Tele-Services

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for marketing automation technology will expand from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $4.8 billion in 2015. It’s not surprising given that this technology can automate all the routine aspects of sales lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, customer retention, testing, measuring, and optimizing marketing campaigns.

As amazing as it is, there’s one critical element that’s missing—human beings. That’s right—technology just can’t do everything. Marketing automation is best used for repeat tasks that require no judgment; steps in a process that need to happen like clockwork.

People, of course, have qualities that technology cannot duplicate. They can develop one-on-one relationships with your prospects and customers, ferret out the information you need to qualify leads, and add the judgment required to go beyond lead scoring, which is based only on a sales lead’s actions, and determine whether a lead meets your qualification criteria.

So how do you decide which marketing processes to automate and where you should be using people? Simply follow these two rules. 

Even the best tele-services agency cannot generate leads from a bad marketing list. Whether you’re using email, direct mail or telemarketing, the list is the foundation for your marketing initiatives. So, while it may be time consuming, it’s essential to build out the details of your list and keep it up-to-date.

The Complex Web of Decision Making

If you’re marketing a complex product or service with a high price tag, you’re likely selling to a web of decision makers within an organization, each analyzing your offering from a distinct perspective and interjecting their opinions at different times in the buying cycle. You need to understand as much as possible about the prospect’s decision-making process and who is involved so you can move forward with your marketing outreach in an intelligent way. 

Do you want to rock your business-to-business telemarketing results?  If so, reading these six rock star tips could be your prelude to success.

On average, only about 30% of webinar registrants attend, but strategic event recruitment can increase attendance rates to 65%, doubling conversion rates and ROI. The tips below will help your webinar approach (or exceed!) that 65% attendance target. 

The Trend to Specialization in Marketing

Have you noticed that your competitors are outsourcing marketing functions-everything from channel development to social media? Why is that?

It’s because marketing is changing more rapidly than ever before. This turbulence within the marketing discipline is driving the trend toward specialization. And outsourcing enables companies to work with marketing partners that have a depth of knowledge in the best practices for specific areas of marketing. 

Much attention is paid to the cost per lead in B2B lead generation. However, what’s more important is the cost per sale. After all, that’s the outcome you’re seeking.

Let’s say a company sells technology solutions to operations managers. Its marketing and advertising efforts result in a list of 200 leads that costs it, for the sake of simplicity, $5,000. The company shares these leads with its sales people based on their territories. The sales people follow up and walk away with five closed sales. When you divide five into $5,000, you come up with the cost of $1,000 per sale.

To make sure you don’t lose your best B2B lead generation efforts when you hand them over to sales, you need to start by clearly defining what a good lead is. Both sales and marketing should agree on this definition. Then you’ll need to set up processes and standards for lead nurturing, communication between sales and marketing and lead scoring.

Define a Good Lead

Leads become lost because sales and marketing people have not defined what a good lead is or clearly identified who is responsible for lead nurturing. 

Are Sales Driven by Numbers or Quality?

If you follow the “sales is a numbers game” metaphor, you might think the salesperson who makes the most calls or follows up on 100 percent of the leads that cross his or her desk is the victor clutching all the spoils.

Metaphors (and their literary cousins—proverbs and adages) are convenient ways to define situations clearly. But choose the wrong metaphor and you can be headed for trouble. In the case of playing a pure numbers game with marketing leads, you’re probably hovering on the edge of a black hole— and you know that’s a metaphor for disaster. 

Business-to-business appointment setting is essential because you need to get in front of decision makers to grow your business. But sometimes it seems like a brick wall is standing between your company and your goals. So here are some best practices that will help you set appointments and ultimately achieve your objectives. 

Companies that Measure Marketing ROI Increase Growth

When it comes to B2B lead generation and determining the top producing marketing activities, ROI matters. A report by the Pedowitz Group says that “ The top-tier of highly effective and efficient marketers calculate ROI or similar financial measures to assess their marketing effectiveness (62% vs. 23% of all other marketers) and are more likely to indicate they are experiencing much greater growth than their competitors (55% vs. 13% of all others).”