Cleaning Services Leads – Getting Strength In Numbers

The concept of getting cleaning services leads through strength in numbers really reflects the model of many commercial cleaning firms. Instead of spending so much time looking for people who are good enough to do a large set of tasks, you can divide those tasks among different people. And when you think about it, this does not just apply to cleaning leads but also to lead generators producing them.

Offshore Lead Generation? Kick Mediocrity Out the Door!

When we talk about outsourcing, you sometimes get the idea of lesser quality in services. Well, you may think so because you cannot directly monitor the flow of these types of campaigns and hold only so little influence when it comes to bringing about an outcome we can be pleased with. When it comes to lead generation, however, it seems like more and more businesses are choosing to outsource their campaigns to service providers, even to offshore lead generation companies.

Some business owners understand that cutting down on costs is all part of how they can keep their business in a profitable state. Others, however, frown upon outsourcing their lead generation campaigns because they believe that offshore services providers bring in mediocre results. True enough, some companies do bring in mediocre results, however, one should not lump all offshore companies into one basket.

Training Telemarketers – How Much Investment Should You Put?

If you believe that experience is the best teacher, then you should know why you should invest in training whether it comes to telemarketers or any other professional engaged in a business process. No professional is made completely within the vacuum of academic institutions.

Telemarketing Groups Need More Than The Telephone

There is a reason why today's call center is now being called a contact center. More businesses are expanding beyond singular forms of communication with their markets. It then naturally follows that they will use the same multi-channel approach when it comes to communicating with each other.

Contrary to some people's fears, having different channels will not drive you crazy so long as you know how to manage and moderate. That however takes training. Thus, if you do not invest in training, no person, no matter how skilled, will stay long in their job.

Related Content: Telemarketing Tips – Employee Retention Rate Matters

• Manage – Some might argue that management skills are already learned in school. That is under the misguided notion that a telemarketer can manage what needs to be done before the week begins. On the contrary, they must learn how to manage on the go. B2B telemarketers are called to exercise quick-responses regardless of what medium is being used by prospects and customers to communicate. Without properly managing the different tools being used in real-time, you will only end up with a flustered and harassed agent. In fact, some companies who train their agents still recommend that their clients not demand too many conflicting tasks. With proper management comes a good sense of realism. 

Related Content: How Telemarketing Is More Realistic Than Popular Opinion

• Moderate – Using each method in moderation ties with good management. You cannot manage different marketing methods if you do not know which one to use and how often. The strength of using multiple channels comes from the capacity to be flexible. That flexibility is lost though unless you or a more experienced marketer will personally make sure that agents adjust to switching quickly when a prospect calls for it. For example, if they cannot get in touch via telephone, they must have a well-written email at the ready. And as an organization, they should be quick to adapt to what actually works versus having the extra but inefficient methods result in a large overhead. 

Both skills require actual training on the job because there is no established theory or textbook guide that will drive them in for you. Furthermore, you can read it in many marketing and business resources that actual field experience is necessary due to the fact that said field is always changing. Take for instance the sudden shift where traditional marketing is now challenged by customers who are more well-informed and more influenced by their peers. Some go as far as to say that the field is changing even more rapidly than before! If this is true, there might not be enough time for schooling and you will be limited exclusively to training your marketers on the job. Why wait until that time? Start putting more investment in training or at least outsource to lead generation companies and invest in theirs!

Avoid Bad PR In Telemarketing And Other Marketing Channels

Don't be fooled when a few naïve individuals assume bad PR is only a B2C disaster. It's very much a real threat in B2B marketing too and can occur as the result of bad practices including telemarketing, social media, as well as email.

Whether a product or service is B2B or B2C, you do not want your marketing tactics to result in a bad public image. In fact, even the act of switching from, for example, telemarketing to social media, will not necessarily cleanse the stigma your business has put upon itself.

If you want to start with a basic example of what bad PR looks like, you can check out this article from Jezebel:

“... it seems that consumers have now taken the mocking of the product into their own hands via Amazon UK, a site where you can now find page after page of brilliant and hilarious fake product reviews from clever users...”

Do you want your own product to be the object of similar humor? If not, then take note of how each marketing tool can result in bad PR, what you should do to prevent these disasters from happening.

Telemarketing Services

There's never a shortage of telemarketing parodies out there. The examples range from call center agents with strange accents to raging arguments between a representative and a customer/prospect. This is, in fact, a real shame because even cold calls can turn out well if they're done professionally. To avoid this, make sure your agents record their calls and allow you to review them on occasion. Be the first to discover something that's worth turning your business into a laughing stock so you can quickly act before it escalates into a disaster.

Social Media

Social media marketing may be new but that's exactly what makes it ripe for easy PR disasters. Pam Moore of socialmediatoday funnily describes one example:

“You are not alone if you feel that your social media program has gotten a bit out of control. Do you wish you had a social media policy? Have no idea what is being published when by your social media team? Have nightmares about a PR crisis or waking up to see a picture of you passed out at your desk on the cover of your Facebook timeline as a joke by your social media team?”

The article gives a lot of its own advice on prevention but the bottom line is, make sure your business doesn't embarrass itself on any social network. Stick to a relevant image and establish focused objectives centered around why you're using social media in the first place.

Email

Here bad PR can occur in a more subtle yet sinister way. One day you think your email blasts are being received and read. All of a sudden you learn that you're being marked as a spammer. It's as if nobody makes fun of you but everyone quickly ignores your message. That's just painful (especially when your lead generation group is now pressed for time). You can't afford this kind of delay so take a good, hard look at your templates and subject lines. Be unique. Be personal. Avoid looking like spam. It's that simple.

