Telemarketing Archives

GDPR telemarketing and consent

Posted on 6 April 2021 by bluedonkey

As well as producing sales leads, several other metrics are used to determine the value telemarketing generates for a business. Among them is the number of email addresses captured by the telemarketing team. Email is really important for a marketing database because it allows organisations to drip feed their company messages and brand in a low-cost way. However, it will come as no surprise that there are rules surrounding the collection of email addresses. As with any other item of data that can be used to identify an individual, consent must be generated in line with GDPR telemarketing compliance. The General Data Protection Regulation came into effect in May 2018. It contains rules concerning the protection of people and how their personal data is processed.

Consent in GDPR telemarketing

There some key factors relating to GDPR telemarketing practice that exist around the issue of consent. The collecting and storing of personal data is considered lawful only when data subjects, that is the person the data relates to, provide their specific consent to this processing for one or more purposes. So if the consent of a data subject is gathered, companies may process personal data of individuals provided its use is in line with the six principles of data protection of lawfulness, purpose limitation, data minimisation, accuracy, storage limitation, integrity/confidentiality – in other words, it’s protected and only used for the reasons specified when the permission was given by the data subject.

Consent given freely

While views on the subject of GDPR telemarketing and consent can vary, its definition in Article 4(11) GDPR says that ‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her. This can therefore be done by asking the question, ‘can we take your email address so we can keep you informed of our products or services’. The data subject can then grant or decline agreement to the processing of personal data that relates to them.

Conditions for consent

Article 7 of the GDPR specifies particular conditions for consent to be gathered. So where data subjects have given their consent to the processing of their personal data, organisations must be able to show how this is achieved. GDPR telemarketing databases might for example contain a tick box and statement that the telemarketer will use to confirm consent has been sought and granted. Where consent is also requested for other things such as an appointment that has been generated, the request for consent must be distinguished as additional to the other purposes.

Limitations of consent

Any language used for GDPR telemarketing consent gathering should be clear and easy to understand. If a data subject gives their consent to the processing of personal data, it should not be assumed that an organisation has a right to process the data indefinitely. And of course, personal data is not just email. Anything that can be identifiable with an individual is personal data. This includes name, job title, direct dial, and mobile numbers among other things. Under GDPR telemarketing must respect and protect this data, keep it for only as long as necessary and only for the purpose directly linked to the consent given.

Consent is a privilege not a right

Data subjects can withdraw consent at any time, but the processing taking place before that withdrawal request is still considered lawful. Before a person gives his or her consent, he or she must be informed about the possibility of withdrawing it and it must be as easy to withdraw the consent as to give it. As ever, GDPR telemarketing practice should not seek simple compliance. Companies like Blue Donkey who value their brand, and take pride in everything they do should seek to take a position of best practice, not simply compliance. So you and your frontline telemarketing team should not only embrace good GDPR telemarketing practices, like the Blue Donkey team, you should be an advocate for it. Only then will the future of our industry and the privilege we’re granted to reach out to people by use of the telephone be sustainable.

How to cope with rejection in telemarketing

Posted on 30 March 2021 by bluedonkey

Like life, telemarketing is full of ups and downs. At times you dial a number, reach someone you need to talk to and get chatting like you’ve known them forever. You just connect in a way that works for you, and them. When this happens, your questions yield perfect answers, and the buyer peppers the discussion with all the things they need from you in order for you to work together. Hence you’re able to present your company’s products and services in a way that dovetails their needs as a business. Almost by magic, your sparkle generates a relationship that can endure over time. You feel valued, and your work holds meaning and reward.

On another day you might dial and dial and dial until you reach someone. When you finally do, you ask the same questions to strike up a dialog, you use the same introduction and features, but the call just flops. So you try again. And again. And again. To no avail. Then you’re left with a feeling that you’ve somehow failed, no one wants to talk to you, people are not interested, nobody is even there to take your call, and telemarketing doesn’t work. You feel the harsh stab of rejection and your job sucks.

Deep breath please

Newsflash! It’s normal to have bad moments in telemarketing. Actually, it’s perfectly normal to have moments that make you want to turn tail and flee, screaming for the hills. Hopefully, the big fat highs you get from the good times are easily worth the bad ones. Nevertheless, there are things we can do to help minimise the rejection we experience during the bad times, and there are things we can do to mitigate the effect of rejection when it does inevitably feature. Next time you’re faced with a situation where your telemarketing gave you a sense of rejection, take a big deep breath, sit up straight, and fix your mind back to the last great call you had. What happened in that call? How did you feel? What did you do that was special? Make time for these kinds of reflections regularly. Unfortunately, people have a shocking habit of remembering and talking about their horror stories, far more than their successes. This makes the negative recollections far bigger and more prominent in our minds than they deserve to be.

