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What B2B telemarketers say about selling benefits, not features

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What B2B telemarketers say about selling benefits, not features

For B2B telemarketers, when making a sales call, it’s important to make sure calls resonate in just the right way. If you can draw a potential buyer into a discussion, and get a message across well, you’re more likely to achieve objectives. If calls come across as salesy, pushy, or too goal oriented, they’ll have limited impact on performance and risk damaging your brand.

One of the best ways B2B telemarketers ensure their calls come across well, and are interesting and informative to the person they’re speaking to, is to focus on the benefits rather than the features of a product.

What is a benefit

Where a feature is a fact about what something does, the benefit is the reason why it’s important. A benefit falls into four categories. Time, effort, money, or security and the motivation for a business decision maker to purchase something will fall into one, or more of those categories. The benefit is therefore the advantage delivered by the feature. For example ISO:9001 quality accreditation means a company’s quality management system is verified by specialists, so potential buyers trust them more. Successful selling requires B2B telemarketers to show potential buyers how a product meets their needs.

Questions

The process begins by asking questions designed to uncover the potential buyer’s needs. B2B telemarketers will use open questions relevant to the product to try and capture this information. Not only will this help to show the decision maker how your service can apply to their situation, it will also demonstrate you’re listening, something that can go a long way to laying the foundations of a productive business relationship.

Bring your business to life

If you simply list the features of the product you represent, you won’t be providing any information the decision maker can’t get from a catalogue.

Instead of simply relaying basic information about technical features, B2B telemarketers use the opportunity the call affords to illustrate the benefits of the service. This is a valuable chance to make the service really come to life for them and give the brand a personality. It will also help to make a call memorable and will help build connections with a business and its potential buyers.

Tailor the benefits

Skilled B2B telemarketers will tailor the list of benefits they discuss to the needs of the business they’re contacting. Do a bit of research by going on the company’s website as you dial and use your opening question to find out more about the business and its needs. You should then be able to talk to the decision maker about how your product can meet these needs and make their life easier. Ask them about the challenges their business faces and see if you can work the benefits you’re offering into the call that way.

Tools for B2B telemarketers

If you become flustered during your call, it can be easy to fall back on listing the features of your product or service. To ensure this doesn’t happen B2B telemarketers often use graphics and diagrams that demonstrate benefits as a visual tool. These can be flashcards, flight cards, cartoons, or anything that paints pictures in the mind. They shouldn’t be scripts or any kind of prompts as these prevent a natural flowing discussion not enable them. As well as helping benefits stay fresh in the mind, these tools help B2B telemarketers come across as passionate and positive.

Visual tools are making a huge impact on marketing currently, particularly for social media where messaging needs to be instant. These tools can be magic for B2B telemarketers too. Hubspot says “Visual content is in high demand. Just about every piece of content you create can be enhanced by some kind of visual element …Just consider how much more prominently visual content gets displayed in social media feeds compared to text-based content”

If you’d like to find out more about how our B2B telemarketers can help you speak to one of our team or have a look around our website.

Simple B2B appointment setting

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Simple B2B appointment setting

B2B appointment setting will be more important than ever in the weeks and months to come as the world moves out of lockdown and into recovery mode. Whether your appointments are virtual or in the same room as your prospective clients the same basic guidelines apply to your calls.

No place for a nerd

No matter how impressive your products or services are, your B2B appointment setting will work best when you avoid complex, wordy descriptions of features. Not only will plain English endear you to the person you’re talking to, it will also help your key points to stick in their mind. Most of us won’t remember endless nerdy technical detail or stats, but we will recall specific key benefits that help a product or service stand out.

Ask open questions designed to capture need. Then use simple language, avoid technical jargon, and present the products and services relevant to these needs as clearly and as concisely as possible.

Proof points

There are few things more compelling for B2B appointment setting than cold, hard evidence. If you can clearly demonstrate how your company will outperform others, or offer a better service than an incumbent supplier you’ll have a much better chance of success. Before you pick up the phone, have this important data to hand and use it to back up your points.

