Showing posts with label B2B lead generation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B2B lead generation. Show all posts

Friday, April 5, 2013

Have Your Software Sales Leads Migrated?


The biggest sign of a dying B2B industry is that its software sales leads are migrating elsewhere, leaving a market environment that has become too barren and incapable of sustaining any business life. For software companies, the natural reaction is to see how badly you have been rendered obsolete. The first step to that though might lie in knowing why and where your business sales leads have migrated.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Are You Telemarketing For Short-term Or Long-term?

Given the variety of processes that telemarketing is capable of, it can be easy to grow indecisive when determining which on you need the most. For example, they can play a role in either delivering you a long-term advantage or a short-term one but not always at the same time.

Balancing Both Is Delicate For Lead Generation


Choosing between short-term and long-term benefits has been an ancient dilemma that extends beyond the world of business. Ultimately though, the decision maker has to make a compromise, trying to balance both by actually forging a connection instead of always picking one over the other.

Here is an illustration for telemarketers:
  • Short-term – Suppose your business is in a pinch and needs to generate as many sales leads in order to stand a chance of surviving the next year (or worse, just the following months). You can have telemarketers start a massive, wide-reaching campaign to see just how far the actual numbers go. You might have to forego using them for customer support for the time being but it just cannot be helped. Once you are done though, what do you do with the results? In fact, think about this with the assumption that you got enough sales to save your business. What then? Is this all you will get out of future campaigns?
  • Long-term – Suppose your business did well but there are signs that the future looks pretty dry and you need customer retention to survive it. The only way to do that however is to be as openly as possible to customer feedback. Telemarketers can receive incoming calls, record and resolve issues, but at the same time, send this feedback back higher up for the rest of your company to reflect upon. But just like short-term, what do you do with the actual results of this B2B telemarketing process? Are you really content with just maintaining your current business relationships without making new ones?
Hopefully, you can already tell what kind of compromise you can make between the two. Again, you need to forge a connection between short-term benefits that can have an effect on long-term. With regards to the results produced by telemarketers, that connection is formed by flowing the information between inbound and outbound. Using the above example, you use the information you got during your short-term, outbound campaign to inform the agents receiving your inbound calls.


In turn, your inbound calls should result in more information about what the market as a whole is currently demanding. These days, with online resources providing more and more information, your own customers have a greater capacity to influence each other's buying decisions ahead of your business. What is worse is that not even this collective understanding can always reach the specialist level of an industry expert. You should use the information gathered from feedback to shape up whatever message or questions to ask during your next campaign. Do not limit your B2B lead generation to either short-term or long-term but balance it for both!

Monday, October 1, 2012

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.

Monday, September 17, 2012

How Telemarketing Is More Realistic Than Popular Opinion


Telemarketing is no stranger to knocking heads with popular opinion. More specifically, when it comes to clashing with popular opinion on themselves. But as conventional as this might sound, appeal to popular opinion has always been a logical fallacy.

Popular opinion likes to depict the telemarketing industry as one that's going the way of snail-mail. The labor is often depicted as drab and weary. Agents are infamously portrayed as being overworked and exhausted despite the supposed simplicity of their work. Thus, the prospect of using it in marketing processes like lead generation and appointment setting seems archaic and therefore highly unrealistic. Who wants to hear a marketer on the phone these days right?

The reality is hearing a live conversation is as realistic as you can get (well, perhaps with the exception of actually meeting face-to-face with a prospect). On the other hand, it's plain to see that many companies and their customers don't necessarily want to reach that level. Who would want a face-to-face meeting just to purchase something?

If you're in any B2B market, your surprising answer would be: a lot.

Many B2B companies offer complex products, services, and even just solutions in order assist other companies in their endeavors. Such complexity requires a lot of discussion, a discussion that can only be had in a live business meeting.

Ironically, this is based on the simple logic that a real phone call is, in fact, more realistic compared to other forms of business communication that many telemarketing critics like to champion. Just a few examples range from lesser anonymity compared to email while still sharing the flexibility and flow of an email conversation. (You can even argue that B2B telemarketing is a lot faster.)