Resilience

By shifting your focus away from the negative situations, and firmly towards the positive ones, you’ll quickly shake off the effects of rejection. The great news is that these behaviours are habit forming. Over time your ability to switch away from the negative and towards the positive will happen naturally. We refer to this as resilience. As your resilience grows, the ability to flip your thinking will kick in automatically. Another huge positive is this, the less you allow destructive emotions to dominate your thoughts, the more your internal dialog shifts to ‘expect’ great things to happen. Instead of thinking ‘this is going really badly, no one wants to talk to me’ you’ll think ‘I’m going to have a really good conversation now’. If you expect great telemarketing to happen, you’ll make calls that are laden with possibility and potential, as well as mitigate the effects of any rejection that does manage to sneak into your day.

Re-frame

In fact, if you can learn to accept and label rejection differently, it can actually be really good for us, our mental health and our work as sales professionals. At Blue Donkey, our teams are making calls across many different projects all day long. It’s all we do and we’re a centre of telemarketing excellence, so every dial is measured, benchmarked and reported on by way of the contribution it makes to a paid for campaign. The graveyards of low achievement that in-house telemarketing teams can sometimes experience just cannot happen at Blue Donkey because they would pose a threat to the business. Therefore we see rejection as a signpost. Metrics are carefully monitored for the number of times a call receives anything other than a ‘positive outcome’.

So the simple ‘not interested’ results or rejections are carefully measured and reported on for each hour of telemarketing that takes place. Two things happen with that data. Either we can use it to reassure a team member, because it’s common to overestimate how many negatives and underestimate the number of positives if we’re having a bad day. Or if the number of negative outcomes is unusually high, it indicates the messaging should be adjusted. So it’s not the caller, it’s the call that’s being rejected.

Techniques used by telemarketing companies to reach decision makers

Posted on 25 March 2021 by bluedonkey

Finding and reaching the right decision makers is one of the biggest day to day challenges a telemarketing business will face. At Blue Donkey we manage meticulous benchmarks sector by sector, project by project that helps us set expectations about the efficiency with which we reach decision makers in organisations. A handful of approaches will enable telemarketers to increase the number and frequency of the contacts they reach. These approaches can be relevant at the point where data is first selected and profiled for calling, it could be about the words used at reception level that stop the so-called gatekeeper blocking a call, or it could be in the actual moments after the call is patched through to the decision maker themselves.

Ultimately the work of the telemarketing company can’t even begin until the decision making contact is successfully identified and reached. It’s a skill that takes years to perfect, and even then, factors outside our control can mean that some days deliver fabulous performance where others simply flop.

Data

Thinking about who should be targeted for a client is the first task a professional at the telemarketing company you use will perform. This isn’t just about the type and size of business your project data is auditioned for, it’s also about the particular stakeholder within the target business. It goes without saying that companies who are likely to need your product or service should be targeted, however, taking a blanket approach is not advisable here. The telemarketing company will need to identify the best segments within the best segments!

For example, it’s not unusual for a client to instruct their agency along the lines of “we can sell to any manufacturing business in postcodes X to Y”. On the face of it, this might seem like a reasonable instruction. However, telemarketing requires highly qualified, skilled individuals, so it’s more expensive than most other channels to market. Therefore if it costs the same to target a company turning over £1M and who might spend £1K, as it is to target a company turning over £50M and spending £50K, then, of course, it’s better to target more of the larger. Making value judgements about each group of records before adding them to the telemarketing company workload not only saves money in ROI terms, it can render a whole project, on balance, worthwhile or not.