Proof points such as awards won, delivery times, customer satisfaction rates, or things such as Google reviews will all help endorse and support you.

Flaunt it

Do mention accreditations such as ISO or IIP, especially to buyers who express particular concern for quality management, or process quality. Specialist auditors externally verify such accreditations, so they are super helpful for B2B appointment setting, especially in crowded markets.

Relevant to the needs expressed

Giving specific examples of the benefits your products and services can offer will help the company you’ve contacted understand how they could be relevant to them. Use open questions routinely in your B2B appointment setting to learn more about the business and their specific needs. Tailor your conversation around the buyer’s answers so you demonstrate clearly how you can meet these needs and make their business more successful in the process.

Listen

Whenever the person you’re speaking to contributes to the conversation, make sure you listen attentively to what they’re saying. Telemarketing can be scary. When we’re nervous, we have so much internal noise happening that it can block out what people are saying.

Avoid the temptation to make judgements about the person and their world. According to the DS Psychology Group, judging is one of the most common barriers to effective communication. They say Judging is evaluating the other person and what they said rather than really trying to understand how they see the world

Make sure you absorb, understand, and address each particular concern or objection one by one. Involving them in the call in this way will help to create a genuine two way dialogue. It will also help them see how your products or services could relate to them and demonstrate your company is one that takes customer service seriously.

To learn more about B2B appointment setting or effective telemarketing techniques, contact a member of our expert team today.

How to make lead generation telemarketing more compelling

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How to make lead generation telemarketing more compelling

Lead generation telemarketing can be a tough gig if you’re not confident about your knowledge or skills using the telephone. Despite being one of the most important skills in business, ‘telemarketing’ – which is basically just using a telephone to speak with potential buyers, is one of the most unappealing and shunned jobs around. The arrival of diallers and robocalls over the past couple of decades did much to undermine the task of cold calling, and in fact, destabilise the whole telemarketing industry in putting volume over quality.

Just a phone

Legislation such as TPS has helped regulate and control the behaviour of operators who frankly didn’t care about the person on the receiving end of bad calls. Such organisations have, by and large, been eradicated. Fortunately, once again we’re returning to a place where the phone is just a phone. It’s a good guy. It’s a communication device, and only as good or bad as the skills and intension of the person using it. The telephone will always have an important role in marketing and business generally because it’s effective when done well. So thankfully, lead generation telemarketing has a great future, but getting it right is key.

How professionals do lead generation telemarketing

Throughout a call, the lead generation telemarketing agency will be working to build a compelling case for a product or service. Whatever the ultimate objective of a call, one basic rule applies. The more intelligent and informative the interaction is, the more likely it is that a lead will be successfully achieved. Taking the time to get under the skin of each and every client brief is one of the key success factors for an external lead generation telemarketing supplier but the rules of the game are the same for everyone.

Differentiation

Knowing why the client business is special, by asking the right questions, builds a case that’s compelling and rich. So the calls created are in turn also compelling and rich. The briefing process will help build a broad picture of the company and its strengths, their differentiators, USPs, the values and mission of the business and its stakeholders. All count towards creating a mosaic of features and benefits to be used on the phone. Such detail is critical for calls loaded with knowledge and excitement, so the person making the call is able to produce a narrative that peppers the buyer with great reasons to engage.

According to Biz Journals good differentiation helps professionals outperform their peers. “When I talk with salespeople about one of the most critical skills they must master to be in the top one percent of all salespeople, it’s this one skill: Helping buyers think differently about the solutions they have or could have.”

Every call is the only call

While the temptation might be to try and throw all this rich information at every potential buyer on every call, that’s not helpful. Lead generation telemarketing will impress a buyer only if the call they receive sounds and feels like the only call you made that day. In fact, it IS the only call. Every time you reach a particular company or buyer, it’s the only call you’ve had with them that day. A call will resonate well, and capture attention when it feels and sounds unique.

Seeing a person in your mind’s eye will help. So will sitting up straight, working away from distraction, and remembering to breathe! When people are nervous, they often don’t take enough breaths.