Here are a few more ways that telemarketing can seem more 'real' than mere popular opinion:
  • Live feedback – Whether it's in a customer survey, a raw survey, or even customer support, you get to literally hear it straight from the mouths of B2B prospects and customers. The fact that telemarketers make a note to record their conversations only serves to prove that point. 
  • Empirical results – With live feedback comes results that are more empirical than text-based messages and conversations. Tracing the source of an email can be a lot harder than tracing the source of a phone call. Even if you can't find the source, you have the live recording a of a real person's voice against a message that anybody could've typed. 
  • Makes you realistic too – Opening your business to phone calls is a good way to insure transparency and avoid bad PR. Whether you're contacting potential B2B clients or receiving calls for current customer concerns, they'll both know your business is real. They have as much evidence of your validity as you have of theirs. That not only emphasizes on how real your business is but you're also being fair too. 
As always with popular opinion, it doesn't constantly win out. Most people may not see much of telemarketing from the privacy of their own homes. But when it comes to attracting B2B leads, it remains an ever present tool even in multi-channel marketing.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Don't Waste Lead Generation On Bad Sales Processes!


People are really mistaken when they think outsourcing somehow equals forsaking responsibility. Lead generation is one good example. Some professionals think that it's a lazy way to get outside marketers to do all the work for them.

But on the contrary, it only calls them to be more productive.

Remember, the purpose of lead generation isn't automatically a guaranteed sale. It's only supposed to help salespeople succeed. That's where the responsibility of your lead generator ends and the work of your salespeople begins. Generating leads is only one part of the entire sales process. The professionals are right when they say that your sales team shouldn't use the leads from your outsourced provider as an excuse to get complacent. Even worse, blaming your provider is completely anti-ethical when the problem in the funnel is outside of their control.

These problems include:

  • Not acting on a lead – They've already contacted your prospects and qualified them. You're off to a quick start so what are your salespeople waiting for? Their leads are right there and all the information they want on their potential customer is easily accessible. However, that information is perishable. Just because you've learned of a prospect first doesn't mean your competitors are far behind. You also have to remember that even verified prospects can have changing interests. Leaving them too long with their unsatisfied needs will only result in them going off somewhere else to fulfill them.
  • Not using the information – Many customers (both B2B and B2C) hate presumptuous salespeople. False assumptions are the result of ignoring the data gathered about your prospect. Winging it when contacting targeted potential clientèle is certainly not the way to go. One purpose of lead generation is to act as the eyes and ears of your market's community. A major concern of marketing is seeing things from the customer's perspective. Don't waste the time they spent saving you the trouble of knowing your target market. Make sure your salespeople pay close attention to what they've learned.
  • Not showing up for the prospect – What's the purpose of setting an appointment if your salespeople have a bad record of not showing up? Your sales leads have fulfilled their purpose of making sure your prospect will likely to show. They've also taken note of the time you promised that your salespeople would be available. Why on earth should they disappoint the both of them by not showing up on the agreed date?

As you can see, outsourcing a business process is not a license to forsake responsibility. This goes especially when that process is only a part of a bigger one. As a matter of fact, if that stage is the only good thing compared to the rest, then you're only wasting the efforts of those responsible for that particular stage.

The role of a B2B lead generation campaign does not equate the whole of the entire sales process. Before you spend money on outsourced services, make sure that your own salespeople remember that they still have an area of responsibility when it comes to making the most of them. That way, the only responsibility you'll have left is making sure your lead generator lives up to their own.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Inbound Telemarketing – There Shouldn't BE A Voicemail Hell!

In the above video, you will find suggestions for a few websites that can help assist customer service callers bypass what they call 'voicemail hell'. Voicemail hell is apparently their term for the mind-numbing grind they undergo before they actually get in touch with a marketing representative. However, perhaps the biggest tragedy is that these sites exist because of a mistake. That mistake is that your telemarketing service shouldn't be putting customers in that hell in the first place!

If you think this is bad for regular customers, what about busy business owners or even C-level decision makers? These people are busy and their day doesn't leave them much time to put up with this kind of service. Excessive automation is a bad thing in telemarketing and there's no excuse for it. Besides, there are plenty of alternatives to this and they don't necessarily even require you to do away with telemarketing at all:
  • Website – If you want your customers to troubleshoot a problem, don't force them to use a phone for it. It's a lot easier for them to go to your website and get their information there. That does away with much of the automation they would otherwise go through in their calls. Any more serious problems should be good enough reason to connect them with a live customer service representative. 
  • Email – A contact center doesn't have to be closed off to email. Some customers don't want to discuss the problem in real time but instead would first prefer to collect their thoughts and write it down. If your B2B customers want to write down these problems, use an online ticket system that sends messages to your company inbox. Take note though that your agents should still respond as quickly as possible. 
  • Social Media – Getting real-time feedback via social media is another better idea. Customers can help each other out with the easier problems instead of forcing themselves to call upon customer support all the time. The community-oriented purpose of social media also serves as your eyes and ears to your market so keep them open to spot trends in problems. 
Now asides from the alternatives, there are a few more things you can learn from this video with regards to good customer service:

