In the third instalment of our ‘Ask The MD’ series we ask the question ‘what should stop you considering outsourcing your lead generation?’. Find out the answer in this video featuring our Managing Director, Owen Richards, and sister company Forrest Marketing Group‘s Managing Director, Richard Forrest.
In the second instalment of our ‘Ask The MD’ series we ask the question ‘what should you look for in an outsourced partner?’. Find out the answer in this video featuring our Managing Director, Owen Richards, and sister company Forrest Marketing Group‘s Managing Director, Richard Forrest.
In the first instalment of our ‘Ask The MD’ series we ask the question ‘how important is traditional sales prospecting in today’s digital age?’. Find out the answer in this video featuring our Managing Director, Owen Richards, and sister company Forrest Marketing Group‘s Managing Director, Richard Forrest.
You can still hear the echoes of the champagne corks popping but you know the real work lies ahead. Any business that’s been through rounds of investor pitches, meticulously prepared presentations and hundreds of handshakes to successfully secure investment, knows that feeling of celebratory relief. When you’ve been focussed on securing the money for so long it’s hard to shift to the next phase. Your strategy is clear…in theory. And now someone else believes you can do it too, which presents a new pressure, living up to the pitch.
How do you ensure you make your budgets work as hard as possible, so you can deliver the profitability your investors need to see and achieve your predicted growth?
Start with a solid self-appraisal
You’ve likely got a very strong idea or product to sell, some great market insight and a formidable sales strategy. What do you think will be the hardest part of your strategy to get right? Are you struggling to distil the benefits of your product into a targeted marketing strategy? Maybe you need help reaching decision makers. It’s worth thinking about this at the outset. If you’re in the SaaS industry, for example and the bulk of your time and expertise has been focussed on developing your software, it’s going to be a steep learning curve for your team in areas where your strategy demands immediate excellence in sales or marketing. Look at your budget and make some decisions about buying in expertise. Working with experts who can nail your brief and give it the time and attention it deserves, will save you money in the long run.
Don’t limit your own success
Maybe you really are the best person to do it all, but think of the scale of the opportunity. Do you have time to do everything? Or, will you free up valuable diary space if you carefully outsource elements that you believe you could oversee with a guiding hand? Think about where your money and your time are best spent. If you’re the face and the voice of the business, you’ll eventually need to relinquish some of the day-to-day.
Build your supplier network
A trusted supplier is genuinely worth their weight in gold. They can give you a steer on where to allocate budget and where you’ll get the most return on investment, provide a valuable sounding board for any ideas or concerns you may have and genuinely look out for opportunities on your behalf. Good suppliers are an extension of your team, bridging that gap in knowledge and expertise and working with you collaboratively to achieve mutual success. They won’t sell you anything you don’t need but instead make even the tightest budget align with your business aims.
You can be ambitious and realistic
When it comes to your business, there’s nothing wrong in thinking big. We’re living in an age of business insight, if you’ve got an ambitious target in mind you can work out what your conversion of leads needs to be to achieve your goals. A trusted supplier can advise of typical conversion rates and how they’ve achieved this for their other clients, giving you an educated idea of what’s realistic for your business and your timescales.
At Air Marketing, we’re experienced in working with clients to maximise their outsourcing budget to achieve their business objectives. We’ve worked with businesses at every point in their journey to leverage the best return on investment for budgets that need to deliver results. We work with clients to create a tailored, blend of services that will deliver the best conversion rates in their desired market. If you’d like to hear more about how we can help your business grow or show you how we’ve helped businesses from all sectors achieve success. Get in touch today, call us on 0345 241 3038. Or hear more from our existing customers here.
I started my journey with Air Marketing back in 2018 as a Business Development Executive. I really enjoyed the role, the culture and the opportunities that were clearly available from this position. But I was hungry for growth and I knew I wanted to develop my career, within the first year I quickly excelled and was rewarded with the management of my first account. I was thrilled by this opportunity to really show what I was made of and also to give the client the best experience of working with Air.
Fast forward to today, just over a year later and I’m stepping into one of just three Account Manager roles, with my sole focus to deliver ROI for our ever-growing client base.
I wanted to share with you how I got here, so these are my 5 focus areas:
Training
I’m a huge believer in achieving anything, if you’re willing to learn and open to change. Within my time at Air I’ve had the opportunity to learn from various senior team members and taken part in some fantastic training sessions. These have been vital to my progression as it doesn’t feel like I have ever stopped learning. My favourite training was a Time Management session run by our in-house Learning and Development Co-ordinator. It taught me how to balance my workload and keep stress levels under control, which is vital in a fast pace, high performance environment like Air.