Words

When a number is dialled and a receptionist appears on the line, the telemarketing company will be only too aware that their performance at this fragile point in the call could lead them to the right person or can cause them to crash and burn. Indeed the importance of technique at this stage of the telemarketing call is probably hugely overstated, in fact arguably, the term gatekeeper itself is discourteous and sends out totally the wrong message to anyone considering a career in sales. The best techniques used to get through reception at Blue Donkey are undeniably simple respect and honesty. Jargon or language that’s deliberately designed to mislead should always be avoided, as should any attempt to pretend the call is something it isn’t. However, never pitch to anyone, other than the target stakeholder who is senior enough to have decision making authority for your product or service

MAN

A good way to source the name of the right decision maker in an organisation is to ask very specific questions at reception. A good example of this kind of questioning is ‘who is the person that makes decisions about’. An example of what to avoid is ‘who deals with’ as this risks leading you to the day to day administrator of a task rather than a decision makers. At Blue Donkey we refer to this as finding the right MAN. This is the person with the means (or money), the authority, and the need. People often aim to get through to someone at a lower or mid manager level that the telemarketing company are able to reach, and then gently work their way up the organisation.

Attitude

Once team members at the telemarketing company reach the appropriate decision maker they’ve worked so hard to find, it’s not unusual to suddenly feel tongue-tied or intimidated, especially if the call is with a c-suite executive. Blue Donkey team members are taught to visualise a person in their mind as they are conversing. This does a number of things to help. It humanises the decision maker so they become less scary to the caller, and it enables the caller to artificially practice face to face techniques such as eye contact. Asking a relevant and intelligent open question will then quickly draw the decision maker into the call. Then the really exciting stuff can begin to happen.

How cold calling builds warm relationships

Posted on 23 March 2021 by bluedonkey

OK, so we know cold calling is probably the last thing anyone wants to do when they grow up. It’s one of those tasks that people dread and avoid above anything else. Yet it’s no secret that the best business relationships often start with the humble cold call. So think about it! Cold calling is cheap to do, you don’t need any special equipment, there’s minimal planning required, and the results are instant. What’s not to love?

Using cold calling to turn prospect data into productive and warm business relationships is one of the biggest challenges companies face. It requires robust routines and skilled staff, but frankly, pretty much anybody can turn their hand to cold calling. Feeling passionately about your products and services, taking a genuine interest in other people and their business, and having the pluck to pick up the phone is all it really takes.

Anyone can do cold calling

As an outsourced telemarketing provider, far from feeling threatened by that fact, at Blue Donkey, we’re actually heartened by it. Companies that use the telephone well, are already convinced of the benefits of cold calling, so there’s less heavy lifting required in the selling process when they come to us for service. Companies that are adept at cold calling also give a great brief and are realistic about what to expect. That’s because there’s no exact science about what makes a call ‘good’. Making and taking calls is highly subjective, but there are some basic foundations that it’s totally worth knowing.

Be your best you

Good calls start in the heart. If you feel strongly about your business, your calls will always resonate better, because enthusiasm is an emotional contagion. Asking earnest questions is nothing less than pixy dust. It gets people talking to you and generates valuable insight you can start working with. More important still, if you are putting someone else’s priorities at the centre of your call, you’re not trying to flog them something, you’re trying to understand their needs, so you can meet them. That feeling of ‘doing right by someone’ is the big difference between life relationships and work ones. In life, your warmest connections are those who are more important to you, than you. Cold calling, and work generally would have much more meaning to us if we weren’t obsessing over targets and sales so often.

Cold calling IS something nice companies do

We’re not sure when, but somewhere over the last couple of decades, the notion emerged, that cold calling was something nice companies don’t do. We beg to differ. Nice companies do do cold calling, they just do it differently. Firstly, forgive us for stating the obvious but nobody wants to be cold called, however, we all want the right calls. If something is going to help us achieve our business goals, we want to know about it. Right? For companies using cold calling, profiling data carefully is everything because it will connect us to buyers who have the propensity to ‘want’ what we can do for them.

Then all we have to do is dial them, ask the right questions, discuss how we can help them, work at their pace and according to their agenda, and follow up in a timely considerate way until they trust us enough to proceed as a client. It might take days, weeks, months or even years but game changer clients that you like and respect, are worth the investment of time, care and patience. They’re absolutely worth the effort of a well-placed cold call.

Successful prospect research begins with the right attitudes

Posted on 16 March 2021 by bluedonkey

We all know telemarketing is a powerful way to win new business and generate growth. But talking to people you don’t know, and who weren’t expecting your call, is a pretty tough shout even when you’ve been in sales for years. Getting them talking about their needs is a good way to ease into a productive call and potentially a rewarding relationship. We call this prospect research, and it’s the stage of a call when we form an understanding of the potential buyer’s world. It takes confidence to build dialog that gets buyers talking, and sensitivity to listen carefully enough to build a picture you can start working with.

