bunny to be active. Regular movement alone, for example leaving your desk every 30 minutes to get a cup of tea or load the dishwasher counts as being active. At Blue Donkey we aim to delight clients with our service. The best telemarketing output takes focus and hard work, something we associate with sitting at a desk, however punctuating hard work, with some movement might just be the factor that tips us all from good to great.

There was a time when sniggering urbanites dubbed Fridays their shirking from home days. The current pandemic has forced organisations to dramatically rethink the traditional structures of their business. At Blue Donkey we trust our amazing team, and we’re confident they deliver some of the best telemarketing in the industry. But despite this, before Covid, managers would never have opted to put precious resources into developing systems that allow people to work from home. In fact, it’s the last thing on earth the business would have adopted as a means for producing the best telemarketing possible for our clients. However, Covid has forced unthinkable change.

Trust

Much like Blue Donkey, companies are learning to trust their teams to work as diligently from their home, as they would do in a workplace. People understand the responsibility that is placed on them, so they work really hard. Whether you’re aspiring to produce the best telemarketing or best of something else, working from home requires self-discipline. Inevitably employees are being compared with their peers for productivity and output, so they feel they must constantly prove themselves. Where in an office, the water cooler chats, and corridor banter would have moved people from their desks and provided some human interaction, the absence of this, coupled with the relentless motionless hours, and stress of uncertainty has brought about seismic change.

Lone workers

This is particularly worrying for people who live alone, where the counterproductive impacts of working harder, blurring of lines between work time and home time, and physical inactivity coupled with loneliness are the perfect cocktail for depression. This is no small thing, in fact, ACAS report that since Covid, depression among workers has gone up by 20%, so 1 in 5 people now experience depression. It’s therefore really important that managers do something to ensure there is balance in how much work and interaction is inserted into the day for their staff. Managers need to shift from thinking about the best telemarketing, or the most efficient widget to considering the benefits of happy staff.

You matter to us

Sending out the message that staff matter, as much as the quality of their work must be the new theme. For the economy to recover, as it no doubt will, moving from minding the output to minding the whole business needs to happen. Teams need to know they matter, not just their work. Particularly when they’re working from home, because they can’t see us smiling, and they won’t hear our warmth when we say well done, thank you, that’s the best telemarketing we’ve seen today.

Regular communication is, of course, important, at Blue Donkey we still have morning meetings by video for 10 minutes first thing to say hi, celebrate the day prior and recap goals. Regular one to one video calls allow managers to gently drill down on how individual team members are feeling, and the socially distanced workspace is available for anyone who needs a bit of support or time out of their home offices.

We’re moved

No doubt the simplest and most effective intervention we can make however is to tell our teams to move. Encourage lunchtime walks. If necessary block out diary time each day to get out of the house and grab the benefit of green space. Be clear that staff are not expected to be at their desk every moment of the day. In fact, the impact of physical inactivity costs UK businesses an estimated £6.6 billion a year. According to experts at Living Sport, lack of physical activity is one of the ‘big four’ causes of preventable ill-health along with smoking, poor nutrition and excess alcohol. However, inactivity affects the largest proportion of the population and is the least well known. Low levels of increased activity can make a huge difference and bring about dramatic benefits, improving physical and mental health and quality of life. Daily tasks are made easier and independence is increased. As well as improving fitness and strengthening muscles and bones, it also contributes to brain development, improves concentration and learning, encourages movement and develops coordination.

Living Sport is a charity, set up in 2006, to improve the health, happiness and wellbeing of the people of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough by inspiring them to get active. Speak with them today about how you can move your teams to be more active.

The potential benefits of physical activity to health are huge. If a medication existed which had a similar effect, it would be regarded as a ‘wonder drug’ or ‘miracle cure’ (Chief Medical Officer (2009) Annual Report 2009, Department of Health).

As Christmas approaches, we’re all reminded that Santa only comes to those who believe. It’s a little like lead generation.

So many sales people invest time and effort into their appearance, their presentation, and their market or business knowledge. They commit to what their lead generation needs from them. They’re the real deal. The shiny happy know-alls that have everything going for them. Except for one thing – they don’t believe. They don’t 100% share in the vision and goals of the business they work for. Whether it’s caused by mismatched recruiting, poor training, or bad management, a lack of belief will ooze through the voice and sabotage sales efforts. Unless you and your product are absolutely, resolutely connected, your results will give you away sooner or later.

Believe in your business

Lead generation is a tough gig if you don’t feel passionate about the business you work for. This is especially the case in B2B marketing as client spend is usually associated with relationships. Consumer marketing is arguably less demanding since products or services tend to be more transactional in nature. So if they’re well thought out, customers will purchase, whether the human connections are convincing or not (utilities being a typical example).