Feedback
I may be a Gen Z; however I don’t agree with snowflake culture that the generation has been tarred with. I value and really take on board feedback from those more knowledgeable both inside and outside of work to aid my professional development. Sometimes the feedback has been negative, but I always feel you can take learnings and constructive criticism from these moments. Being in sales I have a tough skin anyway!
Honesty
Yes, honesty. I’ve always taken the approach of transparency with my colleagues and clients. It’s something that fits well in our culture and something we pride ourselves on at Air. You can’t lie when it comes to statistics and data. If you’re honest with clients this will create a strong and respectful relationship for the future.
Creative thinking
A large proportion of my role is process driven, with this we see consistency of delivery and of results. However, you need to be one step ahead in account management. This means you need to be thinking of new ideas all the time to keep things fresh. Nine times out of ten your original strategy is going to change, and you will need to adapt to this to keep on the front foot.
Passion
I believe that passion is the biggest thing you need to get to the next step. I love what I do, and I am lucky to work in a culture that nurtures that passion and ignites it even further. Being dedicated to reach your goal is important and it is this drive and dedication that will see you become successful.
I’m looking forward to everything 2020 has in store in my new role, working with more fantastic clients and achieving great results for them. If you’re interested in joining Team Air, visit our careers page or call 0345 241 3038.
Opinion piece by Gracie-May Bryan, Account Manager at Air Marketing Group
Even the most experienced sales professional might struggle to pin down a comprehensive definition for each discipline and others might not differentiate at all; so it’s not hard to understand where the confusion arises.
The sales and marketing landscapes have vastly changed in the past decade. Digital marketing, content marketing and sales enablement specialisms have emerged alongside the advent of marketing automation and analytics tools. As a result, businesses are closer to their customer data than ever before, meaning campaigns can be focused and personal, and sales and marketing professionals can become laser-focused on their target market. You might ask what does this have to do with telemarketing, telesales and inside sales? The answer, absolutely everything. 75% of companies say closing more deals is their top sales priority, yet 40% of salespeople say getting a response from prospects is getting harder (source: Hubspot). It’s these solutions that help bring businesses closer to the decision maker, generating meaningful leads and supporting your overarching sales goals and objectives. Here’s how.
Telemarketing – a vital part of your outbound strategy
There’s a huge difference between a telemarketer reading a tired, poorly thought out script in an uninspiring environment and outsourcing the job to a professional and dynamic agency who can demonstrate genuine return on investment through happy clients. Highly trained telemarketers are skilled sales professionals, adept at staying on brand and message whilst nurturing a conversation. They are focused on building rapport with your desired targets and delivering detailed reporting that helps you inform and shape your future campaigns. The best agencies offer you full transparency, connecting you to the team making the calls, live reporting and a dedicated campaign manager. They will provide you with a true extension of your in-house team.
Telesales – professionalism and scalability
Telesales is a slightly different focus. Homing in on the sale of a specific product or service, it’s ideal for businesses that might need to scale up their sales resource around a product launch or campaign. Done well, this approach is far cry from the high volume, light touch methods some might associate with telesales; it can help you increase conversion rates and boost your brand in the markets you need to be known. These skilled telesales professionals can build valuable customer relationships without the hard sell.
Inside sales – turning interested prospects into active clients
Inside sales teams target prospects and customers through email, phone conversations or online through LinkedIn, business groups and forums. These professionals are not only skilled in the art of identifying opportunities for upsell and nurturing conversations through a sales pipeline but a valuable support to traditional ‘outside sales’ identifying key opportunities beyond the scope of their role. Converting a sales lead into a valued customer can be challenging to say the least, this is where inside sales comes into its own, taking greater ownership for nurturing this valuable conversion process.
We understand the reasons driving the decision to outsource are often complex. You might want to save time, protect your internal resource, or bring in the expertise you need, when you need it. Whether you have a project in mind or if you’d like to explore how our services could support your business and sales objectives, we’d welcome the opportunity to take this forward and show you how we’ve helped businesses from all sectors achieve success. Get in touch today or call us on 0345 241 3038. Or hear more from our existing customers here.
It’s common knowledge that the telemarketing industry carries with it strong stereotypes. The word ‘telemarketing’ has a negative connotation for many and this has resulted in an abundance of myths becoming associated with telemarketing.
This is extremely unfortunate for one of the most direct routes to market with incredible case studies to back it up. As a company that sees our clients get great results out of telemarketing campaigns, we’ve set out to debunk these and explore why they really are just myths.
FALSE: Telemarketing diallers always have to stick to scripts
Sticking to strict scripts does not result in conversations that are tailored to each and every individual on the phone. Although there may be some structure to the calls, a strict script is not adhered to. This enables real conversations that adapt to the prospect’s needs, build a relationship and trust in your brand.
