Telemarketing Archives

Sell the sizzle, not the sausage

Posted on 18 February 2020 by bluedonkey

One of the mantras we use with our client family at Blue Donkey is We sell the sizzle; You sell the sausage. This is important in b2b telemarketing. It’s key to why people come to us for expertise and forms part of our identity as an agency. So what on earth do we mean by sell the sizzle, not the sausage? We’re not sure where the expression originally came from as many lay claim to it, the version we like is Elmer Wheeler’s from the 1920s. He urged salespeople to focus on the experience around a product, rather than simply on the object itself. In b2b telemarketing, we translate that as the familiar concept of benefit selling, where instead of using features to sell (“it has xyz Mr. Prospect”) we use benefits (“which means it does abc”). One is basically what it has – its features or properties, for example, the other is what you get by having it – in other words, the benefit it delivers.

People never buy a product or service because of its features, they only ever buy a product or service because of the benefit delivered. So you won’t buy toothpaste because it contains fluoride, you buy toothpaste because you want clean, white teeth. The fluoride is the feature, the benefit is what you get from having this feature.

Mmm yum!

You’ll notice that sausages sizzling in a frying pan are appealing, often more so than actually eating the sausage (or not!) The sound and smell of the sizzle represent the promise of something nice to come.

Buyers in b2b telemarketing need to know what your product or service can do for them, rather than how it works. To us at Blue Donkey selling the sizzle is all about selling the particular business benefits of a product or service over the telephone. Our job is to connect with the right prospects, find out about their needs, and deliver strong benefits relating to those needs. We build an appetite for a particular way of improving their business or its performance and then critically, we pass that interest to our clients as a lead generated.

As the b2b telemarketing team, we do the first stage of the sales process by connecting with the right person and building rapport and desire (the sizzle), then our clients get the second stage of the process (the sausage) by way of the lead generation. If we go too far on the phone and try to sell the sausage, it negates the point of a meeting, and the lead is lost. This is one of the reasons why technical people sometimes struggle to make a success of b2b telemarketing, they try to take the call too far. According to business publisher Entrepreneur.com The best way to understand the true benefit of your product or service is to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question.

What’s a benefit (or a sizzle, or a sausage??)

Blue Donkey takes the interaction to the point where we have established need, interest, trust, and rapport with the prospect, this is the sizzle – the benefit selling. The sausage is passed to our client in the lead generation process as a sales lead for them to convert by taking the interaction with the prospect further and turning them into customers.

In b2b telemarketing, a benefit is something that helps you, an enabler. For businesses ‘a benefit’ is always associated with time, effort, money or security.

No business purchase is ever made unless it delivers against one of those four benefits. As a consumer we buy for all sorts of different reasons, as business purchasers, we only buy for one or more of those four business benefits.

Time – so reduces the amount of time required to do a certain task
Effort – so it makes the process easier or reduces the amount of effort required
Money – saves money or makes money
Security – reduces risk, or increases the sense of security

Sizzling hot sales leads

When we sell the sizzle in b2b telemarketing it’s our job to get the prospect interested, understand how we can help, and once ready and committed to speaking to us further, we ‘close’ – so we ask for a meeting. Sometimes the close can feel awkward. Overcoming this can be as easy as saying “from what you’re telling me, it sounds like there are a number of ways we can help you, throw some dates at me and I’ll have somebody come and show you how we can help”.

More and more companies are finding the task of lead generation and b2b telemarketing specifically challenging for their internal teams. Outsourcing has become a popular choice especially for organisations that can make better use of their resources by concentrating on core tasks and outsourcing non-core activities to specialists like Blue Donkey. To find out more about the work we do, or to discuss a project of your own, get in touch with Blue Donkey today.

How lead generation companies find the right Mr Right

Posted on 12 February 2020 by bluedonkey

Have you ever wondered why lead generation companies spend so much time obsessing over gatekeeper skills? If you use the telephone for new business, you’ll know only too well that getting past the gatekeeper or receptionist and finding the right decision maker is pretty mission critical. For lead generation companies this competence is one that can make or break a project or even a business. In our 22 years we’ve discovered that determining the right Mr. Right isn’t always a clear-cut thing. Read on to find out more.

