Category: Sales

Business development strategies are crucial for helping businesses to grow, expand, and reach the next level.

Effective business development is one of the fastest ways to grow your business but it can also be one of the most time consuming as it often requires focus, planning, stamina, and resources. However, when done right, your business development processes can have a huge impact on your growth, your revenue, and your company’s future.

Here are 5 ways to improve your business development process:

Effective market research

Market research plays a vital part in any business development process, helping you to understand your current market position and determine where it is going.

Carry out research into your industry, your geographical area, and the market segment you are targeting. Telemarketing is a great tool for this.

Research contracts, bids, and opportunities for co-operation with other companies – this can help you to increase your revenue channels.

Subscribe to industry-related databases, forums, and blogs. These can be hugely valuable, providing detailed information about projects within your sector. This can save you time when collecting information and reduce your market intelligence efforts.

Focus on your client’s needs

Rather than focusing your business development process on what you’re offering, focus instead on what your client needs, listen carefully to the client’s individual requirements and preferences. If you listen carefully you should then be able to modify your own pitch to match their requirements. This, in turn, should increase client satisfaction rates.

Prioritise client satisfaction

A dissatisfied client could damage your company’s reputation as a whole.

With this in mind, client satisfaction is key for effective business development and should always be your priority. If a problem or issue arises, you need to fix it as quickly and effectively as possible.

Don’t let relationships go cold

As well as providing a good service to your clients, it’s also important to maintain relationships. After all, studies have shown that retained clients spend, on average, 67% more than new customers.

Make it part of your business development process to engage with your clients periodically. Set up Google Alerts for your clients so you know what’s happening in their world or share useful content with them when you come across it. You could even send notes on special occasions, such as birthdays and anniversaries.

Ensure to connect with your clients on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

Innovate

Innovation is key when it comes to beating your competition. After all, if you offer your clients something unique, there’s a high probability that they will do business with you.

What more can you do with your services? Is there a part of what you offer that needs something extra in order to increase sales? Perhaps you need to integrate services into packages?

Continue to innovate and improve your business development process to benefit your clients and consequently your sales pipeline.

If you’d like to understand how we can help with your business development process, contact us on 0345 241 3038 or get in touch today.

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At the start of the New Year, many of us take the opportunity to re-evaluate our business processes and sales strategies.

When you’re putting together your sales strategy for 2018, telemarketing is definitely something you should consider. With so many new technologies and tools available, it’s easy to overlook the traditional telemarketing approach, but taking this route can play a significant role in your sales strategy. In fact, it’s one of the fastest growing forms of direct marketing today.

Here are 8 reasons why telemarketing should be part of your 2018 strategy:

It’s cost-effective

Telemarketing can be a cost-effective method of selling your business, particularly in comparison to other sales methods. Although there is a common theory that it’s expensive and that costs within telemarketing aren’t easy to control, it actually provides a seriously powerful return on investment. After all, what more should you expect from a marketing channel that connects with individual prospects one on one?

We speak more about the cost of hiring in-house versus outsourcing here.

It’s convenient

Telemarketing is a convenient sales tool, for both you and your customers. This allows you to bring your product or service directly to them, without having to travel and take on the expenses involved.

Unlike other sales strategies, such as email and direct marketing, your customers will be able to ask questions directly and have an immediate conversation, rather than waiting around for replies.

It’s versatile

Telemarketing can be used within a whole host of sales applications. Ranging from appointment setting, lead generation, and follow up, right through to event promotions, re-activation, and market research – telemarketing is incredibly versatile.

Immediate contact

Unlike other methods of contact, the telephone is immediate and attention-grabbing. With technology today your potential customers are available almost 24/7.

High conversion rates

When implemented correctly, telemarketing is known to deliver high conversion rates, particularly of course where there is a focus on quality rather than quantity.

On-going engagement

As well as reaching out to new leads, telemarketing is also a great way to engage with existing customers. Staying in contact with your customers gives you an opportunity to find out more about their needs and build a better, on-going relationship with them, whilst also allowing you to upsell other products and services that they might benefit from.

Expand your business

A further advantage of telemarketing is that it allows you to expand your business by selling to customers in other areas, both locally and nationally. Opportunities to expand are therefore endless, giving you a chance to hone in on your target audience, whatever the area.
Immediate feedback

Telemarketing allows you to obtain instant feedback from your customers about your product or service. This, in turn, allows you to immediately start working on ways to improve your business.

As well as being a great sales tool, telemarketing is also an ideal way to ask your customers if there is anything else that you can be doing for them.