FALSE: There’s no emotion – each call is just a number
If our diallers had no emotion and didn’t care, we wouldn’t have achieved what we had in the last financial year. Each call isn’t just a call. It’s a conversation which looks in to pain points and reasons why a service or product might help someone. This therefore requires a deeper and emotional understanding that goes way beyond statistics.
FALSE: Complex products or services can’t be sold over the phone
This all comes down to training. We would agree that without the right training, no product or service can be sold over the phone. If you’re looking to work with an outsourced telemarketing supplier, it’s important to understand that full training is carried out in order for telemarketers to be confident in what they’re talking about. At Air, we work on a vast range of products and services, which means we have to be seriously clued up on the details of each and what they could potentially offer a prospect. In the last financial year, we conducted 534 hours 45 minutes of training focused on our clients’ products and services.
FALSE: Telemarketers are inexperienced staff that don’t stick around
The phrase ‘call centre’ brings with it connotations which surround the idea of young and inexperienced team members who leave not long before their seat is warm. At Air, our diallers are ex-directors, business owners and sales professionals from a variety of backgrounds, spanning a wide age range. We take pride in nurturing all employees who wish to build a career with us – read Yasmin’s story here.
FALSE: Dishonest or aggressive methods are used to win sales
The belief that telemarketers hammer the phones, they’re aggressive and their practices are dishonest is one that is far from true. Before any campaign, we ensure that our data is as clean as possible with the right information and that we adhere to any TPS registers. Ethical selling and quality assurance are at the top of our priority list.
FALSE: Cold calling is dead
And this is the biggest myth of them all! There’s an ongoing debate which is based on the concept that cold calling just doesn’t work anymore. This simply isn’t true. Moreover, the results from both telemarketing and multi-channel marketing campaigns are proving this ideology wrong every year. In fact, our clients make an average return of £18 for every £1 they spent with us.
At Air Marketing Group, we don’t throw mud at a wall and hope some of it sticks; we look to nurture leads to encourage conversions. Read our top 10 tips for successful telemarketing blog here.
We’re passionate about the way we work with your business. We’ll ensure that any questions or uncertainties you may have surrounding a campaign with us are answered.
To arrange a free consultation with one of our Sales Directors, get in touch today or call 0345 241 3038.
The relationship between sales and marketing is famously a rocky one. If something goes wrong in the sales funnel, it’s easy to point blame at one another. If you work B2B, it’s likely that you’ve come across this argument around lead generation and conversion at some point in your career. Sales will often suggest that marketing have provided low quality, unqualified leads, or even a lack of leads. On the defending side, Marketing may imply that Sales don’t follow up leads and if they do, they don’t do it properly.
So how do you take the best from each department and turn the relationship into a happy union, resulting in business success for all?
Persona production
Marketing are fantastic at knowing the industry and who they should be targeting in regards to job titles, seniority and location. However, Sales can provide a valuable insight into which professionals both are and aren’t converting as leads and why. By working together and incorporating market research, comprehensive personas can be produced, or current versions refreshed. This will help Marketing to better target desired audiences and Sales to personalise pitches – resulting in increased acquisition.
Content collaboration
There’s an ongoing Marketing perception that the content they produce specifically for Sales is rarely utilised. Having worked together building and defining personas, take your new-found relationship to the next level by planning for and producing strategic content that targets leads at just the right time in the sales cycle. Naturally, Sales observe real FAQs and issues throughout the lead nurturing process and Marketing can turn these challenges into helpful solution assets.
Another great content strategy to consider is ghostwriting. Marketing can help build the credibility of Sales by positioning them as thought leaders in blogs and on social media. This will help build trust and most importantly, convert leads.
Strategy syncing
Turn your content collaboration into a long-term shared strategy that incorporates sponsored ads, email campaigns, social media, blogs, whitepapers and events (to name a few areas – depending on your business!). Supporting a shared message between Sales and Marketing will unify brand communications and tackle common goals.
Goal sharing
Defining shared goals may seem like an odd suggestion at top-level but there are a few insightful KPIs (key performance indicators) that complement the Sales and Marketing mix. After all, we are all working towards the same end game of improving the bottom line. Our partner and B2B lead generation software provider, Lead Forensics, suggest a variety of interesting KPIs including:
• Number of leads per channel
• Number of leads per asset
• Conversion rate of landing pages
• Ratios of MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to SQLs (sales qualified leads) and closed
• Lead scoring
• Email open rate
• Email click-through rate
• Cost of content
CRM integration
Integrating a Sales and Marketing CRM, such as Hubspot, is a brilliant solution for data sharing and visibility. Make the most of your CRM by setting lead scoring. ‘Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, often in the form of numerical “points,” to each lead you generate for the business. You can score your leads based on multiple attributes, including the professional information they’ve submitted to you and how they’ve engaged with your website and brand across the internet. This process helps sales and marketing teams prioritise leads, respond to them appropriately, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.’ Learn more here.