Mr. Right

For lead generation companies to perform consistently, they have to be good at qualifying the right names at reception level. Call after call they must ferret out new items of information, and new influencers or decision makers. As most lead generation companies will have a large number of retained projects, they’ll be concerned with building a long-term pipeline of names, as well as those required to secure the objectives for that week or that month. Questions used for calls at reception level will have a large bearing on the success of the whole cycle of telemarketing, or even the whole marketing cycle, because if the wrong names go in, the entire marketing cycle will be impaired. Asking who is the person responsible for/in charge of / or who makes decisions about, rather than asking for the person who ‘deals with’, will help guard against spending time and wasted calls trying to reach the wrong Mr. Right.

Mr. Right-Now

At Blue Donkey finding Mr. Right, Mrs. Right or Ms. Right is very close to our hearts. Occasionally we find stakeholders that are helpful to our purpose because they are involved in the buying process in some way, for example, they may be end users of a product or service, they could be in the procurement division, they might be part of a broader function such as operations. These folk need to be engaged, and convinced, they form part of the process so they are effectively Mr. Right-Now. They’re affected indirectly but don’t have chief decision-making responsibility. The notion of a ‘decision making unit’ is quite an interesting one. Some organisations simply don’t have single decision makers they have a number of people who perform different functions. Often lead generation companies may need to speak to one, some, most or all of them in order to onboard them. The reality is, your competition probably won’t have the patience to see this through, so it’s worth the extra time and effort.

Mr. Right-Then

Once won, these organisational stakeholders or groups are often customers for life. Most lead generation companies don’t have 22 years under their belt, some never will. This is simply because having too much of an eye on today’s goals can sometimes obscure the future. For a small family business like Blue Donkey, over our 22 years, we’ve seen the value our strong connections and friendships bring. It’s not unusual for our client friends to return through several career moves. They trust us to deliver a dedicated service they can rely on to achieve their organisational and career goals, and in doing so we achieve ours. If you’ve developed a strong bond as a supplier, a colleague, or partner, chances are, you’ll be called upon again. So past customers are also fantastic prospects.

More than that, it’s great to work with people you consider part of your professional family. You already have trust, and belief in each other. Experts at Forbes explain that keeping clients for life takes high emotional intelligence. They add “don’t tell me business isn’t personal, and I won’t tell you finance is void of emotion. It’s okay to let the authentic, relatable human creep in. That’s when stuff gets real and relationships blossom.”

To understand more about the techniques used by lead generation companies, or to find out what Blue Donkey can do for you, contact a member of our team today.

Importance of Closed questions for a lead generation agency

Posted on 7 February 2020 by bluedonkey

For a lead generation agency, it’s critical that telemarketing is designed to maximise every tool in the armoury. Some of these tools are not ones you would normally associate with successful telemarketing, and probably won’t be ones your lead generation agency will wax lyrical about. Closed questions fall into this category. It’s true we all love an open question, at Blue Donkey Intelligent Telemarketing we like to be a bit sassy though, so here’s our take on the important role played by the much-maligned closed question.

What is a closed question?

A closed question in lead generation agency speak is one that can be answered with a simple yes or no. In telemarketing, you need to get people engaged as quickly as possible. The faster you can get someone talking, the easier it will be for you to build a rapport and begin laying the foundations for a business relationship. Consequently, closed questions are a definite no-no at the beginning of a call, especially since asking a closed question to someone that you haven’t yet built a rapport with will almost certainly attract a negative response. However, there are a lot of points in the call where closed questions work a treat. They usually begin with would you, could you, type prompts and for a lead generation agency they are the main tool used to pre-close, where you test the waters for whether a decision maker is willing to proceed. For example, ‘would you be willing to have someone come and see you about x’.

No need to go on about it

Closed questions are also excellent for helping control the flow of a conversation. It’s hard to believe perhaps but a good lead generation agency will find getting people off the phone is sometimes as hard as getting them on it. Decision makers love talking about their business, and for a charismatic, skilled telemarketer, getting people engaged won’t be too much of a problem until they start over-sharing or going off on a tangent. The closed question can help gently rescue such situations by steering the call to its conclusion.

So controlling

Another way they help with controlling a discussion is that closed questions can be used to gain agreement, and encourage the next steps, for example by asking the decision maker can we come and see you about that. In some cases, several closed questions might be used by a lead generation agency to successfully establish the appropriate criteria for a lead has been met. It’s important these aren’t fired out at speed like a machine-gun, but used carefully they can help ensure that the right boxes have been ticked before you close for a meeting, sale or whatever the objective of your call.