  • 1: People still want live telemarketing agents – The existence of voicemail hell can serve as proof that people still want to talk to live agents instead of anything automated. They want to engage with and talk to a live person. This demand could go beyond only customer service and could also reflect the need for real conversations in marketing activities like B2B lead generation
    appointment setting, B2B lead generation, business leads, contact center, telemarketing, telemarketing company
  • 2: Excessive dependence is bad - Too much dependence on new technology will eventually bring up its flaws. However, you shouldn't wait for that time to come. Don't be closed to the idea that there are still some things that live agents can do that machines can't. 
  • 3: Time is still of the essence – It also serves as a reminder that, whether your customer is B2B or B2C, their time is and always will be valuable. When communicating with customers, don't take up too much of that time by forcing them to spend it in phone traps like voicemail hell.

There aren't just alternatives to the bad practices that result in voicemail hell. Its existence is proof that people still want to talk to live agents whether its in customers support or even in telemarketing. That should give you all the reason you need to retain real people who can give a real conversation.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Appointment Setting - Don't Depend Too Much On Individual Influence


appointment setting, sales leads, call center
There are times during an appointment setting campaign that certain individuals start to influence your market more effectively than the rest. This happens whether it's in the marketing or sales stages of the process.

In marketing, this happens when you rely on a key influencer to refer their friends and followers to your business. For sales, it can happen when a particular salesperson has gained a sort of celebrity status by making success out of even the least qualified sales leads.

At first, it sounds a lot like the celebrity endorsements of B2C. And for the most part, there are similarities. The only difference in B2B appointment setting, in fact, just lie within the products and services involved. In either case however, an excessive dependence on individual influence is risky. These same risks could affect the success of appointment setting for three reasons:

  • #1: They won't be around forever. - Look at Steve Jobs. Despite how many mourned his passing, many more still became uncertain of his company's future. The success of Apple seemed very hard-wired into Jobs' image. Though touching on the subject of death is a bit drastic, it should teach one thing: nothing lasts forever; even clients gained from quality b2b appointment setting services. The decision maker you've often had close contact with may not always be in that position or even work in the same company. They have goals of their own too and it might take them places where you can't do much business anymore. The same goes for a celebrity salesperson. He or she won't always be there. They may even have their own dreams that would take them outside your company. How are you going to fill the large gap in sales that they'll leave behind?

  • #2: They won't always influence the market - This isn't as hard to believe as some might think. Remember, nothing lasts forever. It not only goes for an individual influencer but also for their own influence. It could be the result of something as terrible as a loss in credibility or relevance. It could also be something as simple as a decision to not influence for personal reasons. It's the same thing with salespeople. Some might feel overconfident and start toeing the lines of professional behavior. Others might start feeling the pressure and this would affect their original capacity for making a successful sale.

  • #3: Laziness – This doesn't mean laziness of the influencer. Rather, it's the laziness of you and the rest of your company! Do you seriously think it's a good idea to rely on an influencer to refer their followers for appointment setting while you're being lax with your own marketing and sales? Given the above two reasons, the role of key influence can be a lot more limited than you think. On the other hand, overestimating it can lull your marketing into a false sense of security while placing the burden of sales on a single salesperson all because of popularity.

Both reasons center on the mortality of both the key influencer as well as the influence they exert on your market. Therefore, your dependence on them shouldn't strain that mortality. It's an extreme word but again: nothing lasts forever. It's also more proof of why it's unsafe to mostly depend on outside factors to influence your market using b2b appointment setting.

Instead, your marketing strategies shouldn't depend on a single individual while leaving out the rest. Just because popular fiction puts the fate of the world on the shoulders of a single hero doesn't mean you should do the same in real life, with your real company! Follow good appointment setting practices and all the beneficial things will follow through.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

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.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Outsource A Telemarketing Company When Faced With The Flaws Of The Internet


Suppose that, for a while, online marketing has been your business' only means of getting in touch with prospects. It's not even a core process but you have to do it because you believe it's the most up-to-date way to market yourself (even for B2B). However, this new report from Mashable could mean that it's high time to outsource a classical B2B telemarketing company.

A study conducted by Harris Interactive highlights just how widespread this lack of trust in information on the Internet is for most Americans.

According to the survey of 1,900 Americans, 98% distrust information found on the Internet, with 94% saying 'bad things can happen as a result of acting on inaccurate information online.'”