To learn more about lead generation telemarketing or effective telemarketing techniques, contact a member of our expert team today.

How a b2b lead generation agency copes with objections

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How a b2b lead generation agency copes with objections

No matter how good your product or service, there will be times when you’ll come across objections. For a b2b lead generation agency this is all in a day’s work. At Blue Donkey we know that the way we handle objections is likely to have a significant impact on our chances of success. So we’ve devised some methods to help steer calls through the tricky objection handling stage to the successful outcomes our client family love!

Get a grip

One of the keys to handling objections during a telemarketing call is to get to grips with the root of the objection. There are two kinds of objections generally, factual or emotional. One is based on a fact that isn’t accurate, the other a like or dislike.

With both types of objection, probe until you fully understand the issue. Show empathy, so you agree in theory but don’t agree with their conclusion. Then use a feature that either corrects their fact, or improves the likability. Check that they agree, and at this point the b2b lead generation agency would close for a meeting.

Take objections seriously

One of the keys to handling objections is to take them seriously. Simply brushing over them or skirting a question, will make you seem inattentive or evasive. It may also frustrate the person you’re speaking to, giving them a poor impression of you and your business and making them much less likely to work with you.

The b2b lead generation agency will always take objections seriously – no matter how small, or insignificant they may seem, and by doing so the efficiency in generating a steady flow of meetings will remain consistently high. Take the time to counter objections comprehensively by probing for the particular detail behind it and ensure you address the specific concerns one by one.

Sign of interest

Instead of seeing an objection as a sign the decision maker you’re talking to is pulling away from your call. A b2b lead generation agency will view objections as a sign of interest, and therefore a good thing. This is because a decision maker wouldn’t be raising objections if they weren’t curious so use the opportunity to expand on what you can offer and what makes you special. Try to keep a few relevant facts or statistics on hand to back up your arguments and convince your contact you’re the real deal.

Pecker up

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

Where the big wins lift us for days or weeks, big setbacks in sales can often linger in our mind for weeks or even months. Resilience is a key characteristic of successful people, and according to Forbes, “Setbacks are a normal part of the path to success. Unless your role is to serve as a mindless cog in a wheel of predictable work, you will encounter setbacks – many of them – throughout your career”. By reminding yourself what’s special about your organisation and its products you can quickly recover your mojo and get back on the blower!

A large part of being a successful b2b lead generation agency is skill and experience. To find out more, contact a member of our team today.

Persuasion techniques used for appointment setting services

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Persuasion techniques used for appointment setting services

Appointment setting services need to efficiently and effectively engage target buyers with a message that’s persuasive enough for them to accept a meeting as the next step. Not only do they need to accept the meeting, they need to actually ‘want’ it because they perceive the opportunity as valuable and real. For anyone using the telephone to set appointments, the practices and skills nurtured by providers of appointment setting services can be extremely valuable.

If you’re in a professional sales function, persuasion is one of the most powerful tools you can have. From the moment you pick up a phone you’re trying to persuade gatekeepers that you should be allowed through. Then you’re persuading decision makers you have something worthwhile to discuss. From our 22 years providing appointment setting services, we’ve put together a few of our favourite gentle, but powerful, persuasion techniques.

Product knowledge

Potential clients will take a telemarketer seriously if they can demonstrate good knowledge of the product and market they are working with. The better you know your business, the easier it will be to answer questions with dexterity and to counter objections the decision maker you’re speaking to may have. As well as enabling you to present an informed argument, knowing your product really well, and understanding how it fits into your competitive backdrop will make your call much more compelling. Not only will this give the decision maker more confidence in you and your business, it will help create value in your argument as a potential supply partner.

Meaningful work

Make a list of the 10 key things that are special about your product or service. Learn them and live them. Throw your list away and start again from time to time to keep your message fresh and vibrant. Being clear and confident with your product or service will help build pride and a sense of meaning in your work. These things are taking centre stage more than ever since we now demand more than just payment in exchange for our labours. Satisfaction is increasingly becoming a basic need, rather than a nice to have in the workplace. Pride and satisfaction in our work is also one of the best ways to be persuasive about the value your business represents to buyers so it’s a win-win all round.