What we need is facts

Finally closed questions are a great way to establish and confirm facts. An open question is a question that generally begins with the words what, when, where, how, and they are designed to encourage expansive and informative answers. They’re also great for building relationships because we all like to talk about ourselves or our business. But once you’ve been showered with information you need to ensure you’ve established the facts correctly. A lead generation agency will have a quality management imperative here, as the database and the insight gained will be a measure of their ability.

Growing assets

However, whether you work in a lead generation agency or not, the database should be seen as a business asset. If possible, it should contain a searchable drop down menus to allow your marketing department to select and segment based on homogenous features – marketing speak for prospects who are similar so they can be targeted with marketing just for them. For example, a database might have a drop down menu for organisation size, the lead generation agency will populate this field as they go along, so small companies can be contacted with products that are relevant to them, and large ones can be targeted specifically with products designed for the larger organisation. This reduces wasted marketing budget and enables your messaging to be better targeted. According to Professor Malcolm McDonald, one of the world’s foremost authorities on strategic marketing, market segmentation and the concept of the ‘segment of one’, segmenting at key decision points is the bedrock of commercial success. It consists of splitting the market into groups of people who are likely to behave in a similar way

Using the database to carefully build this insight will overtime enable far better use of resources, reduce wastage and deliver success measured in the same robust way a lead generation agency uses metrics.

Closed 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.

What’s Mindshare when it’s at home?

Posted on 30 January 2020 by bluedonkey

Telemarketing companies are engaged by clients to find the right key decision makers and communicate compelling messages. Most telemarketing companies would say they stand or fall on their ability to achieve this task well. But does this always mean a sales lead is generated? You might think so. However, the answer is almost certainly no.

Why bother!

What’s the point of going through the agony of finding decision maker names, dialling numerous attempts to catch them, mustering the pluck to get your message out, asking open questions, and phew… finally the close… if you’re not even going to get a sale at the end of it all. Some might say this is a waste of time if you don’t actually make a marketshare gain, like winning the sale or taking an order away from the competition. The truth is, telemarketing companies will not just be concerned with generating tangible, measurable results, whether they’re sales leads, meetings or sales transactions. In fact, the work of telemarketing companies is more often about having a series of two-way conversations with potential buyers that are simple enough to challenge the way they think. The premise being that if you do this often enough, and well enough, eventually sales or marketshare if you like, will follow.

Selling and sales

These days the task of selling is rarely about just winning orders. As more markets become saturated, the differentiating factor between one product and its competitors becomes harder to define. Everything starts to look broadly the same. When this happens, people and their collective personalities and attitudes become the main factor making a company stand out from the crowd. In the same way that we all remember great service, those calls that stick out in our mind because someone was charismatic, knowledgeable, demonstrated understanding of our business, will be the ones that stand out for us. And that’s what we call mindshare! It’s not just about being ‘nice’ it’s about truly connecting with people, and building an army of supporters as we go through our day.

It’s all in the mind

When mindshare works, it means that clients, customers, or prospects connect with your business and its values. Yes, it’s likely to create marketshare at some point, but on its own, it’s not a tangible sale. So where marketshare is measurable as the amount of revenue you generate, mindshare is about how well people remember your brand or business which is much harder to define.

Thought leadership publishers Future of Customer Engagement and Experience describe a failure to create this warm mindshare factor as the Chewbacca Syndrome. They explain the effect. ‘It happens frequently to those who are completely neck deep in their company lingo and have a unilaterally inside-out view of the world. The customer’s reality and the market situation might as well be on a disconnected parallel universe, for all the consideration it’s given’. One of their key recommendations to avoid Chewbacca syndrome is to put the customer at the centre of your universe. In other words, take the trouble to reflect on their needs and wants before diving into your remit to sell.

So why care?

Telemarketing companies consider mindshare to be as important as marketshare. Quite simply because the leads we generate this month might be a measure of marketshare, but the value we deliver in six months is attributable to mindshare, and depends on how we influence people today. When organisations are only concerned with winning sales, the culture within the sales team will be self-serving and flawed. Like the Chewbacca Syndrome, it’s a bit cheesy and repellent and definitely isn’t for organisations with an eye on long-term sustainability.

