Category: Blog

It’s no surprise that when clients begin working with us, and throughout our partnership, their top concern is leads and building a strong pipeline. Even though leads are important, they are only worthwhile if they are of good quality. So, whilst businesses may want to generate leads as quickly as possible and build that pipeline over a short period of time, at Air our top priority is reminding prospects and clients that this takes time. Quality leads don’t appear overnight.

Definition:

When a client begins working with us, the first step is to put a defined strategy in place, including an in-depth criterion which highlights what a quality lead looks like to the client. Ultimately, we can sit and dial as many people as a prospect would like us to, but if we don’t fully understand their target audience and we therefore ring unqualified data, the leads won’t convert – they may not even appear.

In order to help both us and our clients fully understand what defines a quality lead, we’ll sit down and discuss the target audience. There are a number of defining factors we would look at to qualify leads, including:

• Budget
• Contract Length
• Seniority of Decision Maker
• Geography
• Industry
• Company Size

Training:

In order to make sure that the defined lead qualification criteria are adhered to, we implement various processes following on from our initial conversation. Perhaps the most important one being training.

Training is central to everything we do at Air, as we understand that by investing time into growing the overall knowledge of our team, we will produce higher return for our clients. Each individual has the same access to training on a client campaign and an individual training budget for anything else they feel they need, whether that’s confidence, gate keeper or closing training, for example. With everyone working from the same level of training, we know that understanding is uniform, and leads are quality guaranteed.

For general campaign training, we welcome input and love for our clients to visit the office and get involved – after all, if you want leads for your business, no one has more insight than those within it. From initial campaign training, to on-going training provided by our Account Directors and Executives throughout a campaign, we know that it is vital that everyone is on the same page, understanding exactly what qualifies a lead and ensuring that the correct channels of communication are in place if any changes arise.

Transparency:

From the get-go, we are transparent. You know exactly what stage we’re at and how your campaign is performing. We know that this is key to providing you with quality leads as you are able to provide us feedback throughout the campaign and work to fully optimise your results. In the same vein, we can also make suggestions as we go along and develop a strong, beneficial, two-way relationship that will provide you with a pipeline of quality leads. If you feel that you need help building and maintaining a strong pipeline of quality leads, get in touch today. Our expert team will work with you to fully understand your business before implementing a quality focused campaign. Call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-maketing.co.uk

For any business looking to raise brand awareness and encourage growth, a strong sales team will quickly become your best friend. But the world of sales is vastly different to what it was a couple of decades ago, the traditional hard sales tactic simply won’t work anymore. In order to reach and nurture your prospects through to close, you need to pair your sales with targeted marketing activity and offer a consultative, expert approach. So, what should you consider when outsourcing your sales and marketing activity?

For any company looking to drive ROI and gain traction, we know that there are 3 key things to consider when outsourcing your sales and marketing activity:

Data

Whilst you may be tempted to jump in, buy data and begin calling, it is vital that you take the time to work out what specific data you want using market segmentation, i.e. industry, company size, geography, etc. In narrowing down your data, based on your target audience, your efforts are more likely to hit home and lead to conversions. With data, cleansing is key for a more personalised, targeted sales and marketing campaign – at the end of the day, no one likes, or should receive, spam.

Once your sales team have the data, we suggest that your marketing team run an introductory email pre-calling and use the report from this to further guide your sales calls, generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). For example, did people unsubscribe, open the email, or click on the content within it? In raising awareness pre and post dialling, you are more likely to see engagement with your initial and further calls – for one client, we saw a 20% increase in engagement by accompanying our dialling with an email campaign from Roots. This also works in reverse, it is vital that you use the data from your calls and feed it back to your marketing team, in doing so the data can be put to use in a nurture stream, further assisting the close of your sales.

Dialler and Pitch

Once you have quality data, and your sales team are ready to begin dialling, it is vital that they are prepared. As we’ve mentioned, the hard sales tactic simply doesn’t work anymore, especially if you’re selling high value products/services. Instead, people want to talk to an expert and be guided through the sales journey.

With this in mind, it is vital that you outsource your sales and marketing to a team/s that place an importance on training, everyone involved should have in-depth knowledge of your product/service, industry and target audience. At Air we place an importance on dialler training and encourage our clients to come to the office and assist in the training of our team, after all no one knows your business and it’s aims like you do.

From this training, our diallers will be well versed in the tone and insights needed to pitch your business in an optimal way. We don’t want our diallers to sound like robots, so we avoid implementing a strict script, however we know that our diallers need to pitch themselves as the expert in order to sell well.

We believe that through the perfect combination of data, dialler & pitch, even can make even the most difficult campaign successful.

Integration

At Air, we are lucky to have the services of an intelligent marketing team, our sister company Roots to Market, in house and fully at our disposal. If there’s one thing we’ve refined since Roots was established, it’s integration and we feel that we have now achieved that magic mix of sales and marketing.

In order to fully service our clients to the best of our abilities, we know that we all need to be working from the same page. Communication is key and both sales and marketing need to be involved at every stage, from strategy planning, to technology implementation and campaign start.

With any campaign, regular reporting and campaign catch ups should be in place to ensure that both teams are working to a common goal and completely understand how each team is working to meet your qualifying criteria. There should also be complete transparency with yourself, with sales and marketing both reporting back to you on campaign progression.

If you are considering working with a fully integrated, intelligent outsourced sales and marketing team, get in touch. Call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Content marketing is a softer way to get your product or service in front of your prospects and there is perhaps no easier way to do this than through a company blog.

A blog allows you to share your company story, news, insights and industry relevant opinion pieces. When done well, they can provide an informative platform & wealth of knowledge, that your prospects can dip into and learn from, when in the awareness stage of your sales pipeline and beyond. They allow you to position yourself as the expert who can be relied upon from a distance, this is beneficial as often prospects aren’t committed to having an initial in-depth conversation with you, they are still getting to know you, your business and your offering.