Take note, this isn't really to say that a telemarketing company is superior to online marketers. In fact, a quick read through the comments on the article will actually point to an irony: despite how 'unreliable' online information is deemed, the article itself is a form of online information. Therefore, why should anyone trust it? Doesn't that look like a typical case of shooting one's own foot?

Setting that irony aside though, both the comments and the article itself do prove a simple truth: the internet isn't always reliable. Therefore, relying on it all the time can be counterproductive. Here are just two ways that the flaws of the internet can affect the success of your overall B2B marketing campaign:

  • Reliability On Information Found – Lead generation is a staple for B2B marketing and leads are more or less packages of information. More specifically, it's information you can find that can direct you to a potential client. Still, even contact numbers and email addresses found on the net aren't entirely accurate or up to date.
  • Reliability On Information Presented – This can also reflect the way people view the information you've put on your own website. They might not entirely trust it and if it's just too insufficient, they'll seek out another company. A business that is just too limited to the internet also limits the means with which prospects can contact it, inquire about it, and verify what is being presented.

An outsourced telemarketer is simply a cost-efficient way to expand your overall marketing capacity when a single channel proves insufficient. If you're relying on the internet for contact information, search for contact numbers and have the telemarketer acquire more information through the phone. That way, anything you've learned from a prospect via their website (or even a lengthy email exchange) can be confirmed. Using telemarketers can also give you new ways to gather information from both your target market and from among your current customers. On the other hand, having an outsourced call center will also allow your prospects to verify the information you've put out on your website.

The truth is dependence on a single medium isn't always the best idea. Before, people distrusted telemarketers for the pretty much the same reasons that people now distrust the internet (at least, the same reasons cited in the article). Expanding your marketing efforts is simply a way to paint a clearer picture of your businesses when one medium proves insufficient.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Pick A Lead Generator That Knows What It's Getting!


These days people are saying that the business world is now being driven by an entirely new resource. It's not just money. It's not just raw materials. It's not simply property. Today, businesses are being driven by a need for information.

And you have to admit, knowledge is proving to be really powerful. The speedy acquisition of data and its abundance now on the World Wide Web has enabled new ways for companies to determine demand and study their markets. Despite how the complexity of research, you can't deny the simple logic: If you know what your customers want, you'll know what to do.

However, this wealth of information isn't all gold. In fact, not all of it is even valuable!

That is the danger that is present in the new online frontier. Not all acquired data can necessarily serve the purpose that it is being researched for. One of the best examples of this danger is found in B2B lead generation.

Information overload is definitely a negative for all lead generation professionals. Your prospects want information but you need to first ask yourself: What kind of information? See, this is where all the enchantment with data starts to disappear. You'd be surprised at how specific potential clients can get when asking questions. And since this is B2B, decision makers certainly rank high when it comes to making critical evaluation. Whatever your industry, targeting businesses means you'll be speaking with them and you will answer to them. If you want your company to be of any service to theirs, you need to pay really close attention to what they say.

From there, you should know that information overload is bad for you too. There are a lot of useful things you can learn about a prospect but there is still the risk of gathering information that's not at all useful for you. Contact information and company name, for example, are only useful to a point. That point is when you call and end up facing the gatekeeper. That still doesn't tell you what you can say to convince the gatekeeper to let you through. If your lead generation comes with an appointment setter, such minimal information barely cuts it! You need to arm yourself with knowledge of a prospect so that the appointments will end well. You can't just get that from a phone number.

This all applies regardless if you're forming your own lead generation campaign with your own marketing team or you're searching for the right lead generation company to outsource. A lead should only give you information that works to your advantage. This ranges from knowing about the opportunity to knowing about the needs you're sure you can fulfill.

Remember, the ideal which fuels today's race for information is that it's supposed to teach your business how to be of better service. It tells you what your markets want, what potential clients want, and what they actually need, all so that you'll know the next thing your company is going to do. Ironically, all this data-hype has only blinded people to that ideal. Make sure you're not one of them and know what kind of information you'll need to get!

Thursday, May 31, 2012

The Value Of Information And Why It Improves Appointment Setting


Anyone who knows even the basic definition of lead generation should see that it's an information gathering process. It's even more important in this day and age when information and access to it has become its defining commodities.

But first, just how exactly does information help in business? What makes it so sought after? What are the advantages?

The truth though is the value of information reaches back all the way to ancient times. The merchants of the past needed it to find new sources of materials for their wares. In addition to that, news and daily gossip helped them identify good buyers and draw the interest of new ones. During times of war, rulers would invest in spies and reconnaissance as much as they would in heavy arms and infantry. Number of enemy soldiers, strategic locations, and distance of travel all still fell under the category of information.