To find out more about how Blue Donkey can help you create positive mindshare for your brand contact us on 01353 724 880.

Why B2B Telemarketing companies use open questions

Posted on 20 January 2020 by bluedonkey

B2B telemarketing companies love open questions, in fact, they are the single most important tool in our armoury. This is because, for a telemarketing call to be successful, we need to get people talking to us about what’s important to them and their business. The faster we can get someone talking, the easier it is to build rapport and begin laying the foundations for a business relationship. Of course, decision makers are busy, so getting them to sit down and talk isn’t always easy.

We’ve tried out lots of different ways of getting telemarketing calls off of the ground and like most good B2B telemarketing companies we find 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 makes an open question?

An open question is a question that can’t be answered with a simple, single word, such as yes or no. B2B telemarketing companies need to get people talking, dial after dial, as compellingly as possible. Asking questions that engage and capture a buyer’s imagination will get them contributing to a conversation quickly and attentively. Usually starting with words such as what, when, how, where or why, an open question is one that gets people thinking and draws them into a dialog. For example, a question beginning ‘how do you achieve…’ takes focus and concentration, so you’re likely to get some useful detail in the answer. Once you’ve got them talking, you can direct the dialogue, begin to introduce your business and get your relationship underway.

Open questions increase our likability

We all want to be liked. Engaging a complete stranger on the phone is never an easy thing to achieve. Coupled with the fact that at B2B telemarketing companies, we know the people we’re calling are NOT interested. How do we know that? Well, we’re calling them, and they’re not calling us.

Asking open questions, that engage and get people talking is a human skill that’s as useful in life as it is in business. By showing genuine interest and learning to listen attentively to others helps us build more enduring relationships, and helps us find meaning in our work (as in life). New research from a team of Harvard psychological scientists suggests that asking more questions and in particular, asking more follow-up questions —increases people’s positive impressions.

Open questions Do’s and Don’ts

B2B telemarketing companies invariably use open questions to gently probe decision makers about specific challenges their business faces. These are always in relation to the product or solution they are calling about. Here’s what we think.

Do keep your questions simple and focus on one thing at a time. Don’t try and double-barrel your questions so you’re asking about lots of things at once, as the decision maker will generally answer the last one only. Do be clear about what you’re asking if you’re not clear how can someone else be expected to understand? Don’t use the same question over and over again, like anything you’re repeating endlessly, it will eventually sound robotic. Do listen to the answer, most of us find listening hardest when we’re nervous. Finally, don’t ask someone you don’t know how they are today (nuff said).

Use open questions to gain insight

As well as helping B2B telemarketing companies get the decision maker talking, open questions are used to gain insight and build a mosaic about each organisation we call. This helps by both opening up new potential opportunities, and as a means of powering up our client databases, so that over time they can become a valuable business asset in their own right. Not only does a good database provide sales, it will also become an ‘intangible asset’ in company valuations if overtime open questions are used regularly to keep building insight and intelligence about prospect companies.

A bit of research before you pick up the phone, or as you’re dialling can help you identify questions that could lead to something more. A few moments looking at a website could arm you with a better understanding of who they are and what they do so you can ask the right questions when you’re speaking.

Don’t ask if you can ask!

Finally, B2B telemarketing companies probably spend as much time weeding out bad habits as they do teaching good ones. One of our pet peeves is the temptation to ask if you can ask. It serves no purpose other than to make a question longer and more cumbersome. Listen carefully and you’ll hear someone doing it in your office today. It’s when a question is preceded by the words ‘And can I just ask’.

Open questions are a vital and powerful telemarketing tool. To learn more about how B2B telemarketing companies craft telemarketing techniques, or to find out more about what we can do to help you, contact a member of the Blue Donkey team today.

Is it time to STOP opening B2B Telemarketing calls Happy New Year?

Posted on 13 January 2020 by bluedonkey

At the right time of year, opening B2B telemarketing calls with the phrase ‘Happy New Year’ is a great way to set a positive tone for your conversation. Unlike the many religious festivals and events that take place over the same period, New Year is pretty much universal so applies to anyone.

However, as a lot of telemarketers begin their calls with ‘Happy New Year’ around this time, people can get bored of hearing it fast. And in fact, if you persevere with the opener for too long, you could end up irritating people rather than disarming them. So, when exactly is the right time to stop wishing everyone a happy New Year? And should you set your telemarketing team a clear cut-off point?