Benefits

Positivity can be very compelling. Appointment setting services train their staff to understand the difference between one product and its competition by breaking things up into ‘benefits’. A benefit in business is anything that’s associated with time, effort, money, or security. Without these things, it is unlikely a decision maker will buy. By contrast, as consumers, we often buy things just because we like them. And because you can’t have too many shoes!

If you’re passionate about the products or services you represent, and you know the precise benefits they deliver better than the competition, it will come across in your voice and help to gently persuade the decision maker into working with you.

Listening skills

Though most persuasion techniques rely on how well your appointment setting services present their argument, the way they organise and gather feedback can help. Instead of diving into a call with your pitch, use open questions to understand the needs of your buyer and their business. Then by using benefits and features, you can illustrate how you meet those needs.

Only when you’ve allowed the potential buyer to tell you how they do things currently, can you begin matching what you have that meets with their needs. Remember that listening is an active task. It’s also hard to listen actively when you’re nervous, as you may be too distracted by your own thoughts to hear the sometimes subtle nuances being sent your way. Visualising a person in your mind, and being away from distraction will help, as will tuning into their tone of voice, as well as the content.

Storytelling

Appointment setting services often use examples and flagship client stories to illustrate how a particular product or service performed for another business – often one that’s similar to the situation presented by the decision maker you’re speaking with. Storytelling has become more popular in sales as it presents selective information in a way that relevant and engaging.

According to sales productivity experts Yesware, neuroeconomists ran a series of tests to understand the effects of storytelling. Amazingly, they reported that people have higher levels of a trust hormone afterward. Called ‘oxytocin’ this hormone promotes feelings of connection and empathy.

Repeat

Summarising the benefits and features of your product or service at the end of your call can help iron out any lurking objections. Appointment setting services rely on this final safety net to ensure the buyer understands the details of a meeting. It’s also a useful opportunity to jump through the hoops of best practice for data sharing and GDPR. In your summary, reiterate the benefits you can deliver, and where and when the meeting will take place. If you’ve tailored your argument correctly, this summary should remove any last shadows of doubt.

To learn more about appointment setting services or Blue Donkey’s powerful telemarketing techniques, contact Blue Donkey today.

Why a market research agency will use questions sparingly

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Why a market research agency will use questions sparingly

A phone based, B2B market research agency like Blue Donkey is tasked to get as much information as possible, using as few questions as possible. This is because decision makers within organisations may be happy to share information in order to help improve their supply chain or their industry but they won’t usually be willing to spend more than a short time doing so.

It’s also important to remember that questions help get a conversation going, to find out more about an organisation, and to steer the call in the right direction. Most people will respond better to one or two open questions than they will to lots of closed ones. After all, nobody wants to feel they’re being fired questions machine-gun fashion. The professional B2B market research agency will be mindful of this and will be clear that the number of questions which can be asked in any one conversation is limited.

Different types of questions

Closed questions invite a single word answer, typically yes or no, but could include words such as like or dislike. They are great for creating a simple to understand numerically presented report but are best used with surveys that are not driven by human interaction like telemarketing or face to face. Probing questions are similar to open questions but they are usually drilling down on a particular detail. Where open are usually broad, probing questions are useful for clarification.

The types of questions a market research agency would use for telephone research are similar to those used in the toolbox of telemarketing. There are lots that are more suitable for written or online surveys. Experts at type talk describe the most popular methods including Funnel questions, Recall & Process questions, and Rhetorical questions, among others. They are interesting to know about when you’re planning research, and are great for helping us identify when we’re being funnelled or led by the ear!