Additionally, if you telephone someone out of the blue you don’t know if they’re in the middle of something important when your prospect research lands, and so we assume we’re disturbing them, or that our call is not welcome. Whilst most of us don’t sit at a desk waiting for our phone to ring, it’s probably not the case that every call we get is unwelcome either. In fact, for busy decision makers, the telephone can sometimes be the eyes and ears to the outside world. If there’s a new innovation or a better way of doing things, they’ll want to know about it. So the right calls are…. well, right.

Curiosity

So how do you know if your business is relevant to the people you’re calling? To make a success of things, you need to know about the buyer’s business in order to identify needs that you and your organisation can meet. Effective prospect research starts with curiosity, being interested enough to get people talking to us. However, communication is always more difficult by phone than face to face so getting them talking can be tricky. As soon as the buyer starts talking, and contributing to the discussion, we feel more comfortable, and before we know it, we’re away, building the foundations for a relationship to happen. So we learn to feed our curiosity and get people talking by using a particular type of question. These are open questions and begin with words like: when, why, how, and where. Open questions can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, instead, well designed open questions will generate long detail-rich answers that give us something to start building upon.

Trust building

When people talk, they do more than just tell us things. We all like people who get us talking, and decision makers enjoy discussing their business, after all, it takes passion to succeed. So by getting people talking, not only do we generate valuable prospect research data, we also create an environment of mutual sharing and trust. Drawing people into conversation shows them we are interested in them and their business, not just in selling them a one size fits all. Listening to buyers tell us what we have to do to meet their needs, and allows us to showcase our ability to present something interesting, that fits those needs appropriately. Taking the time and trouble to build trust in a relationship is an important enabler in B2B markets. It is a powerful way to win higher spending clients who are satisfied advocates year after year. In fact selling professionals who take care to build and nurture trusting relationships often make clients for life, taking them from role to role. Of course, that’s good for career success, but actually, it’s so much more valuable, in helping us build careers with meaning and warm friendships, that started with a single call.

Visualising success

Humans generally use all five senses to communicate, so when we can’t read someone’s body language, or see their facial expression, it’s natural to feel a little compromised. One of the best ways to overcome the challenges of telephone communication is visualisation. When you pick up the phone to call a prospect, try to picture them in your mind’s eye. During the conversation imagine their facial responses. This technique will help you better empathise with your prospect. Getting a better understanding of who someone is and what they want, need, and prefer, will help you build greater rapport with them and present your message in a way that appeals to them. This makes it possible to artificially overcome some of the barriers of telephone communication. You will sound warmer and more confident, which will help breakdown any resistance that the person receiving your call may have. Your prospect research will also benefit hugely from visualising success in your encounters over the phone. Instead of assuming your call is one of many, assume it isn’t. Rather than seeing someone who isn’t interested in your offering, visualise someone who is. This is far easier to achieve when you genuinely feel pride and confidence in what your business does for its clients.

Why the humble smile is so important to lead generation agencies

Posted on 4 March 2021 by bluedonkey

Lead generation agencies connect call after call all day long. Making sure each one resonates with buyers in an impactful and individual way is an art great telemarketers, and good business people alike must master. To make a success of winning new clients, the first impression is everything. Like the adage goes, first impressions last, and they do. How we come across will be a defining factor that gets the relationship off to a good strong start or a flimsy floppy one that we’ll have to find a way to recover from.

A smile helps put the call on the right footing from the get-go. Sure, you can’t see a smile communicated over the telephone, and you don’t witness the body language that accompanies the human smile, yet somehow it permeates the voice and therefore the call in more ways than one. Lead generation agencies are only too aware of the big fat benefits that come from a big fat smile, and the barriers which emerge with its absence.

Positive values

One reason a lead generation agency can’t ignore the consequence of a smiling workforce is that, like life, smiling faces find more friends. Smiling happy people have an infectious quality that makes them more appealing to others. So when the floor manager looks around the office at their sales team, a room of smiling faces is the one thing that will immediately indicate that great things are happening on the phone lines. That means that if there are leads out there, your team will reach and convert them. People who buy into the mission and values of their business, find it far easier to feel good at work. Collectively this feel-good factor builds and sustains teams that feel valued and regard their work as meaningful.