First week back in the office

The first week back in the office in January is generally an acceptable time to begin every call by wishing the prospect a happy New Year. Most people will be speaking to colleagues, telemarketers and B2B contacts for the first time since before Christmas so it won’t come as a surprise if they’re wished a happy New Year several times a day.

According to a poll carried out by Cambridge News, 22% of people stop using the phrase after the 1st January. Luckily for telemarketers, however, the same study found that a whopping 63% of people continue to wish colleagues, friends and B2B contacts a happy New Year until the end of the first week of the month.

Into January and beyond

The Cambridge News poll found that just 15% of people believe it’s appropriate to drag New Year pleasantries out for the whole of January. Most people will have done their fair share of well-wishing by the middle of the month and some may find the phrase a little jarring as January draws to a close.

In fact, wishing prospects and contacts a happy New Year long after the celebrations are done and dusted can make your telemarketers seem like they’re trying a little too hard to be friendly. It could also give decision makers and gatekeepers the impression that they’re low on ideas or poor innovators.

Getting it right

If you want to ensure your team gets their calls off on the right foot and doesn’t irritate anyone with their New Year greetings, it’s important to train them in effective and productive opening techniques. If they’re able to tackle a range of situations, they won’t have to rely on clichés and will be able to use seasonal greetings only when they’re really appropriate.

To find out more about improving the quality of your B2B telemarketing calls, contact a member of our team or take a look around our site.

Appointment making experts capture attention in 10 seconds or less

Posted on 16 December 2019 by bluedonkey

Appointment making experts must capture the attention of the person they are calling in the first few seconds of engagement. If you can do this, you’ll have a much better chance of achieving the objective of your call. If you find you sometimes struggle to capture attention, take a look at the tips below for grabbing a prospect’s attention quickly and effectively.

Stand out from the crowd

One of the best techniques appointment making experts use to capture attention quickly over the phone is to create original sounding calls. By giving buyers something authentic you will disrupt their routine and ensure their focus is entirely on you. Work on effective opening techniques so the start of your call is original, informative and captivating. Your call should always begin with who you are, where you’re calling from, and the reason for your call. This should be short, original, and informative. Then ask an open question that draws the person into your call in a relevant way – so no questions about the weather please!

Get personal

If your telemarketing calls sound scripted, generic, or irrelevant, it will repel your buyer, making them unlikely to pay attention. If you can tailor your call, make it personal to them and their business, you’ll be able to demonstrate not only that you care about their needs and requirements, but also that you’re sensitive to the demands of their industry and that you’ve taken the time to think about their needs. Appointment making experts will generally find that if the chemistry is right in the first few seconds of a call, they are more likely to win face-time with their potential buyer.

Be positive

We tend to overestimate how many calls buyers get these days. One of the worst things you can do when starting a conversation with a target decision maker is to give voice to your insecurities with statements such as ‘I’m sure you get many calls like this’ or ‘I know you must be very busy’. The implication with such sentiments is that you believe they won’t want to speak with you. And if you feel that way, guess what happens? Being positive in your outlook will help you sound inviting, compelling and like you can make a difference to that person’s work in some way. After all, you wouldn’t have them on your database, or be calling unless you had already established that you have a good reason to speak with them.

Simple is best

Few things can cause a telemarketing call to wither and fade faster than technical jargon and business speak. Appointment making experts will generally avoid the use of business jargon, its outmoded and irrelevant for most professional situations. Instead of trying to impress your contact with buzzwords and long, complex phrases, keep your conversation simple. Use short sentences and reference proof points or examples, and use dialog that’s accessible to anyone. That way your call is easy to digest and builds bridges in your communication, not barriers. Besides, there is nothing more embarrassing or cheesy than using a piece of jargon incorrectly – cringe!

Pay attention please

If you want your buyer to give you their complete attention, you need to do the same. Make sure you don’t become distracted during your call, and this is so easy to do when you’re nervous because you are tuned in to your own feelings and emotions, rather than those of the person you’re communicating with. Try to make sure you listen carefully to their answers, instead of attempting to think ahead to what comes next. Seeing a person in your mind will help you do this.

Appointment making experts learn to build rapport by carefully listening to the person they’re speaking to, using complete attention to gain valuable insight into their needs and requirements. This also serves to help the appointment setter’s job become more worthwhile and meaningful so they are actually doing something with a social purpose, to help someone else. According to wellbeing experts at Rescuetime.com meaning in the workplace is one of those things that is hard to define, but once discovered has far-reaching benefits.

Capturing someone’s attention quickly and effectively is an essential telemarketing skill. To find out more about useful telemarketing techniques, take a look around our website or give us a call and speak to one of the friendly members of our team.

Negative impacts that b2b telemarketing companies try to avoid

Posted on 12 December 2019 by bluedonkey

A negative brand impression can be hard to recover from, particularly where it’s the first impression a potential client gets about a business. For b2b telemarketing companies, this is an important consideration and one that means we spend a lot of time crafting calls that resonate in a buyer’s mind positively. Telemarketers are often the first contact a company has with new potential clients so making sure your team know how to make a good impression is essential if you want your telemarketing campaigns to succeed.

Pushy!

As all b2b telemarketing companies know, if there’s one thing that decision makers dislike more than anything else, it’s callers who come on too strong. Diving into a sales patter before you’ve taken the time to build rapport or warmth with the decision maker will make your telemarketers seem pushy and ham-fisted. This could easily lead someone to a negative impression of your brand. According to CRM software experts Hubspot “there’s this notion that to grow a business, you have to be ruthless. But we know there’s a better way to grow. One where what’s good for the bottom line is also good for customers. We believe businesses can grow with a conscience and succeed with a soul”. Hubspot maintain that respect is key to success in today’s markets, and say that customers don’t want to be harassed by salespeople, they want to be helped, and so presenting information in a way that’s both respectful and intelligent will protect the integrity of your brand and give your teams a better sense of meaningful work.

Questions questions

Asking questions is an essential part of building a positive brand impression not just for b2b telemarketing companies but for anyone using the telephone to engage with clients or potential clients. If your team fails to create an authentic two-way dialog, they risk alienating decision makers, burning through precious data or simply becoming disillusioned with their lack of positive achievement. In addition to creating a productive conversation, asking questions gives telemarketers an opportunity to uncover more about the prospect and demonstrate that they have their interests at heart.

Gently does it

Good connections and a strong product or service offered to the right organisation and buyer will help influence people to act. So b2b telemarketing companies will always seek to ensure that where a potential buyer isn’t ready to take the next steps, there is a default objective to gently gain consent for another call at an agreed time. It pays to have patience and build the relationship around the potential buyer’s needs and objectives, not our own. In the short term, setting aside the desire to generate a lead, in favour of managing the relationship for some point in the future, when there may be a decision pending, or a new budget coming up, is a better experience for all involved. If the data is properly selected and the call is strong, you can usually expect to generate a positive outcome, but that may not necessarily be a lead, it may be an opportunity to speak again. For b2b telemarketing companies, it’s mission-critical to be mindful that the most valuable relationships invariably take time to nurture.

Knowledge

Ideally, telemarketers need to be able to answer questions that decision makers may have. This means they need a good working knowledge of your company, your products, and your services, so they can discuss the benefits of what you offer and make a compelling case for why you’re the best option out there. Outsourced b2b telemarketing companies may not always know everything about a clients’ product or service offering, in which case they won’t blag, pretend, or swerve the question.

Instead, it’s much more satisfying to simply say ‘that’s an interesting question, I don’t know the answer, is there a particular reason why that’s important to you?’ Turning the challenge into an opportunity to be honest and open up the discussion, is far more rewarding than putting up a pretence or allowing ourselves to feel deflated by the failure to know absolutely everything.

Find out more about improving the quality of your telemarketing calls by taking a look around our website or getting in touch with a member of our expert team.

Open questions for b2b lead generation

Posted on 11 December 2019 by bluedonkey

The best telemarketers have a clear sense of what they need to do for effective b2b lead generation to happen. It starts with finding the right key buyers, engaging them in a two-way conversation using open questions, uncovering a need that they can fulfil, and closing for an appointment or desirable next step. Understanding the psychology behind these steps can help you to improve the quality of your calls and give your telemarketing the best possible outcomes.