Today, the same value remains and only the form has changed. Businesses in particular are still eager to find potential buyers and in the case of any B2B organization, knowledge of even one possible client is already one worth gaining. As a result, all such businesses invest in B2B lead generation (and it's why this particular time period has them making use of any means to acquire it). The information acquired in that process can really assist you when you've set an appointment and make plans to meet the prospect.

There's also another basic fact about information that defines this century's technology: communication. It is the channel through which information flows. Places like the internet and social media have revolutionized the way information is obtained.

With such large amounts of information however, a big question arises: How much is too much?

The truth is not all information is useful for everyone. For B2B businesses, the information you need might exceed any single method of communication (including online-based ones). As an example, look to some of the lead generation companies out there. You'll notice a trend where they'll start going beyond their initially preferred methods of communication and start integrating other methods.

Why does this happen? Going back, B2B companies do everything they can to learn as much about their prospects. Things like budget, needs, company size are just the starting points. You all still need to figure out how they're related, how they're related to your own industry, and how you can offer a solution (whether its a marketing solution via advertising or an ERP software solution). All of this is for the purpose of using that knowledge to convince a prospect and close the deal.

The decision makers and other personnel who can provide this information can't be just easily reached through one method anymore. Discussing their problems would require several. Just when you think outsourced telemarketing means you're just using telemarketers, those same telemarketers could also be using email and social media just reach your prospects. That is just one sign that it's no longer just the method that matters but the information you obtain with it.

Monday, May 21, 2012

What Causes Price Resistance Among Your B2B Prospects and How to Get Around It


B2B lead generation, telemarketingOne of the biggest obstacles we face in B2B lead generation is price resistance from our prospects. This seemingly knee-jerk reaction among potential buyers is partly caused by simple yet powerful forces called emotions. By understanding the role that emotions play in the buying process, we can overcome price resistance and turn leads into sales.

Quite apart from how most of us view ourselves, we’re not perfectly rational beings that arrive at buying decisions through a series of logical steps. Even our prospects in B2B lead generation do not rely on pure reason alone. Emotion and logic both play a major part in price resistance and should be the focus in our campaigns.

One way you can use the factors that affect influence price resistance to your advantage is to change how your prospects perceive your product or service. For example, an accounting department head will always have some price range in mind for a piece of accounting software with a given set of features. Instead of repeating these features over and over again, why not make your prospects feel as if your offer is the best available in the market?

To influence how your prospects view your product and pricing, you often have to compare your offer with another similar but not exactly the same item. In the above example, you could mention the tremendous savings your prospects can have in choosing your software package instead of hiring expensive system developers.

Another effective way to appeal to both the emotional and logical sides of your prospects in B2B lead generation is to increase the value of your product without changing its price. Price and value are two separate things, and the product value should reasonably exceed the price offered in order to be attractive for buyers.

As you can see, one of the best ways of overcoming price resistance from your B2B prospects is through a well-conducted telemarketing campaign. With effective telemarketing, you’re able to directly appeal to your prospects’ emotions and expectations that affect their acceptance or rejection of the price tag your offer carries.

Monday, May 7, 2012

B2B Telemarketing – A Marketer's Best Friend


What any company cannot afford to waste is time and money. When it comes to marketing, you can only go so far before you exhaust your budget. And given that most campaigns are given a limited amount of time to be prepared, or to get results, you really can't have yourself throwing marketing dollars in the wrong direction as well as using time which could have been allocated to doing other tasks which could have yielded better results. This becomes more of a trying task when you have certain requirements you need your prospects to meet. Also, you can't just go around and make random office visits and expect to get meet with your target decision makers. Under these circumstances, what's a marketer to do?

With such obstacles surrounding the field of B2B lead generation, perhaps it's time to consider an approach than can help with pre-qualifying your prospects, one which isn't that much of a hassle and won't eat up much of your marketing budget. What we're talking about here is B2B telemarketing, a direct marketing approach that can greatly help with lead generation. This can be done through B2B appointment setting. In essence, this is already what a B2B telemarketing campaign is all about and how it functions. Because of the direct approach, you can get in touch with your prospects through means of the phone and have your telemarketers pre-qualify them right there and then, as well has have any questions answered on the spot.

So instead of spending valuable time and money on sending your marketers to different places with no assurance of getting you sales propositions, you can make use of B2B appointment setting and telemarketing. Pre-qualify your prospects through the phone and generate sales leads from those who express a genuine interest in your offered products and services. B2B telemarketing is really any marketers best friend, a medium which helps save time, money, yet performs exceptionally well for marketing functions.