Simple Lead Generation Facts: Knowing Where And Where Not To Get Information

Monitoring customers isn't just limited to consumer businesses. Even B2B companies need to observe their targets for lead generation. It is easy to understand just how much you need information that guides you on what prospects find most interesting and relevant to their business needs.

On the other hand, this behavior can have the same backlash as their B2C counterparts. More specifically, you don't want to violate the privacy of potential customers. Not only is it bad PR, bad PR has clearly negative effects on both future sales and lead generation success.

Avoiding This Image Is The Key To The Information You Seek

How do you avoid this image? More importantly, how do avoid it but at the same time, get the information you need so that your marketing efforts really touch on what a prospect is looking for. To find the answer, look first to how you get your information, who gets, and where that information is stored. One good place to start is your contact center.

Related Content: Avoid Bad PR In Telemarketing And Other Marketing Channels

Now whether you've outsourced it or managed to build one up in-house, it is very likely that you use this center as your main tool for interacting with your market and getting information. You don't always just use it for B2B lead generation or taking care of customer support but possibly both! In today's business world, you will need all the information you can get and that requires different sources. Without that information, you might kill any chance of success for future campaigns:

Related Content: The Top 3 Ways To Kill Your Telemarketing Campaign

Meanwhile, the conduct and practices deployed by your agents are what can define your business as either a faithful service provider or a creepy stalker. To find out which, ask yourself the following questions:

• Where do you establish your presence? - First off, it's good to use multiple channels so that you have the means to converse with your market in anyway that is desired. Secondly however, are they aware of the regulations governing each medium? It would be very awkward for them to encourage proper online marketing practices but don't think twice about neglecting the ones for telemarketing.

• How is the information given away? - Believe it or not, you are not always in the wrong for gathering information from public sources. That is because the source is, well, public. It is available to many. No prospect should fault you for acting on information that they have made available to everyone else. This should be your immediate defense. One clear difference between stalking and observing is that the former uses information that has been obtained without consent. Despite that, prospects in turn need to realize that even something as simple as publishing a social media profile should be done with the expectations of people acting on it.

• Where do they draw the line? - Following the previous point, your agents should know where to draw the line. If they are certain that a prospect is not willing to impart certain information, they should respect it. At the same time though, they must be able to obtain more trust so that they can use it for the sole purpose of providing a better service.

The good news is that these are industry standards that apply to both in-house groups and outsourced companies. It just so happens that both marketers and prospects tend to have a flawed understanding of customer privacy. So on your part at least, make sure you hire professional telemarketers and other experienced professionals so that you will know when and when not to gather information.

B2B Telemarketing - Driving Social Engagement Beyond Social Media

There seems to be no end to social media marketing and last week, cNet published an article reporting that the Global Fortune 100 are have only just begun maximizing this new channel. The article also mentions five findings as the result of the study but here is one that's most notable:

“3. Engagement is becoming second nature to companies. Seventy-nine percent of corporate accounts on Twitter attempt to engage with other users by retweeting and using @mentions.”

Indeed, engagement is the critical factor in social media marketing. It's what both makes it an effective medium and at the same time, it's what proving to be the challenge for these companies. However, is such engagement necessarily limited to social media? You see, when you make that the goal, the medium might hardly matter.

In this case, telemarketing services can also be used to drive engagement and achieve similar results:

• Interest – It checks for a prospect's interest and responds appropriately. If there is clearly no interest, then simply move on. If there is more interest but not enough to warrant a lengthier conversation, they're tagged for follow-ups. The more interest there is, the more a telemarketer can engage with them and send them further into the sales process.
• Needs – A potential client won't have interest if they don't have any needs for the products and services offered. On the other hand, you can only learn to serve better if you knew the finer details of these needs.
• Time – Engaging a prospect through telemarketing does not necessarily consume as much time. You just need to make sure that follow-ups are done right and measures are placed to take the conversation elsewhere if the phone is proving to be too time-constraining.

Then again, perhaps what really puts social media over telemarketing is that it has enabled customers to organize themselves and given them a greater voice. This blog from the Harvard Business Review already demonstrates how this is so for B2C companies:

“In other words, social media improves service by making the market for peer-to-peer opinion more efficient. This is good news for good service and bad news for bad service. End of not-so-complicated story.”

Still, does this apply to B2B? As far as organizing peer-to-peer opinions, it actually does! While businesses would rather be treated on an individual basis, things like referrals and reviews can improve your image and in turn attract more prospects towards your business. On the other hand, negative feedback can also call you to fix things up and improve services.

