Tele-Services

As any good salesperson can tell you, it’s impossible to help your client unless you know what they want. If you skip the buyer’s needs assessment, you run the risk of making assumptions about the buyer’s needs and offering a solution that misses the mark. So, after greeting a new prospect, assessing their needs should be your priority.

In years past, when companies have considered either onboarding business development reps (BDRs) or hiring a third-party provider of a professional business development team, they’ve made certain assumptions: • BDRs traditionally were viewed as entry-level roles that often led to sales. • Business development teams typically were not recognized as professionals in their own right, let alone the lynchpin to growing a business. That, however, has changed.

We’ve noted how COVID-19 has changed the way we do business. In the case of face-to-face sales calls, the changes that have occurred are largely permanent. For example, a McKinsey survey in November 2020 found that more than 75% of B2B buyers prefer virtual sales calls.

Since James Oldroyd's 2007 Lead Response Management Study, we've known that speed counts. The difference between a sales rep successfully connecting or not with a lead can come down to minutes. Oldroyd reported that reps who responded within five minutes were 100 times more likely to be successful.

Seven years ago, Forrester predicted that by 2020, a million B2B salespeople in the United States would lose their jobs to digital, self-service e-commerce. Today, two years since the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift in sales activities—fewer face-to-face meetings, less travel and greater reliance on digital resources and virtual meetings—you may be exploring your B2B sales options. For example, customer-centric websites that include chatbots, calculators and rich content are helping B2B buyers to research and purchase without the help of sales reps.

People sometimes question whether B2B telemarketing and tele-sales are effective in today’s business environment. Yes, I am pleased to report that teleservices are still workhorses you can count on within your sales and marketing arsenal. In fact, they may be more important in 2022 than ever before.

Your sales reps can sell more by talking with customers and prospects and not at them. In other words, they need to have a conversation. I'm talking about conversational selling. Instead of developing a standard pitch for inside sales reps to follow or giving them a script, give them the skills and tools to engage.

The simple act of putting up a sign to announce something for sale is advertising. More specifically, it's outbound marketing. It's the oldest and simplest form of marketing. Today, we include in the mix newspaper, radio advertising, television commercials and pay-per-click ads, all of which are passive outbound marketing. Then you have your proactive outbound marketing, such as cold calling, email blasts and direct mail. Bringing it all together, you have your account-based marketing.

Video conferencing is no longer a competitive edge. It's essential equipment for prospect and client engagement, thanks in large part to the COVID pandemic restrictions on meeting face-to-face. Corporations, mid-size companies, even small businesses use video conferencing to engage with customers and prospects. Growth is almost off the charts: What was almost a $4 billion business in 2019 is slated to surpass $20 billion by 2024. So, if you're wondering what the new normal looks like, video conferencing is one of the mainstays. But what system to purchase?

In 2021, the average cost of a data breach will be $4.24 million. That’s enough to destroy most businesses. And according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute, both the cost and frequency of cyber attacks are increasing every year. What are you doing to protect your data assets? Like most companies, you probably realize that a data breach also has the potential to put both your business continuity and reputation at risk. You undoubtedly take data security and privacy seriously and go to great lengths to protect your systems and data.