If you're outsourcing any of these tools (or even all at once), it's even more important that your provider doesn't embarrass you! It's not a matter of what method they use but how it ultimately results in a good image that can't be mocked. Cheap lead generation means nothing if it results in bad PR!

B2B Lead Generation – New Sales Skills Need Complimentary Marketing Support

B2B lead generation is a tool that offers sales not only opportunities but also insight on their prospect. That insight is critical given the rise of new sales techniques that are allegedly doing away with the old.

At least, that's what Lynette Ryals and Javier Marcos are saying on the HBR Blog Network. To summarize, they're echoing the beliefs of many other sales professionals that the old modes of traditional selling are making way for the type of selling that emphasizes on relationships prior to the sale. These in turn would require new skills from sales people and thus, marketing should be able to come up with complimentary support to help them meet these new demands:

“Commercial skills and capabilities are about financial insight, business acumen and customer insight — specifically, insight beyond what the customer has articulated.”

This only raises the amount and grade of information that marketing services should acquire. The methods also need to be more subtle. Techniques like taking surveys need to ask questions that are formulated based on knowledge and analysis that's beyond the capability of prospects.

“Relational skills and capabilities include the ability to manage multi-level, multifunctional relationships, to understand relational dynamics and to inspire trust.”

Establishing trust is one of the initial tasks in any marketing approach. You don't attempt the sale when you're first contacting a prospect. They have to be qualified first and more interest needs to be established. That interest however can be affected by the amount of trust that you gained. Acquiring said trust means you're helping sales to develop a connection and gain more and more permission to stay connected.

“Managerial skills and capabilities needed by people in sales roles include people management skills (because so much business-to-business selling is now done in teams and cross-functionally); high ethical standards and integrity (growing customer demands in relation to corporate social responsibility and ethics are changing selling behaviors); openness to change and adaptability; and influencing skills.”

Now just because high managerial skills are necessary doesn't mean you can't make your marketing efforts easier to manage. If sales is willing to lay out clear-cut requirements, then the marketing approach must be ready to meet those requirements. The same goes for their ethical standards (make sure your practices are legitimate and acceptable). An openness to change also extends to marketing given that different forms of marketing are often the result of changes in market behavior.

“Cognitive skills and capabilities include innovative problem solving; the ability to identify opportunities; ”

Seeing as how generating leads is all about indicating opportunities, any additional information from marketing should ultimately serve to assist in identifying problems. This is where it's most critical for sales to lay out specifications while at the same time, marketing strategies should end up delivering leads that meet these specifications. Some sales teams won't demand anything too complicated but others might. In the end, it's all about how one party coordinates with the other.

The new skills described in this article can apply to B2B sales in any industry. Thus, it's not surprising that you can demand complimentary marketing support for it from any type marketer out there. You can have these requirements for online marketers as well as professional telemarketers. A change in sales will always demand complimentary marketing support.

A Quick Contrast Between What Scammers Do And What Professional Telemarketers Do

Anyone with even average experience in the telemarketing industry would eventually learn about telemarketing scams. And painful as it is, it's usually when they're hearing someone hold them up as a reason why the industry is dead.

However, if B2B businesses have any say about it, it's still pretty much alive. You see there's a fine difference between what real telemarketers do and what scammers posing as them would do.

Today, telemarketing continues to stay alive because there is still a need for it to contact and engage potential B2B clients. All kinds of decision makers, from managers to all the way up to the CEOs, take a lot of means just to contact. The phone just happens to be one of them.

In the following, you will find just some areas where scammers and telemarketers differ greatly.

Targets

Scammers – Scammers typically target the most gullible. These would include people who have no easy access to confirming the things they say over the phone. They would go for areas that they think have low awareness with regards to telemarketing scams.

Professionals – B2B telemarketers target only businesses, and more specifically, certain people in charge of certain areas all in order to generate sales leads. The businesses themselves aren't very easy to navigate because you have gatekeepers and other safeguards to prevent people from wasting the decision maker's time. The businesses must also fit a certain criteria determined by industry, size, and factors that would indicate a need for whatever product or service they're offering.

Goals and information

Scammers – Scammers are basically thieves. The things they steal? Information. Personal information. These could be credit card numbers, bank account PINs, and other sensitive data that would allow access to people's money. And if they can't get that, there's always the classic case of duping people into directly sending them money by making up the same false promises (e.g. tax reduction).

Professionals – Real telemarketers are also after information but this information is only for the purpose of convincing either themselves or whoever is outsourcing them for it. Convince them of what exactly? A need. B2B transactions have their best value when there is a definite need for something and the money spent on the relationship or the project is worth every penny. You're talking about big business here and specific needs have to be confirmed. It's the only way they can get the qualified leads they need to determine who and who is not open to do business. The telemarketers themselves aren't attempting to sell and in fact, the closest thing to that would be when they do additional appointment setting. The sale itself still needs to be made by whoever needed to get the necessary information to act upon.

Technology

Scammers – Scammers are cheap or otherwise they wouldn't be so desperate to steal instead of pursuing more honest efforts. This is reflected in their use of low quality communications technology, fellow criminals who obviously never trained to communicate like a pro, and even those who use websites generally don't put effort to make it look convincing enough. That takes money and perhaps more money than what they rip off of people.

Professionals – These people use only the best and more. They're not just limited to the phone. They have a large database that they've built over the years so they don't have to start compiling numbers from scratch. Their equipment is selected to ensure clear, quality communication. Finally, they wouldn't be professionals if there wasn't some time invested in their training.