That doesn't mean that other forms of communication cannot compliment that though. For example, once you've received your feedback, you can try outsourcing call center services to gather more data. Since businesses would still prefer to be treated on an individual basis, using both the collective feedback from social media and the individual feedback from one-on-one phone surveys can help paint a clearer picture of what you've done right and what you can do better. It also shows that you're not just engaging them as an entire audience but also as separate entities with separate needs. Don't just limit social engagement to social media. Go beyond it!

Outsource A Call Center For Phone-Related Marketing Efforts

Despite the prevalence of email, website, and social media, people will still use a phone. If these people are in business, perhaps it's even more so. While the other three, digital-based channels have the capacity to transmit more information, it has also indirectly given them more capacity to transmit junk and eat up time. You have spam messages, drawn-out content, as well as the need to be active on social media even when you have other important things to do.

Those are just some of the reasons why the phone is still used in marketing efforts. This doesn't mean that the pushy telemarketers are about to make their dreaded return. (DNC lists have put an end to that.) It only means that the phone is the best tool to utilize in business activities such as:

• Phone Surveys – Telephone surveys are a part of research. Research, in turn, has always assisted in shaping up marketing strategies, identifying targets, as well as qualifying B2B sales leads. The results could also indicate trends and changes in B2B buyer behavior. A phone survey could even more suitable for B2B because, as stated before, the phone is a channel still highly used in business.

• Inbound Marketing – When it comes to B2B, there's only so much information you can put out on your website or in your marketing emails. (And in fact, it's likely that you need to minimize the volume of that information as much as possible so that your prospect won't be overwhelmed). This calls for an inbound strategy which allows prospects to inquire only about certain things they wish to know about your business.

• Customer Service – One of the things that distinguish B2B from B2C is that there is a clearer emphasis on business relationships. Such a relationship goes beyond closing the deal. It's about ensuring that the client receives the full benefit of what you have sold. Neglecting customer service can result in bad referrals and a poor reputation all around. It's only worsened however if your prospects try to contact your business but end up frustrating themselves with long waiting periods and constantly being redirected.

On the other hand though, building up your own center can be very expensive. You need to hire more people and train them. In order to train them, you need to educate yourself first as well. Couple this with the costs of adequate technology and you might as well offer telemarketing services of your own in order to help cover for them.

Fortunately, that's why you have outsourcing. The only thing you need are the tools and the personnel after all. Outsourcing to telemarketing companies gives you access to those services without having to bear the heavy price of investing in them yourself. Another benefit to outsourcing is that it also saves you the time as well as the money when using the phone for the above purposes is a little bit too far from your core functions. Still, just because it's not what your business would normally do, doesn't mean you can't benefit from those who can do it for you.

Defrost Your Cold Calling Approach

One of the reasons why people dislike getting random phone calls is that it's just that: purely random. And when you look at the worst examples, you have to admit that the whole thing sounds a lot like a numbers game. You get a list and start calling. That's it. You don't do research. You don't try and see why these particular companes might make a good business leads. You just dial in, fling your pitch, and expect a Yes or No (chances are, you'll get a No more often).

Why do you think it's called 'cold' calling in the first place? You need to defrost your approach and improve your chances with each call. And as implied above, the key is to do a bit more research. Is it really too much to first look up the company? Maybe it would have been a few decades ago when telemarketers were still scanning phone books.

Today, with internet and social media, you have more opportunities to learn more about who you're calling. This isn't even comparable to B2C telemarketing because unlike consumers, businesses can be quite eager to talk about themselves. It's how they impress their own markets. More and more companies are setting up websites and establishing presence in social networking sites. These places are excellent sources of information that can help you make yourself more relevant to the needs of their decision makers. Another advantage you have with information is that you also know a few things that would make for a good conversation.

Furthermore, information isn't just the only way to boost your chances. Throwing in a bit of email marketing can help too. Try contacting prospects that way and get those who respond into receiving your call. If you're going to insist that you don't have the time to look up a company, then you a list of addresses instead of numbers. At the very least, your emails are going to be less disruptive.

Of course, there are limits to what you can find on the internet. And yes, companies are also taking measures to make sure that the online channels of communication don't get clogged with marketing efforts in the same way that the phone now has.

That's still no excuse to do things far too randomly. B2B leads are defined by the information they have on the prospect. Information is supposed to help improve the accuracy of your marketing efforts. It's supposed to reduce the uncertain factors which lead to randomness. An appointment setter who shows sincere interest in finding out problems and offering solutions has a higher chance of getting people to meet them than those who just try and set the date without showing that same consideration.

Ask yourself, would you rather burn through a whole list by just rapidly calling the numbers on them or would you rather improve your chances with each, single one of them by knowing more about who they are? Defrost your impersonal telemarketing approach and remember that getting information is what you're supposed to do, even from the very start!