Thank you

Of course, lead generation agencies can’t force people to smile, it cannot be built into the job description, and none of us are happy all the time. However, there are things that as managers we can all do, wherever we work, to create a place where employees are fulfilled and happy. A simple thank you is a wonderful example of this. Thanking people for their hard work, noticing those that go the extra mile, a gentle pat on the back, or a nod across the room. All these things, which cost nothing, and take no time, contribute towards building a culture that tells people ‘you matter’.

Catch people doing good

Building a business that breeds job satisfaction, engagement and inspires discretional effort is something lead generation agencies like Blue Donkey must to. It’s the only way to produce the kind of intelligent telemarketing which gets results. This way of working is actually far harder than producing a load of scripted calls, which a room full of automatons dial. It requires responsibility and engagement. Without the goodwill of a happy, smiling team, it simply can’t be done. Noticing when team members achieve something goes a long way to winning their trust. Even when the achievement is apparently small or insignificant, it becomes significant, by being an opportunity to connect.

Catching people doing good instinctively feels better for managers than catching people do wrong. A happy workforce doesn’t happen by accident. It requires thoughtful and caring leadership, but the effort is seriously worthwhile. Not only does it propagate a lot of winning smiles, it makes the tough times infinitely easier to navigate because you have the assurance of knowing your team is pulling in the same direction as you. After a whole year in the sad grip of the pandemic, we’re sure Blue Donkey directors are not the only bosses who can look at their workforce and say, hand on heart, – You’re the reason we’ve survived this crisis, not us. That’s something we can all smile about.

The art of building messaging that can really generate sales

Posted on 23 February 2021 by bluedonkey

To generate sales you have to have a super-hot message that gets people listening, and thinking. You’ll want it to contain every juicy nougat of information you can muster, from your flagship sites to your biggest proof-points. And you want to write it down for posterity, so you never forget just how special your business is.

But wait! That’s a script and we hate scripts. Yes, we hate scripts. They are bad for business, and unhelpful for creating calls since they can’t reflect individual personality or mould around the needs of different buyers. No grown up in the big old world of work needs a script, although we understand the desire to want a written reference tool. Good news! There is a really quick and easy way to build a road map of all the attributes, reasons, and features that define your business in its busy market. It’s not a script, it doesn’t provide prompts, but it’s a great brainstorming process that will help you pepper your calls with interesting and relevant detail. Read on to find out how you can organise your thoughts to generate sales, and pull your best moves every time.

Must say, Should say, Could say

At Blue Donkey we’re building, growing, and changing messaging all the time, across multiple different client projects. One may be a financial product such as invoice discounting, another might be a piece of capital equipment for pharmaceutical use, such as a combinatorial chemistry solution. We may well flit between several projects in a day, and each one has to be as flawless, compelling and as well informed as the next.

So how can you generate sales under those conditions. We call our method the Must say, Should say, Could says. It’s a kind of ABC of what your business is about and what makes you special in your market. You can create them as a simple list, on a piece of paper folded landscape, into three columns. This is definitely not a telemarketing script, it’s a simple road map of keywords that get you thinking – so the words come from your own head and they sound unique according to what you know about the particular decision maker you’re speaking with.

Must says

Must says are the list of your juiciest soundbites presented in order of importance. They are pretty much self-explanatory as they are the competitive aspects of your business and products that help you stand out from the crowd. This is the stuff that has to be communicated in every call, it contains the essence of who you are, and what makes you special. Must says will be pretty much front of mind for you every time you think about your business, the list will simply help you feel more empowered in how you generate sales because you’re confident of remembering mission critical items of information.

Should says

The Should says will include things that may not necessarily be important to every call or every decision maker but they’re relevant for certain contexts. So if you’re speaking to a school, your messaging will be carved from a template in your mind of what schools need. Should says might include important things such as accreditation, systems, or structural attributes that help generate sales because they define you as a business. They’re pretty important, but possibly not as much as the Must says.

Could says

Could says are the last category. They’ll be the factors you use to address particular aspects of an individual customer’s needs based on what you’ve talked about in your initial questioning. It might refer to preferences they expressed, for example, speed because they’ve said their current supplier can be slow.

The Must say, Should say, Could say menu will be designed around the potential needs of homogeneous buyers. So if you generate sales with schools, your lists will be designed around the needs of schools generally. Your discussions should always begin with an open question designed to capture something about client needs, then your Must say, Should say, and Could say information is used to wrap around those needs appropriately. The different categories of material should be drawn upon as you need them.