Open question for the phone based market research agency

Open questions are those that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no response. They are an important tool in telemarketing generally but for market research they can be pivotal. Market research agency surveys that are created as part of a B2B telemarketing project are usually reliant on flowing responses that fall into the category of qualitative research. This method of research usually falls into the remit of professional telemarketers who are good at asking questions that generate multidimensional answers, much like a good telemarketing call. In qualitative surveys the data collected is not all numerically presented, it’s usually presented in words and paragraphs, but supported by data collected numerically for emphasis.

Avoid hard questionnaires

Conducting research within your own four walls can work as well as outsourcing to a market research agency, particularly if you only need a dozen or so surveys. Make the most of your precious few questions, avoid using a rigid questionnaire, and do what you’d normally do to get respondents talking naturally. When telemarketers follow a rigid formula for their calls, whether they’re scripts or surveys, they don’t have the flexibility required to be able to adjust the conversation or clarify a piece of information. The telemarketer won’t be able to discover anything interesting or build up any kind of rapport during the conversation.

Listen

An expert market research agency like Blue Donkey will be able to use the information they gather during a call to ask questions that are insightful and useful. Our telemarketers know that the more you listen to your respondent, the easier it will be to tailor around their answers to get a better picture of their world. Often the really valuable soundbites come from information that has dropped into the call by way of anecdotal comment that can be delved into deeper.

Silence is golden

The idea of silence in a telephone call can be unnerving. However, using silence in the right way can be just as powerful as asking lots of questions. For example, a market research agency will train staff to recognise when silence is or isn’t helpful. At Blue Donkey, our teams are taught to ask an open question and pause. A common human response to the awkward silence might be to jump in with a multiple choice option or to prompt or lead an answer. This serves only to relieve the person asking the questions, for the respondent, the silence is thinking time. For a market research agency, this thinking time can allow respondents to deliver the very best insight. While it takes confidence and a little courage to leave a long pause after a question, it can produce impressive results.

Learn more about our market research agency, or our intelligent telemarketing techniques take a look around our site or getting in touch with a member of our team.

How telemarketing companies find the right M.A.N.

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How telemarketing companies find the right M.A.N.

Appointments generated by telemarketing companies would be rendered completely useless if they were not with the right decision maker. So there are a number of things we do to make sure we find and engage the right folk from the get-go.

Identifying the decision maker as quickly as possible will help to ensure you don’t waste precious time building relationships with people who could turn into gatekeepers and stop you speaking with the decision makers direct. Telemarketing companies understand that to work out who’s really in charge, telemarketers need to ask the right questions.

As HubSpot says “There’s nothing more frustrating than getting your prospect’s commitment to buy — before realizing they’re not the decision maker. You can avoid the situation completely by researching your contacts and asking the right questions during the discovery process”. Someone might sound like the right person and make all the right noises but if they are not the right decision maker, you’ll struggle to get a meaningful enough foothold in that organisation to make long term sales happen.

Who da MAN?

To identify the right key decision maker, telemarketing companies will have a set criterion. MAN is an acronym that’s often used by way of guidance. The MAN is the person with the:

Means

Authority

Need

The person with the means, authority and need to make a decision will ultimately be the decision maker who owns the problem or opportunity you’re looking to address with your product or service. They will have the motivation and the need to make positive improvements, and they’ll be the person with the budget to purchase or make changes.

Ask the right questions

Often, the person who picks up the phone isn’t the decision maker they are the receptionist or gatekeeper, getting them on side is a good idea but don’t pitch to them. Establishing the correct target at this point can be tricky. Good telemarketing companies ask questions in a way that helps iron out ambiguity. For example, asking for the person who ‘deals with’ is not a good idea, since the person who deals with something may be an end user, or administrator, but not necessarily someone who makes decisions about it. These contacts can actually become a second layer gatekeeper, after the receptionist, if you pitch to them because they might choose to make assumptions in an attempt to be helpful to the real decision maker.

Wording

By wording your question in a more probing way, you can give the person you’re speaking to the opportunity to pass the relationship on without making them feel unimportant. This means asking for the person ‘in charge of’ or who ‘makes decisions about’ is a good start. Telemarketing companies will then take the name and check spelling phonetically, perhaps also find out the best time reach to them.