Consistent communication
We all know that Sales have a competitive nature, but rivalry can be detrimental to business growth. Sometimes what can be seen as a lack of respect is actually a lack of understanding. In a busy environment, it’s important to set aside the time to keep each other up to date with anything that may be relevant to the other team, discuss your shared strategy, ideas and goals using easy to follow terminology. Analysing what both Sales and Marketing believe is working, who it’s working for and what could be improved will enhance synergy and streamline a route to success.
How do we know this works?
After exponential growth in our first two years as an outsourced sales agency, our ever-growing client base were often looking for other marketing services that could be provided to them within the group. We sensed a niche opportunity to help clients with their full marketing and sales demand creation by launching our marketing services line. As demand generation specialists, we build intelligent marketing capabilities to deliver marketing qualified leads to sales teams within ambitious sales led organisations.
Our sales and marketing services teams have been successfully working side-by-side for several years now – supporting one another, as well as clients, with their sales and marketing needs. We know that having a happy union between sales and marketing produces results and believe that this relationship should be at the forefront of businesses who are looking to grow.
If you are interested in exploring how Air Marketing can help you grow your business, contact us today: 0345 241 3038 / contact@air-marketing.co.uk.
Dependant on your business and the goals you want to achieve, there are a number of things to consider when running a successful telemarketing campaign. We’ve complied our top 10 tips for successful telemarketing below, with links to our blog archive for more information.
Today, very few businesses are totally one-of-a-kind. So, it is vital that you develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to help you to highlight what makes you a little bit different and stand out amongst the crowd. It helps if you can encapsulate this in a snappy slogan:
FedEx Corporation
“When it absolutely, positively has to be overnight”.
A strong USP will:
2. Know Your Audience and Utilise Market Segmentation
A simple and effective way to build a trustworthy brand is by implementing a segmentation strategy, however 20% of respondents to an Avention survey felt that segmentation was one of the biggest challenges facing their organisation. Segmentation is a tried and tested means of delivering results to your customers. We only have to look to email campaigns, where Mailchimp showed that clicks are 74.53% higher than non-segmented campaigns, to see this.
The simple truth is that we are only as effective as the data that we use. It is our job to understand who we are calling and to establish a need, all culminating together to create a lead or opportunity for our client. Understanding the target market, key message and goal for our clients will help us to gain the correct data. With data that has been cleansed, we are able to do this in an efficient manner.
4. Place an Importance on Ethical Selling
At Air, we are honest and transparent, we never sell to a prospect who we know we can’t deliver for, whether that’s based on their budget or our capabilities, and this should be universal. Sales people often end up being tarred with the same brush, of being arrogant and pushy, driven by commission and not caring for their clients.
Businesses who demonstrate a clear focus on working with their clients for the long-term and help them to make smart business decision, will fare far better than those who are pushing for a one-off sale, clearly without taking into consideration the needs, values or constraints of the potential client.
Selecting the right telemarketer for your campaign is vital. Get this wrong and you’ll see potential leads deteriorate, your business reputation plummet and you’ll miss the full potential of ROI. Your team need to be able to:
6. Clearly Communicate the Value of Your Product
An inability to communicate their Value Proposition is one of the biggest inhibitors to businesses when looking to attract new customers and reach sales targets, with only 24% of organisations agreeing on the definition of their target audience. So how can you avoid that and make your value known?
Direct marketing is a great way of introducing your product or service across multiple touchpoints, over a variety of different platforms which include direct mail, email marketing and telemarketing to name just a few. When delivered tactfully this marketing tactic will:
8. Be Transparent Throughout Your Customer Journey
At Air, we provide our clients with live time reporting through a client portal so that they can see campaigns unfold to the minute and all call recordings. In doing this, we are able to build a relationship based on trust and accountability, and we encourage our clients to extend this to those that they on board through us. At the end of the day, in sales trust is key. People won’t part with their money if they don’t fully buy into both you and your product/service.
9. Manage Your Growing Pipeline
When developing your sales pipeline, it is essential that you have a definitive sales process. A few basic steps to follow when implementing a sales pipeline are:
10. Listen to Customer Feedback
Listening to customer feedback is especially vital for telephone-based sales professionals who are representing start-ups, businesses choosing to release a new product or service, and those marketing an existing product or service to a new audience. Asking customers, or potential customers, for their feedback is a key step in the process of reaching a sale, enabling you to assess your product/service, refine its offering and match to the customers’ requirements.
If you feel that you could use our help implementing and conducting a successful telemarketing campaign, get in touch. Our expert team have years of experience across a range of industries and we will be able to help you reach your business goals. Call: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk
