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.

Find Sales Leads That Define Your Business Identity

In business, many people still underestimate the power of an image when it comes to attracting sales leads. While it is true that your business should be more than just looks, the concept of a business identity may not just be about looks either. Your marketing strategies can go beyond simply drawing out a picture of yourself.

Creating A Lead Generator That Projects Your Core

The basic concept is to take the core of your business and broadcast it via lead generation. While complexity is a guarantee in B2B, the very heart of what your business is about can fit even in the shortest marketing message. All you need is to take the following attributes and use them as parts of your image: 

• Your methods – The truth is any method can be used to suit your business. It is only a matter of figuring out how you get them all to fit, how well you can stick with them, and how well they can adapt. For example, telemarketing alone can serve a variety of methods but why stick to using a singular approach when it is so much more effective to integrate it with others? 

Related Content: Lead Generation Can Be Cloudy When Using Singular Methods 

• Your industry – If you are in the construction business, use visuals that immediately relay that image. The same goes for your brand name. If not, why would you mislead your prospects and customers about what you do? The good thing about a simplified industry image is that it automatically relays the small stuff while giving you more time to elaborate on the complications. 

• Your target industries – Ideally, you do not generate sales leads from just one industry. That is why your industry identity must meld with the ones you are targeting. Think of it like this: Your business has already presented the tool and now its time to show how well it can serve different purposes. People like variety and that includes your B2B customers. Better yet, they like a variety from which they can generate maximum benefit. 

• Your budget – But of course, you should not be too unrealistic when it comes to presenting yourself. An effective marketing plan only works well if it is being honest or otherwise it will backfire very badly. Instead of viewing your budget as a restrictive limit, view it as the outlining sketch on which you can start drawing out your image. Otherwise, you risk disappointing prospects when the time comes to admit the costs they did not expect from doing business with you. 

Related Content: Telemarketing Tips – Breaking The Costs To Your Prospect

So as you can see, the result is not just an image but an image the projects what you do and what your business is. Maybe there are many other situations where you do not wear an identity on your sleeves but when it comes to business, transparency and honesty are important. Do not be afraid to use tools like B2B telemarketing or targeting industries outside those you would be generally familiar with so long as they honestly express the core identity of your business.

Calling For Sales Leads – The Different Ways That Time Can Affect Success

No matter what channel you use for generating sales leads, don't underestimate the influence of one particular element: Time. You'd be surprised at the many ways that Time can present itself as an obstacle. Then again, time always affects you in many forms when it comes to business. For marketing, the most common forms include:

• The Amount of Time – Obviously you have the amount of time. Whenever you're trying to establish contact and communicating with a prospect, you are using that time. That includes your time and theirs. Mismanaging the amount of time you spend (whether you're using email, telemarketing, social media or all of them at once), will cause you to fall behind and even irritate the prospects themselves. 

• The Right Time – Another thing that annoys prospects is contacting them at the improper time. This could be calling them when they're no longer at work or emailing them with similar bad timing. Make sure that your contact center faithfully keeps track of the clock. If you're contacting different countries, you might even require them to synchronize several more according to their respective time zones. 

• The Next Time – You shouldn't pressure prospects either. Setting that B2B appointment is critical but so is giving a prospect time to think about their decision. In B2B, such decisions could affect their entire organizations so it's only natural that there will be those who will ask you to at least give them several days. Also keep those days close in mind so that you won't forget to follow up! 

• Being on Time – And speaking of forgetting, make sure that your leads also come with detailed information on the time, date, and venue for meeting with a prospect. This should call your salespeople and your marketers to really collaborate closely together. You don't want the efforts of the latter wasted on bad sales processes and vice versa. 

Those are four forms already and these manifest whether you use a singular or multi-channel approach. Another thing you should take note is that these different forms also interact with each other. For example:

• Not Calling Next Time Wastes Great Amounts of Time – A prospect might show some interest at first so you should be ready because they're already giving you another opportunity to qualify them. However, if you forget to follow-up, you'll waste all the time you had spent getting their interest. It's bad enough that the B2B sales process takes up quite a length. Make sure you don't add more to that length by making clumsy mistakes. 