Unlike the telemarketing script, your conversations will be freefall, and completely unique every time. If you speak to someone who is particularly drawn to a solution that does ABC, you pick the features and benefits that relate to ABC in the way you wish to present them. You should have a smattering of proof points, stories, or interesting facts that you can pepper your call with, depending on each particular buyer’s needs. This list can be single words or bullet points so how you present them to generate sales is entirely down to you.

How to manage metrics like a lead generation pro

Posted on 16 February 2021 by bluedonkey

Numbers aren’t everything for a lead generation agency but there’s no denying, they are pretty darn important. The trick is to observe the numbers carefully without allowing them to run the show. That’s really no different from the role any sales professional plays for their organisation, and like life, the smarter we operate, the more we achieve.

As professional communicators, the primary objective for a lead generation agency will always be to find the right decision makers and tell them how you can make a difference. The caller has to establish what each particular buyer needs before deciding what to put on the table for them. Clever open question methods enable that to happen effectively. Otherwise, all you’re doing is repetitively and prosaically calling people and pitching. Couple that with tightly controlled metrics, so you have to dial X times to reach Y people, and you end up with a machine gun, bang bang bang firing messages at an unyielding audience.

Dials

Many a telesales manager of the 1990s would spin the line “if you ain’t dialling, I ain’t smiling”. Whilst today’s management styles have a little more grace, we’re not too classy to accept there’s some wisdom in the sentiment. Put simply, whether you’re a lead generation agency working for a client, or a member of an internal business development function, your first barometer of success will be to find and reach a key decision maker within a target business. Selecting data is key to this activity. Without taking great care to optimise the data and messaging, you’ll figuratively speaking, be throwing mud at the wall and hoping some of it will stick.

Selecting data that has a good propensity to convert, due to company size or buyer type, for example, will mean more of your discussions with buyers will be relevant and therefore generate leads. Marketers call this identifying and targeting homogeneous needs. Basically, the same kinds of people have the same kinds of problems and therefore similar needs.

Then you need to dial, and dial, and dial. On average it will take between eight to sixteen dials for every decision maker reached. So if you’ve tried someone three times, which seems to be a common metric, and then given up, you’re not even in the right ballpark. Spread dials out over days or weeks if you need to. Never keep hitting the redial button, and always remember that your brand is a precious thing that needs to be respected with each attempt.

Decision maker conversations

Every dial has pretty much the same single objective. Find the right buyer and engage them. Only when you’ve reached a decision maker can the good stuff begin to happen. Lead generation agencies have all sorts of control levers to help them identify, target, and reach the most decision makers with the least dials, in the shortest possible time. However, there are very few tools that actually help with the biggest and most important job of all, the task of getting under the skin of buyers. At Blue Donkey, that’s entirely down to the skill and sensitivity of our amazing team.

When it’s taken you eight to sixteen dials, and several weeks to get hold of someone, there’s great pressure to make sure you don’t blow it. Agencies make lead generation effective by maximising each opportunity they’re granted. Having genuine care and passion for your products or services will make your calls vibrant and informed enough to challenge peoples thinking. So a buyer that was happy with their existing supplier will stop and listen to someone who genuinely knows what they’re talking about. Buyers are more likely to answer questions expansively when they have a vested interest and can see there’s a potential for them to improve their business. Making great calls, from good data will ensure your sixteen dials were an excellent investment.

Lead generation rate

Over time it’s possible to establish appropriate metrics for each project or marketing campaign. Whether its ten dials per decision maker reached, less, or more, after a matter of days a pattern will begin to emerge. This set of numbers can be used to set benchmarks for you or your team’s performance. A good lead generation agency uses these patterns and benchmarks to set soft targets that enable them to manage the growth of a project, so clients have a clear sense of what each month’s activity will deliver in terms of qualified leads.

The key barometer is the most elusive one. How many dials, hours, or decision maker conversations will it take to generate a lead. Different lead generation agencies express this metric according to their charging or measuring model. At Blue Donkey we express this as ‘the magic number’, which is the number of hours between each lead generated, whether that’s a confirmed appointment, video call or demo.

So for every day, week, month or year we can illustrate how many dials per decision maker reached, how many decision maker conversations for every lead generated, and how long did each lead take to generate. From that, we can extrapolate cost per lead, lead versus fresh data and so on and so on. By simply taking a moment to measure the output of our day, we’re able to use informed decision making to optimise the weeks and months to come and amplify success long term.