Open questions

Open questions for b2b lead generation are ones that can’t be answered with a simple yes, no or single response. Open questions usually begin with the words Who, What, When, Why, or How. Closed questions are usually answered with a yes or no and typically used to gather particular items of information rather than paint broad pictures. Closed questions have their place in telemarketing but they are usually used to confirm or move the conversation to the next stage of action.

Open questions, on the other hand, require more design and thought. They often need more than simple or single sentence responses, so they are the perfect means by which b2b lead generation professionals can get a potential buyer involved and talking. Understanding exactly how an open question can impact a conversation and benefit a call can help you and your team to get more from sales and marketing campaigns. If you’ve ever been in therapy, you have probably noticed that your therapist asks lots of open questions designed to get you to offload, and according to the top 5 health publisher Verywell, the principle of asking open-ended questions versus close-ended questions can be used by anyone trying to get a conversation going.

Developing knowledge

Since open questions can’t be answered with a yes or know, they are great ways to uncover information about a business, its needs, and what’s important to decision makers in that business at that time. By beginning a call with an open question, telemarketers enable two-way dialog that helps provide a valuable opportunity to find out where they may be able to meet the needs and requirements of the buyer. It can also help the telemarketer to begin to build rapport with the prospect and create a beneficial business relationship.

Develop interest

When you ask an open question, it shows that you’re interested in finding out more about the person you’re speaking to. Rather than just ticking facts off a list or rushing the conversation towards a sale, you’re taking the time to really get to grips with the specific needs of the company you’re connecting with. As well as helping your conversation to get off on the right foot, this can also help your telemarketing call to stand out from the crowd, and unlike the transactional nature of selling to consumers, the most successful organisations selling to business know that b2b lead generation is all about relationships.

If you need help and advice on b2b lead generation or improving the quality of your telemarketing calls, we can help. Contact a member of our team today to find out more.

Do appointment setting companies see Christmas as humbug?

Posted on 26 November 2019 by bluedonkey

The lead up to the festive period provides a popular conundrum for those involved in sales and marketing. Some feel decision makers either won’t want to be bothered by sales calls, or they may be too preoccupied for them. Others take the view that it’s an opportune moment to connect with new potential buyers in the Christmas spirit. At Blue Donkey, we sit firmly in the latter camp. In fact, year after year, where other appointment setting companies down tools and knees up, Blue Donkey work hard to eek out the best possible year end sparkle.

Work is much more fun than fun (Noel Coward)

Appointment setting companies will typically have a calendar of projects that require key metrics to be met. Since any kind of uncertainty in marketing (as in life alas) isn’t helpful, the festive weeks are usually avoided for scheduling purposes. For those organisations, productivity is compromised, and possibly loaded into other months of the year. For appointment setting companies like Blue Donkey who choose to maximise this period Christmas is a chance to have a bit more fun. Phone lines are less busy so there are fewer calls to compete for decision maker attention. In fact running a telemarketing campaign at this time of year can allow you to take advantage of the seasonal good cheer that lingers in most offices, so telemarketing is both fun and rewarding as a result of increased contact and lead rates.

According to workplace experts All Business, a fun workplace is an important factor for reducing absenteeism and raising productivity. So managers at all firms, not just appointment setting companies, should look for opportunities to raise sprits especially at Christmas time when we are expecting teams to give that discretionary extra effort required to deliver results when everyone else appears to have downed-tools.

The final hurrah

After a long year of targets, metrics and KPIs, why would the high performing team want to end the year with a nose-dive to the finish line. Since some competing appointment setting companies and internal telemarketing teams won’t be working, the Christmas period allows those that are to get a head start on the new year. By the time January rolls around, many of your prospective customers will already have heard of your brand, your products and your services, allowing you to stay one step ahead of the competition. This head start can be invaluable in a competitive market and could make the difference between your brand having a good 2020 and a great one.

Business as usual

The key to making the most of this festive period is to keep calls light, engaging and interesting, but do stick to the knitting! In other words, the body of the call should be focussed around business discussions, not Christmas. Appointment setting agencies will always stick to the main focus of the call, which is to engage with the decision maker in a conversation about potential needs and requirements, and when the right needs have been identified, ask for a meeting. There is absolutely no reason why a potential buyer wouldn’t accept a meeting for the new year. Like the rest of us, they will want to capture any opportunity to increase their organisation’s effectiveness with the rights tools or services.

To find out more about effective telemarketing techniques, explore our site or get in touch with a member of our team.