• The Next TimeShould Tell You The Right Time – Suppose you have difficulty determining the right time to call or email so you decide to take a risk. Whether it goes bad or well, always have the courtesy to ask if you're calling them at the right time or if your email finds them in the best mood for reading it. Their response will tell you what that time will be once and for all, be it affirmative or negative. It will also serve to guide future attempts to contact. 

Those are just two examples but in the end, they tell you one basic thing when generating B2B sales leads: keep your eye on the clock. That clock will tell you how much time you've consumed and whether you're doing the right thing at the specified time. Don't underestimate the element of Time in your success!

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.

Get A Contact Center Where Labor Works With Technology

One of the benefits of having a contact center and not just simply a call center is that it allows businesses to use more advanced forms of communication to stay in touch with their target market. In the case of B2B markets, flexible communication is even more important because business owners use these new technologies to engage their own customers.

However, as in any industry these days, you need to quickly identify if your agents are really working with the technology that they have or are just struggling to live without it. The same applies if you turn it around. So many marketers easily cave-in to hype and adapt these new forms simply because they're new.

Such is not a good response to change and is not going to give you any progress. Both situations are the result of too much pride that it blinds them to any flaws. You just have one side who overestimates human skill while the other overestimates technology. You can see these in outsourced marketing firms as much as you will see it within your own company's marketing team. But regardless of which describes your lead generator, you need to bring them back down to earth and objectively view these elements. Instead of setting them up to fight, why not see how well they can support each other?

• For technology – Skeptics of technology often challenge new forms by asking one simple question: How does this help? You should ask the same question. Don't just invest in or outsource something unless you understand how the technology helps agents perform. For example, will the data gathered result in insight to overall market behavior? Can this new channel of communication help generate permission for outbound telemarketing? How do you calculate the results to see if it's really effective? You can even simply ask if this can at least help your agents work just a little bit faster without compromising quality. Again, the key is to stay objective and not cave-in to hype. 

• For agents – If the technology is proven to help agents work, then they'd better use it. Integrating new technology isn't often as wasteful as some critics claim. The waste could actually be their own fault and it's your job to see if that is the case. Just as technology is capable of improving marketing efforts, marketers should have a complimentary amount of expertise to understand how why this is so. One example is when you enforce the use of email to help qualify sales leads. Therefore, your agents must understand how email actually helps in enhancing engagement with prospects.

As they say, tools are only as good as the people who use them. Taking pride in only either human effort or advanced technology only blinds you to what you can really do. Today, new technology only continues to offer new ways to engage markets and gather information about them. Such means of recording, calculating, and organizing data is beyond human capacity. On the other hand, what good is all that when you can't understand how it all helps in generating qualified leads? That requires a human mind and not just coded algorithms.

So when you're evaluating a contact center, make sure that its agents know the difference between using technology to enhance their efforts and simply trying to substitute one for the other. Both human skill and technology have limits as much as advantages.

The Different Ways To Generate Permission For B2B Telemarketing

Decision makers are in a position of authorization. Authorization implies permission. Therefore, if you had ways to get that kind of permission, B2B telemarketing would be lot easier.

So then, why is it still so hard? Well, the challenge is not just in the telemarketing but at least half of it (or more) lies in getting that permission. Their authority wouldn't be all that important if was that easy to get now would it? To succeed in B2B telemarketing though, gaining that permission has its long term benefits so you should make sure that your telemarketers are trying out the following techniques. These techniques can be used by in-house and outsourced agents alike.

• Online Engagement – Online engagement can be less direct than telemarketing and is therefore good for asking permission first. Usually, it's either done through email or social media conversations. Remember to focus on the engagement though because that's the core of these tactics (social media especially). Once the conversation starts feeling too long and drawn-out however, you can ask permission to call. Their consent will not only get you past their gatekeepers but also enable future follow-up calls. 