It’s so much easier to communicate the strengths and attributes of a business if you actually believe what you’re saying and you ‘believe-in’ what you’re doing. According to entrepreneur.com “your beliefs determine a significant portion of your life. They inform your decisions, they dictate how you react to different circumstances and they even affect how you interact with the people around you”. Typically we think of beliefs as faith or values, but it also applies to deep seated feelings about our work.

A company doesn’t need to be perfect in order for their teams to buy-in emotionally to the mission. Especially for those involved in some form of lead generation activity, there needs to be a strong, shared, sense that what the business stands for is fundamentally meaningful and worthwhile. If a company simply exists to box shift, or make money, the lead generation team tasked with talking to potential clients all day will need to be motivated by things other than the ‘cause’. These are typically devices such as money or competition that create a strong element of self-interest. Once the short-lived excitement and adrenaline wear off, they’ll seek more meaning and inevitably move on.

Companies should make a point of shouting about their mission. Sharing the good news, giving public praise, promoting client testimonials and industry benchmarks will all help give their people a sense of being part of something special. Everyone will benefit from this, not just the lead generation team. There are other benefits too, it will help retain talent, inspire discretional effort, and steady the ship during rougher times.

Believe in you

It’s not all down to the business. We all have a responsibility to build our own belief system. One way is to do this is to hang on to good news and leave behind the bad. Making an active effort to collect and retain ‘good emotional baggage’ instead of ‘bad emotional baggage’ is a habit we can all nurture. Often those involved in lead generation will hang on to the negative soundbites they get over the phone, even if they’re untrue but forget the nice things clients may say.  From the time a job seeker starts comparing roles, they need to attune to the companies that offer them something exciting. Whether it’s the product, the industry, the people or something else, we should be aware of the often subtle things that help us connect emotionally to a business and its mission. Only then can we truly propagate a belief in ourselves.

No matter how good your product or service is, and how loyal your buyers might be, no one should ever completely relax about the importance of customer service. We all want our customers to love us, and let’s face it, no one goes to work to do a bad job, but the truth is, at some point you’re going to get something wrong.

So when the unthinkable happens, what should you do, and how can you steer your precious relationships back to a safe and happy place. Great customer service isn’t always about doing the right thing, sometimes it’s about doing the right thing about the wrong thing.

Listen

First things first, let them tell you their complaint. Before jumping in to defend your business you need to execute priorities carefully. First let them speak, then seek to understand. Customer service is about the customer, not you, so let them vent, scream or whatever they need to do in order to get their complaint out. It’s not personal. Listen carefully, sift through the information to build a picture of what went wrong and why. Be prepared to silently rearrange what the customer is telling you about what happened since most people will react incoherently when they are cross about something. Give them time to get everything off their chest.

Never try to avoid an angry customer, always pick up the phone and speak to them rather than email. Putting the human element in your customer service will help defuse the situation.

Apologise

When you’re sure the customer has finished speaking, apologise. A sincere apology is absolutely always helpful when customer service falls short. Insincere half apologies are not. “I’m sorry you feel that way” is not an apology, it’s distancing yourself from the issue and putting the blame in the customer’s corner suggesting they and their emotions are somehow to blame.

Don’t react to their anger, and certainly don’t allow any irritation on your part to seep into your voice. When they’ve come down off the ceiling, try to gently probe, so you fully understand the problem. Don’t be surprised if you restoke the fire, again just let them offload. At this point, you’re looking to get all their anger out so you can start dealing with the problem. They’ll feel much better once they’ve had the chance to let off steam.

Do something nice

When you completely understand the problem, tell your customer what you’d like to do to remedy the situation. In some instances you may feel your process wasn’t to blame, or the issue wasn’t caused by a fault on the part of your business, however it’s important you don’t divert responsibility. Gently offer an explanation and some means to avoid a repetition.

Doing something nice will help win customer service brownie points. If it’s appropriate an offer of a discount or a gesture towards their next purchase will demonstrate your commitment. If that’s not appropriate, think about ways you can win trust and respect. For example, calling them at an agreed time to make sure the problem has been properly resolved, or speaking to anyone else involved in the supply chain to check they have the right details to avoid reoccurrence.

It’s long been understood that customers who are happy with the way a complaint has been dealt with become more loyal than before their grievance happened.  For customer service managers, this presents a valuable opportunity to uncover bugbears and improvement opportunities without the costly need for market research. According to business insurance giants Simply Business, dealing with customer complaints can be a business owner’s worst nightmare. But with lots of attention and creative thinking, you can turn them into a great opportunity.