Qualify

Specifically describing the person you’re seeking is helpful, but once you’ve asked for ‘the person in charge of’, there’s another layer of checking you can do. Telemarketing companies will ask for a job title at this point. If the job title suggests they are not a decision maker, you can qualify further by asking who they report to. It’s essential to be professional and respectful at this point, and if there is any resistance at all, back off and try again another time. Under GDPR a job title is personal information, so be careful how you ask for it. Telemarketing companies work on the assumption that we don’t have the right to ask for anything; we earn it in our manner and professionalism.

DMUs

Some organisations may not actually have a single decision maker responsible for a certain product or solution, especially if it’s an important installation for the business, such as CAD. They may instead have a DMU. A DMU is a ‘decision making unit’ of people who have some level of responsibility, or several people responsible for certain facets. This means there’s more work for telemarketing companies to do before getting traction, or any kind of success with these organisations. However, DMUs offer the valuable advantage that once they’ve managed to build contacts and established a rapport, the connection with that organisation will be robust enough that even if a key contact leaves, there is still a strong link to grow the relationship moving forward.

Find out more about the intelligent telemarketing techniques we use by taking a look around our site or getting in touch with a member of our team.

B2B telemarketing companies sell the sizzle, not the sausage

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B2B telemarketing companies sell the sizzle, not the sausage

B2B telemarketing companies are a professional marketing resource for organisations that need a steady and reliable pipeline of fresh new leads and appointments. Not only does this help generate lasting and exciting growth opportunities for the client, it’s also a good way to get the most from a company’s operational budget, by keeping expensive face to face sales people in front of the right prospects, instead of in the office making calls. More and more, the task of appointment setting has become a specialist service, much like payroll or HR on the basis that you’re probably only good at telemarketing, if, like B2B telemarketing companies you’re honing your skills all day every day.

Attention

One of the key success factors of skilled B2B telemarketing companies is that they’re good at finding the right potential buyers and getting their attention with intelligent two way dialog and then creating an appetite for them to meet. At that point, we generate the lead and pass it to the client organisation to service with a face to face meeting, virtual meeting, etc. One of our favourite ways of describing the difference between what B2B telemarketing companies do and what the client does is: ‘We sell the sizzle, you sell the sausage’. In other words, we take the call so far, and then seamlessly hand the relationship over.

Appetite

More often than not, the sound and smell of a sausage sizzling in a pan is more appealing than the eating. It’s the aroma the cooking sausage makes that gets your juices flowing and your tummy rumbling, building anticipation and excitement. Transferring this idea to telemarketing, the ‘sizzle’ is the promise of something to come, while the sausage is the product or service itself. In order for a potential customer to buy the sausage, they first need to be enticed by the sizzle, and that’s the vital role played by the telemarketing piece, whether its outsourced or done in house.

How can you sell the sizzle?

When it comes to telemarketing, selling the sizzle means telling potential customers what your product or service can help them achieve. It’s not about the technical detail of a product, but about how it delivers a benefit for the buyer. The more exciting and interesting you can make these benefits, the better. Unlike consumers who might buy because they ‘like’ something, business buyers are generally only judging a product or service against four main factors: time, effort, money and security. By showing how a product or service delivers against one or more of these four factors, B2B telemarketing companies get potential customers excited enough to want to meet.

Benefit selling

The theory behind this telemarketing concept is known as ‘benefit selling’. As Marketing Donut puts it “Successful selling requires you to show your customers how your product meets their needs. Highlighting your product’s benefits in quantifiable terms is more likely to result in a sale than simply describing its features. So a feature is simply a characteristic of your product or service, such as a kettle with a 2000-watt heating ring. In this case, the kettle can boil water in less than 60 seconds. So if a cafe owner can’t make tea fast enough, you need to tell them your rapid-boiling kettle will solve their problem and meet their need.” So, the first step, as ever, is to ask meaningful questions about your prospect’s needs.

