Professional and skilled cold calling is a compelling and effective route to gaining new business leads and growing a powerful sales funnel. We are only too aware of the infinite number of possible opportunities out there, perhaps with the next call.
Cold calling is tough, and it can send the best of us running for the hills. So no surprises then that when telemarketers are nervous about making a call, research can suddenly seem like the most important thing in the world.
Telemarketers who are unwittingly putting off making their next cold call, often begin by trawling their target businesses website; carefully looking up their products, blogs, and history, in the hope that they become ‘knowledgeable’ about the business. This sounds like a sensible and diligent measure, yes? We say no! Spending too much time in preparation can itself be the cause of failure in B2B telemarketing because you simply don’t have the luxury of time.
There’s no denying that in B2B telemarketing a bit of research can make a big difference to the quality of your communication. However spending five, ten or even fifteen minutes researching a company every time you make a call is highly impractical. Not only is it unnecessary, but research is time consuming, so potentially a waste of your time and your company’s precious resources. Too much research will put a serious dent in your productivity and can prevent your company from getting the results it needs from its B2B telemarketing.
Productivity and success
On average, reaching a senior decision maker in an organisation takes between eight and twelve attempts. If a telemarketer spends valuable time researching a company before picking up the phone every time, their productivity will be severely reduced and it will take them a lot longer to hit their targets.
In the UK we have some of the lowest productivity figures in the western world. Called the productivity puzzle the Office for National Statistics (ONS) continues to report that the UK struggles to keep pace with the demands of western economies, and again report Labour productivity for Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2019, as measured by output per hour, decreased by 0.2% compared with the same quarter in the previous year, so the problem isn’t going away any time soon.
According to Snacknation however, it seems like more and more companies are adopting the motto “do more with less”. They propose some ways UK workers can adopt new habits to increase productivity at work. We like this one: try one thing at a time and do it for at least 21 days, the time it typically takes to form a new habit.
So, we suggest that for 21 days, you spend less than 90 seconds researching a company before you actually pick up the phone. Then start a dialog which includes some good open questions to get them answering your curiosity about who they are and how you can help them.
At Blue Donkey, we’re used to making the most of every moment we’re working on a project in order to optimise the value we deliver to our clients. So we’ve developed our own techniques for making our research more efficient and our call rate much more productive.
Research
Instead of looking through a company’s website before calling them we suggest dialling the number, while simultaneously logging onto their homepage. This enables a swift look at the products and services on offer before a conversation with the decision maker. This will provide us the information we need to ask insightful open questions and get the person we’re calling engaged in the conversation. As well as boosting productivity, this mini research technique ensures our telemarketers don’t develop any preconceptions about a business. By avoiding assumptions, we can approach each call on its own merits and get more out of our interactions. Remember the adage, assumptions make an Ass of you and me!
Our toolbox for successful cold calling
As an outsourcer, everything we do at Blue Donkey needs to be benchmarked, measurable and based on best practice not just simple compliance. We need to be powerful and effective on the phone, but we need to do it fast. To help us to achieve our time sensitive goals, we’ve developed a basic toolbox of telemarketing techniques. These tools give us the ability to gain a clear and compelling understanding of the products or services we’re representing. Enabling us to take on the voice of our clients and understand what they do, what makes them special, and how the services we’re representing can help decision makers.
By turning research into a fine art and carefully honing our telemarketing techniques, we’re able to get great results quickly and efficiently. To find out more, take a look around our site or contact a member of the Blue Donkey team.