However, there are many traps that companies fall into when they first begin pushing out content. We’ve outlined a few below and given some hints and tips to avoiding making the same mistakes:

1. You post irrelevant content

Your prospects have clicked onto your blog for information about your product or service and how it can help them. It is therefore essential that your blog doesn’t ramble off down multiple tangents but provides them with information that is valuable and informative. Prospects don’t want to sift through endless content to find the answers that they need, they should be able to click on a blog and know that it will be relevant to them. The rule of thumb? Whilst you may have insightful opinions about every aspect of life, unless it is directly beneficial to your prospects needs, it’s best to keep them to yourself.

The solution: create a monthly content schedule and align it to the benefits/attributes of your product or service, or new campaigns/products that you are rolling out. For example, if you own a B2B telemarketing company, focus on generating B2B leads one month and then build on this by following on the next month with a blog on Inside Sales to manage the leads generated.

2. Your personality falls flat

When writing a blog post it is vital that some personality from your business shines through and, importantly, that this personality is one which is relevant to and appeals to your prospects and clients. By this we don’t mean that you should have a joke a minute to make them laugh, but that the language, form and style you use is reflective for your organisation and its goals and values. Is your brand quirky, funny, informative or formal, for example? Understanding this is key to ensuring your personality resonates with prospects and helps you to sell your product or service.

The solution: There is a two-pronged approach for ensuring that your blog reflects a personality that sells your business. Step one is to ensure that you understand your business. This may sound obvious, but many organisations end up finding that their team don’t have a cohesive idea of the goals and values of the company, in turn having to re-evaluate these further down the line. Step two is to fully understand your target audience – how do they want to be spoken to, what appeals to them and what will make them want to get in touch and find out more?

3. You don’t do your homework

If a prospect is looking at your blog, it is more than likely they have a need for your service/product, e.g. they are a new manager who is looking for a performance management tool to improve the engagement of their staff. With this in mind, they probably don’t have much more than a high-level awareness of what it is they need and are looking for someone to help them understand. If you want your prospects to take your brand seriously and value what you have to offer them, it is vital that you demonstrate that you know your industry and position yourself as an expert – a guiding hand there to help them reach their goals.

The Solution: Do your research. Make sure that you know the ins and outs of your industry and can point them towards various surveys, results or articles that highlight the importance and success of your product or service. If you don’t have any research material of your own, align your blog to industry leaders, sourcing their statistics in your blogs to back up your offering and demonstrate its value.

81% of B2B companies use blogging as a content marketing tactic, if you feel that your content marketing is lacking strong blogs and written content, get in touch today. Call us on 01392 796702 or email us at contact@roots2market.com

Lead Generation is a key focus for many of our clients when they begin working with us – at the end of the day, without sales how will your business grow?

In order to keep your business afloat, your pipeline needs to be stocked with a healthy pool of leads that you can reach out to and convert into sales. Whilst you may be tempted to target as many potential prospects as you can with your offering, it is more often than not better to tread lightly, carrying out market research and using buyer personas to sketch out exactly what the best lead looks like to you. It is essential that leads are of a good quality, in line with your target audience and meeting your criteria – for us, and you, there should always be a focus on quality over quantity.

So, how do we go about generating quality B2B leads for our clients?

Integration is key

As an outsourced sales and Demand Generation partner, we are lucky enough to be able to work hand in hand with our sister company, Roots to Market. Our combined specialisms allow us to provide fully integrated sales and marketing services to our clients, helping them to generate qualified B2B leads.

When it comes to generating leads, we understand that cold calling prospects alone is not always the right approach. More often than not, the most effective method is an integrated sales and marketing approach. This involves rolling out Demand Generation campaigns before launching any outsourced sales calls, where Roots will create pre-call emails to introduce the brand and warm prospects, social media campaigns to generate opportunities through data capture and nurture email campaigns to support B2B leads through the sales pipeline.

Working with Roots, and utilising their Demand Generation expertise, we are able to score B2B leads as they work their way through the marketing and sales process. This intelligent approach allows us to gauge when it would be a good time to reach out to prospects with a call, based on how they interact with our clients marketing collateral, such as blogs, whitepapers, emails and adverts.

When a prospect reaches a score that our clients deem high enough to warrant a call, it shouldn’t feel out of the blue, as they will have already engaged with our clients offering in a number of ways, through the marketing activity – whether that’s downloading a white paper or completing a form fill on a social advert.

The human touch

Although our integrated approach allows us to reach prospects the more aware stage of the sales process, we understand the important role that a human voice still plays in what we do. In our digital world, it has never been more valuable and will ultimately be what closes the B2B lead into a sale.

Whilst prospects can find out much of what they need to know online, many B2B leads are looking for high value products or offerings that they need to discuss before making a purchase. In reaching out to the B2B leads generated with a call, our business development team are able to fully understand their needs or business pain points and discuss how our clients offering can help them to overcome these.

As opposed to chat bots or mass cold calls, our campaigns are based on personalised conversations which offer a consultative approach. When we call a prospect, we offer an ‘expert voice’ and we understand that these B2B leads may still not be ready to buy for a number of reasons – they may be tied into a contract with a competitor, for example.

When generating B2B leads, what is most important is that you get your product or service in front of prospects that have a genuine need or interest – which is why qualification criteria is so important. You need to qualify if they are right for you or whether to move on, as you may have thousands of leads but if they don’t 100% understand or have a need for the product, it isn’t worth spending the time talking to them when you could be closing sales with better qualified B2B leads.

If you feel that you could benefit from the services of our integrated team to generate you B2B leads, get in touch today. Call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.