How appointment setting companies generate leads worth having

Posted on 2 February 2021 by bluedonkey

Appointment setting companies are faced with a dilemma. Hungry clients requiring sales leads a-plenty, against a backdrop of strict lead criteria. The sentiment ‘We want all the leads out there but we only want certain leads’ is the kind of conflicting one that comes with the turf. And we get it, demand is high but only within certain conditions.

There’s a school of thought which says if the volume of leads is high enough, the client can cherry-pick what they want, so they won’t be disappointed. It’s a volume-driven approach, and it’s hugely problematic in B2B appointment setting, mainly because you have to churn a mass of data, to connect a volume of calls, to get a few wins over the line. The adage ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ is apt. Organisations using this approach are rarely market leaders looking to grow a loyal customer base. Instead, if you want to nurture and grow relationships which have the potential to make a difference, we absolutely endorse treating buyers and their data with care, diligence and respect right from the get-go.

Less is more

If your telemarketing team or agency work on the basis that they’ll present a mixed bag of leads, of varying criteria, quality or warmth, they may well be setting you all up for failure. Data is precious, and customer experience even more so. Besides, some leads just aren’t worth the effort it takes to sell to them. Mismatching objectives may well mean they’re not right for you, and you’re not right for them, so you end up with a cheap sale and a customer that takes more time and energy than they should.

So what to do? Appointment setting companies recognise it’s far more rewarding when the conditions for a good relationship are laid down and valued from the outset. Fewer leads that convert to high-quality clients are preferable to a ton of leads that flop.

Profile data carefully

The story starts with data. Decent appointment setting companies take great care to make data selections which help, not hinder a project. You might think that goes without saying, but many organisations hold data in their systems which they can’t trace back to a targeting decision. Some records will have come from a trade show, others from an inbound enquiry. They were never qualified in or sifted out. These records should be excluded from appointment setting campaigns until some work has been done to actually establish that they warrant the time and expense of meeting the buyer. If the business isn’t quite right and an appointment is generated with the wrong data, the resulting appointment will be an expensive and frustrating waste of time for everyone involved.

Test and test

For appointment setting to be successful, data should be carefully selected for its propensity to convert to sale. A good way of doing this is to look at your best clients. Who are they, what do they do, what needs are you meeting. Then take a small section of data which emulates that picture and call it. Test several small sets before deciding whether to add more of the same kind of data to the mix. Look for relevance. In other words, if 50% of the calls you or team make are deemed irrelevant because the organisation or buyer type wasn’t right, stop and review. Because effectively you have wasted the time of 50% of the people you called, and that’s not good for you, your team, the person you called, or your brand.

Value judgments

If you’re outsourcing to an appointment setting company, they may assume any data you provide is robust enough for them to carry on dialling without question. At Blue Donkey, we always test data in small sets, even if it was provided by our client. We’ll make a value judgement about how warmly calls are received, and how closely target companies fit our client’s criteria. If we’re concerned, the project will be reviewed and if necessary new data sourced. You should keep asking, does the feedback from calls or marketing suggest we’re banging on the right doors.

Find the MAN

Another thing that you might think should go without saying is this, make sure appointment setting calls are targeting the right key decision-maker. It’s so easy to get this wrong due to the ambiguous range of job titles in use. Appointment setting companies like Blue Donkey have routines that enable them to do this with every record. You should do the same. Before targeting someone, 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 check at reception level ‘what is the name of the XXX?’ This will be a job title such as Finance Director, take the name, check the spelling phonetically, and then qualify out. That’s when you ask ‘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 and you have to ask who they report to.

Pepper your buyers with benefits

A decision-maker receiving a cold call out of the blue, when they’re probably in the middle of something, means they’re suddenly yanked into a discussion they were not planning to have. Appointment setting companies are doing this all day every day. In order to show some sympathy for disturbing the buyer, the call has to be made as simple to transition in to as possible. Benefit selling is one of the things you can do to make the call work for the buyer. If you are selling features, you’re talking about what something can do, if you’re selling benefits you are explaining what something can help a buyer achieve. Benefits are what creates the desire, and benefit selling is the process of connecting what a product does (feature) to the problem your buyer needs to solve.

Finally, give buyers time to think and reflect, so be prepared to gain consent for another call, at an agreed time before the appointment setting process is complete. Work at a pace that’s right for your potential buyer. We know it’s tempting to try and get the appointment there and then, however, if you push hard for the appointment you’ll put the decision-maker off. Pushy isn’t a good look and it’s bad for your brand. Even if you do get the meeting, it’s likely they’ll cancel.