So, there you have it, 8 valuable reasons why telemarketing should be part of your sales strategy in 2018.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to get in touch, or call us on 0345 241 3038.

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If you’re involved in telemarketing or sales, you’ll almost certainly have encountered the ‘gatekeeper’.

Tasked with preventing people from accessing the key decision maker, the Gatekeeper is usually a personal assistant, secretary, receptionist, or switchboard operator who will ensure that only a select few callers will make it through.

With this in mind, the first challenge of any successful call or pitch is to get past the gatekeeper, allowing you to reach the all-important decision maker. Of course, that’s easier said than done!

Here are our top 5 ways to get past the gatekeeper:

Treat them with respect

Although they might not be decision makers, Gatekeepers are typically respected individuals within their firm. With this in mind, it is important that you treat them with the respect they deserve and express your gratitude for the help or information they provide you. This will also keep you in their good books so you will stand more chance of getting through to the decision maker next time you call.

It’s understandable that you might become frustrated if they are trying to stop you getting through to the person you really want to speak to, but don’t take this frustration out on them – they’re only doing their job and the last thing you want is to end up on a blacklist!

Build a rapport

As well as respecting the Gatekeeper, you should also try to build a rapport. Rather than trying to push past them as though they’re nothing more than an automated system, focus on building a positive relationship with them.

For example, as soon as you learn their name, be sure to write it down and start addressing them by that name every time you call.

Sound senior

Within any business, those in management roles can be treated differently by other employees. If someone believes you are important or high up within an organisation, they may think twice about putting the phone down.

So speak slowly and articulately, keep calm and relaxed, and never divulge more details than necessary. If the Gatekeeper senses that you have a senior position, they won’t risk offending or insulting you by probing into your reasons for calling too deeply.

Don’t sell

The Gatekeeper has no power to make a decision regarding the products or services you’re trying to sell. And, to be honest, they’re probably not interested in your sales pitch. So don’t waste your time, or theirs, trying to deliver your sales pitch.

Instead, when they ask what the call is regarding, provide an answer that doesn’t sound too ‘salesy’. Perhaps mention previous correspondence you’ve had with the decision maker.

Call before or after hours

One way to avoid the Gatekeeper is to call when they’re not there! Executives and decision makers often arrive before and leave after normal working hours. If you call during these out-of-office hours, you might well find that their Gatekeeper isn’t around and they are answering their phone themselves.

To find out more about how we can help you optimise your telemarketing results, give us a call on 0345 241 3038 or get in touch.

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Each and every outsourced campaign brings with it a different client briefing. Some may be efficient and give the telemarketers the tools they need to produce results, and some may see a few implications further down the line from a rushed briefing process.

If you’re looking at briefing a telemarketing agency for an up and coming campaign, there are a few elements that you need to be completing in order to run an effective outbound operation.

So, without further ado, here is our 10 point checklist that can help your business when briefing the telemarketing agency you’re working with.

1. Regular Communication

Ask your telemarketing agency how often you’ll be in touch. Dropping communication can lead to potential opportunities to improve the campaign being missed.

Suggest a guideline, perhaps every couple of days, where you speak to the account manager to stay up to date.

2. Monitor and Review

Regular communication also helps you to monitor and review what’s happening with the campaign.
Ask your agency how they are monitoring what’s happening on the campaign, and what their review process is in order to check changes are being made where necessary.

3. Set and Evaluate Targets

Work with your telemarketing agency to set targets for the timescale of your campaign. And, look deeper in to whether these are realistic based on your industry.

Both KPI and team targets can help you to give the agency you work with an extra push to hit those all important objectives of the campaign.

4. Set Key Messaging

Without discussing the messaging that will be communicated over both verbal and non-verbal channels, you may get different callers with different ideas of what the messaging should be.

Be concise with the messaging, making this clear to your provider. And, take out any unnecessary add-ons or information that will confuse a prospect rather than advise.

5. Outline Product Benefits

You and the agency should on the same page when it comes to what benefits are being promoted during telemarketing calls.

Provide them with any information that might support the benefits of your product and service. For example, a results statistic, testimonial or case studies.

6. Define Audience Pain Points

Continuing on from the benefits, inform the telemarketing agency of what pain points your target audience have and how your product answers these.

Think about the perception of the audience; advise the agency on why your company is the best solution for problems they are experiencing.

7. Set Audience Action

Brief the telemarketing agency on what you want the audience to do. Be part of a meeting? Will this be over the phone? Face to face? What is the booking process?