In essence, the idea states that businesses don’t buy a product or service because of its features, they do so because of how these features will benefit them. By looking at the facts behind a product or service – its affordability, its innovation, its originality or its quality – and making these relevant to the business we’re speaking to, we’re able to get potential buyers excited about what our clients can deliver and then generate an appointment with them to explore further. Once decision makers are interested and enthused, it’s time for us to close by asking for a meeting and putting the ball in our client’s court.

To find out more about this powerful selling technique, or to learn how our telemarketers could help your business to succeed, explore our site, or get in touch with a member of our team.

How B2B lead generation services tackle the Gatekeeper

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How B2B lead generation services tackle the Gatekeeper

It goes without saying that getting past the gatekeeper is one of the many important skills required to provide b2b lead generation services effectively. There’s no magic bullet and no single technique works all the time but learning a few practical tips could help improve your success rate and get your message to the right targets more often.

Kindness

Getting past the ‘gatekeeper’ or receptionist can be a frustrating and time consuming experience. It feels like they are standing in the way of you doing your job and achieving your business objectives. However, it’s important you don’t become impatient, impolite, or undermine them. Though you might want to speak to someone more senior in an organisation, remember that the gatekeeper can make or break your ambition, so make sure you give them the respect they deserve. Be polite, professional, and calm. For b2b lead generation services to work efficiently an agency will aim to get the gatekeeper on side by seeing them as a vital part of the business they serve, as we are in ours.

Get something from every dial

Chances are you’ll need several dial attempts before you get through, try not to be disheartened. You can still make your initial attempt count by gathering new information as you progress through your database. Checking job titles, contact details, spelling names phonetically, asking about different sites or new potential decision makers are among the many things b2b lead generation services companies will use the extra dials for.

Take care not to dial the same organisations too often, its good practice to leave a few days between your attempts. That way, the receptionist probably won’t recognise your voice or become irritated by your repeated attempts. Be friendly and say hello, perhaps adding ‘sorry to bother you, is there a good time to catch X’. The next time you call you’ll be able to add a personal touch to your call and get a rapport going much more quickly.

Honesty is definitely the best policy

Remember that gatekeepers field calls all day, particularly sales calls. Avoid cheesy language, over embellished reasons for calling, and definitely never tell white lies to create the impression your call isn’t a sales call. Such tactics are guaranteed to make them less likely to put you through to the decision-maker. Instead of trying to manoeuvre your way past the gatekeeper with lies, half-truths, and evasive answers – be honest. Your integrity will speak volumes about you and your company and it’s likely to help you achieve your sales goals.

Don’t pitch to the gatekeeper

You should only have a meaningful discussion about your business with the person who has the responsibility to make decisions. In b2b lead generation services, an agency will spend hours if not days or weeks becoming fluent and articulate with the complex details of a business. How then could it ever be possible to say enough to a receptionist, in a few short moments for them to do justice to your product or service? When asked what the call is regarding, simply contain your answer to a few words such as ‘business efficiency’.

Asking a question such as ‘is this a good time to catch them’ in answer to a question, can be a good way of diverting their question and avoiding an overlong explanation. As with any skill, practice is key, and be careful not to alienate. The point here is, don’t say more than is necessary or the receptionist will attempt to convey your message to the decision maker. A negative response at this point could render that contact record dead on your database forever. If the receptionist indicates that they’ll never be interested, it’s effectively an opt-out. Read the rules around consent at the ICO website.

Confidence

If you sound confident and authoritative, the gatekeeper will be much less tempted to fob you off with an excuse and will be more likely to put you through to the decision maker. Even if you don’t feel confident – take a deep breath before you pick up the phone, sit up straight, put a smile on as you dial, and remember that you have something important to discuss with the decision maker. If your data is well profiled, and you have pride in your business, you’ll already know that your call could make a big difference to the success of the company you’re approaching.

One final note: for providers of b2b lead generation services, companies where the gatekeepers are especially sharp at diverting weak calls are exactly the right organisations to target because the decision makers won’t be receiving calls at the same rate they would if the gatekeeper wasn’t as conscientious. Great news! Pass the phone.