How to create empathy in your prospect relationship marketing

Posted on 28 January 2021 by bluedonkey

Prospect relationship marketing is the process of gathering together a list of companies that on the face of it should be interested in your product or service, and then calling them. This is usually defined by the kind of needs a company of that type and size may have. If you produce widgets, they might be a manufacturer that use widgets on their production line. One by one you’ll target, reach, and discuss their requirement. Your success will be incumbent on your ability to get under the skin of buyers, understand their needs, and communicate how you and your business can serve those needs. In short, this is relationship building. It’s rapport. It’s empathy.

Empathy is the ability to see things through someone else’s viewpoint, and to sense, understand and feel another person’s emotions. We’ve always known that empathy is a really important trait in life. In business, especially in sales, it is the pixie dust that makes magic happen. But empathy is an elusive quality that’s hard to emulate if you’re not quite feeling it. This is because it’s a trait. Some might even say, it’s a genetically determined characteristic, so you either have it or you don’t. People who aren’t natural empathisers must therefore learn the skills and behaviours associated with empathy, for their prospect marketing to yield relationships worth having.

I feel your pain

Because real empathy is a scarce and valuable thing, certain expressions and idioms have crept into the world of prospect relationship marketing. Many of them need to creep right back out again. I feel your pain is definitely one of them. Like the politician to a constituent complaining about their drains, the expression is used for fake care. Far better to meet genuine needs with basic authentic language such as ‘I completely understand what you’re saying’. Being the authentic straight up you is always better for creating warmth and empathy in a call than jargon, idioms, or language that people around you might adopt. People still buy people so work on your techniques by all means, but resist the temptation to absorb language or behaviours that aren’t really you.

Listen to hear, not to respond

In sales, we’re told to ‘show empathy’, this is actually a bit of an oxymoron. Empathy isn’t something you show, if it is, it’s fake. It’s saying ‘hey I listened to you, my turn now’. You don’t show empathy, you have empathy. There’s a big difference. When you show empathy you listen to respond, having empathy means you listen to hear. And if you listen to hear, you’re far more likely to get to the bottom of what someone needs, and your work goes beyond just mere prospect relationship marketing. Most companies can look at their most active, or best loved clients and trace the relationship back to the first contact. Communicating in a way that resonates well and makes a lasting impact demands that we listen. Carefully and deeply listen. Only when we’ve understood and calibrated what our buyer wants, should we respond.

Deafening silence

And speaking of an oxymoron, the term ‘deafening silence’ is a good one. It is used to describe those excruciating moments of silence after you’ve asked a question, and your buyer is reflecting, calibrating what you’ve said, and formulating an answer. For your prospect relationship marketing to be a success, you have to learn not to jump in and fill the silence. Often the agony of those moments cause us to say something, offer a multiple-choice option, or suggest answers to the question. We know why it happens. But don’t do it. It’s an empathy murdering tactic. Instead, when the silence is painful, remember it may seem like minutes, but it’s really just seconds. A good way to avoid the temptation to jump in and fill the void is to count on your fingers. Actually, hold the fingers of your hand up one by one. It’s almost impossible to do that fast. By the time you got to five, the buyer will speak.

That’s interesting, tell me more

People love being listened to. It is, without doubt, one of the best methods of learning to be more empathetic. It’s also one of the best prospect marketing tools available for nurturing meaningful relationships. And you get to learn what the buyer wants you to put on the table if you’re going to win their confidence. Open questions begin with the words what, when, how, why, and where. They’re a great way to get people talking because you can’t answer the question with a simple yes or no, they generally require thought and expansive answers. So open questions will always have a big part to play in creating empathy, because they lay the groundwork for you to listen and your relationship marketing to happen. But open questions aren’t the only gig in town. Growing your questions from something your buyer has said is a beautifully empathetic way of building your relationship. ‘That’s interesting, tell me more’ and similar responses will help you invite more explanation.

The bottom line here is that undoubtedly, to show care, you have to care. To demonstrate empathy, you need to put the needs of another first. Being properly engaged in calls, visualising a person in your mind as you speak, and knowing what’s special about your business will help you build the pixie dust qualities of empathy. The positive impact on your prospect relationship marketing will make the extra effort worthwhile. Even better though, the increased meaning and satisfaction this affords us in our careers is nothing less than pixie magic.