Why telemarketing
fails
sales talk
Whether it’s all in the name or whether
engagement is key, Hilary Broadley believes
that there is still a role for this multi-layered
and multi-faceted sales activity.
I
’d like to begin by saying that despite
the title of this article, in the context of
professional services in particular, the
term ‘telemarketing’ is a misnomer.
It’s a blanket term that is no longer (and
perhaps has never been) fit for purpose.
Take a few moments to jot down some
words that the term telemarketing
conjures up. I suspect at worst they will
be generally negative and at best limiting
and may include visions of mass call
centres and high levels of cold calling and
bear little relation to what you are about
to read. Your preconceptions can be one
of the reasons campaigns fail, and trying
to get buy-in from partners can be difficult if they feel the term ‘telemarketing’
devalues their proposition.
Let’s start with the end in mind. Your
fundamental objective when engaging an
agency is surely to uncover new business
opportunities and win new clients. By the
time you get to the point of briefing an
agency, you will have thought long and
hard about the businesses you would like
to target and why your service will
resonate with them. This is the time to be
ambitious for what you and your chosen
agency can achieve together and it
requires far more than a traditional telemarketing approach.
The journey towards identifying and
securing new business opportunities is a
complex and multi-layered one; data is
validated, intelligence is gathered and a
picture is built of buying cycles and the
decision making unit within your target
To get the best return
from your investment
it’s crucial that
partners and other fee
earners also see the
benefit and truly
engage in the process.
This article originally
appeared in PM magazine.
For further details go to
www.pmforum.co.uk
organisations. This multi-layered and
multi-faceted sales activity takes place
over weeks and months and should
always be dictated by the needs and
buying cycles of your target clients rather
than your own marketing targets or deadlines.
Focussing on the end results rather
than the tools utilised to achieve them
will secure a higher level of engagement
internally which brings me onto the next
challenge.
Engagement (from everyone) is
key
When you engage an agency to support
lead generation activities for campaigns,
you will have done your due diligence
and, in times of restricted budgets, will
have decided the value in outsourcing
rather than undertaking the activity inhouse. To get the best return from your
investment it’s crucial that partners and
other fee earners also see the benefit and
truly engage in the process. Otherwise
when you reach a point at which their
participation is required, be it to attend
sales meetings or to input into sales
support materials, they could view these
activities as low priority and the investment in the campaign is put at risk.
Partners and fee earners can get involved
in many ways but at the very least they
should attend the initial planning and
briefing sessions and be prepared to
share their insights and observations
about the marketplace, the needs and
pm | Winter 2016
21
sales talk
call you make count towards the end goal.
Each call you make represents an opportunity to validate existing or add new
data, map the DMU in an organisation,
find out about buying cycles and retendering processes and generally build a
clearer picture of the organisation you are
targeting.
All of the above activities are valuable
and it’s as important to measure and
report on them as it is to record the
number of appointments set or leads
generated.
Manage expectations
challenges of the prospective clients your
campaign will be targeting and the solutions they can provide. Ideally they will
be regularly available to contribute to
progress meetings at which updates and
insights can be shared and sales messages
honed.
As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of
valuable intelligence gathered throughout
the course of the campaign and your
wider marketing team need to play their
part in ensuring this information is used
effectively. Whether it is inputting relevant data into your CRM system or
feeding information about current
suppliers into your bid team, the stakeholder group involved in lead generation
projects might be wider than you initially
think.
Don’t abdicate responsibility
When you engage an agency to support
your sales and marketing plans (be it for
lead generation or any other activity),
responsibility for its success remains with
you. The agency are the experts in their
field and while they expect to be held
accountable for the results they undertake to deliver, you must be available to
provide additional data, to engage in
conversations if the project needs to
change direction and to provide access to
partners and other stakeholders as necessary.
It can be easy to think that once your
agency is briefed then your job is done
but you should remain engaged and available to work alongside your agency if they
feel a change of approach might yield
22
pm | Winter 2016
better results or targets need to be
adjusted.
Get your money’s worth
Encourage your agency to challenge you
and play devil’s advocate. They will
undoubtedly be more experienced than
you – after all that’s why you picked
them! So let them provide their perspective and take the opportunity to pick their
brains. Work together as a team and
leave no stone unturned in planning and
preparation.
Personally I find my team and I can
deliver the best results for our clients if
we understand not only what they want
to achieve tactically from a campaign but
also if they can share their strategic goals
with us. This way we can innovate on
their behalf and can often uncover additional opportunities a more tactical
approach might not deliver.
Check your value proposition. You
can guarantee that your competitor along
with a number of other businesses are
targeting the same individual or company
so your proposition needs to be at its
most compelling – why should the
prospect take the call about your service
over and above the competition?
Don’t just count calls, make calls
count
Think carefully about how you want to
measure the success of a campaign. While
you must make a certain number of calls
in order for a campaign to be effective,
it’s important to focus on making each
Reaching senior decision makers,
building rapport and nurturing the
seedlings of a business relationship takes
time and many, many interventions. It’s
vital that all stakeholders involved (partners in particular!) have realistic expectations of the time it takes to generate
qualified leads or set appointments with
individuals at the appropriate seniority
level.
In each and every business, regardless
of size, there are a number of people
involved in the decision making process.
Those of you who have studied marketing
theory will be all too familiar with
Kotler’s thinking around the ‘decision
making unit’ (DMU) and when it comes
to buying services complex in nature, like
those offered by professional firms, identifying and mapping the constituents of
the DMU can be a time consuming task.
Work to your prospects timescales
and priorities, not your own.
In sales, timing is everything. As I eluded
to earlier it is important to remember
that in looking to build new relationships
and win new business opportunities we
need to take into account the priorities
and timescales of our target prospects
rather than those of our own. This is
especially so when selling high value long
term solutions such as professional services. I have known organisations limit
their lead generation activity to one
intense eight week campaign every year
and then wonder why outcomes aren’t
good. What happens if their prospects are
looking for a partner in the other 44
weeks of the year?
Hilary Broadley is MD of
Broadley Speaking, a B2B
business development
agency which helps its
professional services clients
reach senior decision
makers and win new business opportunities, and
provides sales training to in-house teams.