If you think your telemarketing team could do with a little coaching and support, we can help. Alternatively, if you would like to know more about Blue Donkey’s b2b lead generation services, talk to our dedicated professionals or explore our site today.

The importance of open questions for the telemarketing agency

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The importance of open questions for the telemarketing agency

For campaigns to be successful, a telemarketing agency has to get people talking as quickly as possible. The faster they manage this, the easier it is to build rapport and start laying the foundations for a long term relationship. However, as most decision makers are busy, getting them to talk isn’t always easy. In our 22 years as telemarketing agency and trainer, we’ve tried out lots of different ways of getting telemarketing calls off the ground and by far the best method is the ‘open question’. Simple but effective, this tried and tested technique has been helping the Blue Donkey team to achieve outstanding results year after year.

What are open questions

A telemarketing agency needs to quickly engage decision makers by getting them talking. A call is unlikely to be successful if it doesn’t somehow draw the receiver of the call in, by getting their attention and contribution. An open question is a question that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no answer. They are open because they require someone to reflect, think, and respond expansively, so they are absolutely vital in a business cold call. So for a telemarketing agency, the open question is the main device used to intelligently turn their call from a cold one way interaction to a warm exchange between one professional and another. It also relates to the fact that people warm to people who get them talking, and tend to be put off by those that talk too much. According to the Independent newspaper, this ‘likability’ factor is important in life generally, and apparently, we can all do certain things that make us more likable. In their article, Harvard researchers discovered that talking about yourself may be inherently rewarding. Likability and warmth are important personality traits in business, especially in sales. So one way of improving likability, whether it’s in a professional call, or socially, is that we can become better at getting people talking.

Examples

Composing open questions is fairly easy. They usually begin with the words: who, what, when, why, or how. Some are better than others for inspiring detailed responses, and they need to be practiced in order to become second nature. Even for a telemarketing agency, there’s no one size fits all open question. The key to designing one that works is to build a snapshot of what information is required to really make that campaign work. In other words, asking questions that gain the most relevant information. The question chosen needs to build a picture of what the decision maker and their organisation are doing that might warrant them requiring the product or solution. Asking a question that begins ‘how do you go about’ might be a good place to start at it helps define certain criteria and opens up the discussion according to the buyer’s needs.

Ouch! My question just broke

Some open questions work beautifully for days, weeks, or months, then suddenly stop working for you. Others work for certain people but crash and burn for others. There’s no exact science which is why a telemarketing agency will teach their teams the principles of how to design open questions by using the keywords above and encourage them to experiment to find the ones that yield the most information for them or their particular project.

Yada yada yada

Ideally, your open question should ask about lots of areas of the business or their systems in one question. That sort of question might sound something like ‘what kind of process do you have in place for’. It’s effectively lots of different questions rolled into one. It’s important your call doesn’t sound like a survey, so one, two, or three open questions will be the maximum you should attempt to use, otherwise, it will seem like you’re going on a bit, and you will risk losing the buyer’s interest. If you need more, it’s probably because your questions could be designed differently. A telemarketing agency would review the open questions their team are using if they felt decision makers were being peppered with too many questions. And needless to say, only questions that are relevant to the call should be included. Asking someone you don’t know about how they are, or about the weather, won’t come across as professional.

Silence is golden

Don’t be afraid to ask your open question and stop talking. That’s easier said than done for most of us as the telephone is a scary tool if you’ve never met the person you’re speaking with. When we’re nervous, most of us are not as cool as we’d like to be, so it’s easy to feel threatened by silence. A few seconds of silent time on the phone can be like waiting for something vital. You’ve heard the expression, the seconds passed like hours. Be brave, when you ask an open question, give people a moment to reflect on their response. Resist the temptation to fill the awkward silence by jumping in with another ‘clarifying’ question, or a set of ‘multi-choice’ options. The awkwardness you feel won’t be shared by the decision maker you’re speaking with, as they’ll be busy thinking about your question. It might help to count to 5 on your fingers – that’s impossible to do faster than the moments it takes someone to start talking!

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