Tell the agency exactly what the prospect needs to do, in order for a successful sale or meeting to be made.

8. Outline Profiling Questions

You know your perfect buyer, but does your telemarketing provider? Look to set up profiling questions that callers might ask in order to define whether a prospect is the right fit.

The better information both the agency and sales team has on the prospect, the better they can assess the needs and wants of that potential buyer.

9. Seek Relevant Data

Whether you or the telemarketing provider is supplying the data for the campaign, it will need to be accurate and relevant to your target audience in order to justify seeing any results.

10. Set Meeting Quality Guidelines

If the outsourced agency is booking appointments or setting meetings, you need to let them know what an ideal lead looks like.

Quality beats quantity every time, so avoid setting meeting targets without knowing how a quality lead may look.

Outsourcing your telemarketing to an agency may come about for a number of reasons; Lack of skill, lack of time, or simply because you would rather set your sights on other operations within your business.

Whatever the reason, the campaign setup and briefing are crucial to ensure effective results and, of course, a better return on investment for you.

Want to know more? Call us today on 0345 241 3038 or get in touch here.

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The telemarketing industry carries with it some pretty strong stereotypes, which is unfortunate for one of the most direct routes to market with a huge amount of results to back it up.

Additionally, and as a consequence of stereotyping, there are several negative myths which are associated with telemarketing. 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.

Telemarketing calls always use 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, enabling real conversations that adapt to the prospect’s needs.

There’s no emotion, each call is just a number

With no emotion, and with people on the phones that didn’t care, we wouldn’t get much done. 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 beyond statistics.

Complex products can’t be sold over the phone

This all comes down to training. We would agree that without the right training, no product 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 on what they’re talking about.

At Air, we work on a vast range of products, which means we have to be seriously clued up on the details of each and what they could potentially offer a prospect.

Inexperienced staff that don’t stick around

The phrase ‘call centre’ brings with it connotations which surround the idea of young and inexperienced staff members who leave not long before their seat is warm.

At Air, we have ex-directors, business owners and sales professionals from a variety of backgrounds, spanning a wide age range.

Dishonest or aggressive methods

Telemarketers hammer the phones, they’re aggressive and their practices are dishonest, with some assuming information about the prospect.

A powerful myth and again, one that is far from true. Before any campaign, we at Air ensure that our data is as clean as possible with the right information and that we adhere to any TPS registers.

Cold calling is dead

And this is the biggest myth of them all. There is an ongoing debate which is based on the concept that cold calling just doesn’t work anymore.

This simply isn’t true. What’s more, the results from both telemarketing and multi-channel marketing campaigns proving this ideology wrong every year.

In fact, our clients made an average return last year of £18 ROI for every £1 they spent.

Air Marketing Group – Nurturing prospects is a large part of what we do

We don’t throw mud at a wall and hope some of it sticks; we look to nurture leads to encourage conversions.

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.

Get in touch today or call 0345 241 3038.

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Any great sales professional will tell you that they would rather have one great appointment, than 10 terrible meetings.

There is the argument that it costs to generate those leads so each and every one should be attended to in the same way, regardless of the quality.

But, should we be spending even more time (and money) on B2B appointments that just aren’t worth it?

In our opinion, it’s best to choose quality over quantity every time.

There is a huge difference between obtaining a lead, and obtaining a good lead. It’s important for you to spend time focussing on the difference between what you would cast as a good lead for your company, and what isn’t.

Ask questions

You can ask quality questions to understand how much you really know about that lead, and whether the appointment is worth your sales agent spending time on.

These B2B quality checking questions can include:

– Is there a real need?
– What makes this need important at this time?
– Are we meeting with the right individuals? I.e. are they the decision maker?
– What problem is our solution answering?

Know your criteria

On top of questions, set a criterion that adheres to your specific audience, or prospect criteria that tends to convert.

This could be down to a company size, a type of operation, industry type and more. The more in depth you are and the better the understanding you have of your ideal customer type, the better the quality checking will be when checking appointments against said criteria.

With these processes in place, you’ll have a sales diary full of well-qualified appointments that really are worth your sales agents’ time.

Air’s B2B Appointment Setting

Appointment setting campaigns with Air Marketing Group look to provide you with meetings that bring you together with your ideal target audience.

Our rigorous quality checking process ensures that every single appointment is suited to the criteria that you’ve set in your campaign strategy.

We say this time and time again; we won’t provide you with an appointment if it isn’t quality and does not present the potential opportunity to convert.

Want to find out more? Contact us today by getting in touch or calling 0345 241 3038.

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