• Inbound Marketing – Instead of directly asking for it, you can also attract permission via inbound marketing. You can set up an informative website with a contact form for phone numbers for example. Forms that are filled will serve as the signal to call as well as their consent. But in order for this to be effective, you need to know proper targeting. Use advertisements only when you know that your intended market is viewing them. Have your website optimized with the right keywords. The call should also be used to get more information beyond that was spelled out on the contact form. 

• Customer Database – You can also target your current customers if you've already established several good B2B relationships. You've already done what was necessary so that they're no longer cautious of your calls. The only challenge now is to maintain that trust. Using your own customer database will only work if you have entirely new products and services that they might be interested in. Therefore, customer feedback is important. It will guide innovation and development so that you'll have something worth marketing to them.

Getting the permission of a decision maker isn't always easy but once you acquire it, it can be smoother sailing for the rest of the sale process. Why? Because asking their permission shows that you care about their authority and their business. Inbound marketing can show that you're aware of what's going among their businesses but aren't afraid to learn more about each of them. Targeting your customer database shows that you haven't just left them on their own once the sale was made. You're still willing to keep hearing from them. Using online engagement prior to calling demonstrates that you're not eager to sell and want to first find out their problems before offering a solution. There are many different ways to generate permission for telemarketing but don't forget the values that you can learn from each technique!

Why People Are Cautious About Telemarketing Services And What You Can Do About It

Even B2B telemarketers themselves will admit that more than a handful of people either don't like what they do or just have a negative understanding of it. There are good reasons for that though and they're either the result of bad telemarketing practices or just a lack of transparency. In both cases, it's the duty of those in telemarketing services to avoid such practices and be crystal clear about what they do when engaging with businesses.

So first off, what are some of the things that turn people off from telemarketing?

• Pushiness – B2C telemarketing isn't the only form of the practice that was stigmatized by the pushy attitude of both marketers and salespeople. Such hardheaded characters don't give decision makers any peace of mind because of their constant marketing calls. Gatekeepers can easily sniff out a persistent caller and take necessary security measures to block their calls completely.
• Contact Data – While decision makers are more or less used to the idea of publicizing their contact data, telemarketers still have an obligation to use that information responsibly. And once they know it's listed on your customer database, they expect you to keep it secure. A breach in that security will result in a severe breach of their trust.
• Impersonality – Impersonal marketing approaches are just that: impersonal. They're bland. They're repetitive. They're also a terrible waste of time. It's no wonder that not even company gatekeepers are impressed with a message that they've heard over and over again.

Now, what can be done about this? This might be surprising but those of you who were just considering outsourced telemarketing still have good reason to, despite the above flaws. Why? It's because many telemarketers have long taken the hint. The mark of a good company is one that is aware of these mistakes and has taken measures to avoid them. And if you're using your own in-house telemarketing team, you might be able to employ some the following yourself!

• Exercise proper follow-ups – Instead of being pushy, make sure your telemarketers find ways to get around instead of constantly hammering the decision maker. If they're not willing to talk just yet, then call at another time. They can also learn to use other channels of communication in order get permission (e.g. emailing them first or attracting their interest with a website).
• Treat data responsibly – Secure that data as much as possible. In the case of current customers, you should also make sure they're aware that you're using their data and know how you're using it. If you're contacting businesses to qualify completely new B2B leads, then you have tell them where you got their contact information when they ask.
• Diversify your marketing approach – Use other forms of marketing like blogging or social media to show that you're not just limited to telemarketing. You can also improve the telemarketing approach itself by turning it into an opportunity to engage with prospects so you'll know more about how your business can help theirs.

Ultimately, it's all about improving the quality of the telemarketing service and not really about doing away with it entirely. Even if it does prove a hassle for yourself, the continued existence of experienced B2B telemarketers is living proof that it can be done right.

And when it's done right, fewer people will be cautious about it.

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!

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!