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Sometimes it seems that for every technological advance, there is a counter-force at work. Take the telephone. It’s a strategic tool for B2B lead follow-up, telemarketing and telesales. But with the ascendancy of voicemail and its handy helper Caller ID, it has become increasingly difficult to get a live prospect on the line.

For the sales rep, the question becomes: How do I break through the voicemail barrier, beat the technological gatekeeper and deliver my message? To leave a message or not to leave a message? That is the question you must answer. Here are some B2B phone sales tips to help you. 

"Stop selling. Start helping." — Zig Ziglar

When you’re on the phone with a business prospect, you likely have a goal of creating a sales opportunity or making a sale. Since you have quotas to meet, it’s not surprising that you’re laser focused on selling.

The only way you’re going to sell anything to other business people, however, is to help them to solve a problem. So when you make a business phone call, imprint the wise words of Zig Ziglar on your brain. “Stop selling. Start helping.”

That’s the key to engagement.

That said, it’s easier said than done. You need to know the secrets to putting your prospect’s problem in the forefront. Here are six steps you can take during a business phone call to help your potential customer. 

According to the Harvard Business Review, more and more sales organizations are shifting their resources from field to inside sales. That’s because inside sales is not only cost effective, but it is also delivering the goods.

This begs the question, “How do you get the most out of your inside sales initiative?”

Here are three inside sales techniques that put you in the driver’s seat, moving forward as fast as possible on the road to delivering increased sales. 

It is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Scarfing up a whole box of chocolates at one time, for instance, might fall into that category. A more work-related example is when the phone starts to ring off the hook. It’s what you always dreamed of, so how could you possibly have too many phone calls? If you can’t keep up with answering them, however, you have too much of a good thing. Another frustrating situation is when leads pour in from your latest e-book, and you can’t respond rapidly enough to the interest you’ve generated.

When you can’t answer your calls or follow up on content downloads, it put the results of your marketing efforts at risk. That’s because you’re 21 times more likely to qualify a lead that you call within five minutes than let response time stretch to 30 minutes. Those statistics are stunning but true. They are based on actual data from six companies within the InsideSales.com system that had followed up on over 15,000 leads with 100,000 call attempts.

6 Steps to Response Handling Success

It follows that you need to set yourself up for success in response handling. To do so, you need to be capable of taking the following steps. 

“Become genuinely interested in other people.”— Dale Carnegie

Are your salespeople extroverts, introverts or ambiverts?

We tend to think of salespeople as extroverts with the gift of gab. A study, however, published in Psychological Science dug into the personality traits of those who are most successful in sales. It turns out that those who fall in the middle of the scale of introversion to extroversion, the ambiverts, are most effective.

Based on the sales of 300 salespeople over a three-month period, the ambiverts brought in an impressive 32% more revenue than the extroverts and 24% more than the introverts. That means even the introverts outperformed the extroverts. These stats raise an interesting question. Why are the ambiverts and introverts out-performing the archetypal salespeople —those who are outgoing, talkative and love the spotlight?

B2B sales acceleration is all about closing more deals faster. When people think about speed, technology often comes to mind. There are, of course, many technologies that accelerate sales, but there’s one that you may not have considered.

According to an article in Forbes by Ken Krogue, one of the keys to sales acceleration is to pick up the phone. While new, shiny tools are exciting to marketing leaders, in the end, what’s most important is increased sales.

It turns out that to help buyers buy, which is what you have to do to sell faster, you actually have to talk to them. What’s interesting, however, is that you don’t need to have a face-to-face conversation. This isn’t just speculation. Research proves it.

The Data Tells the Story

InsideSales.com showed that on average inside sales teams close deals in 69 days while outside sales take 144 days.

A little math is in order. Inside sales programs slash the sales cycle by more than 50 percent!

Why is inside sales so much more efficient?

As a B2B marketer, it’s easy for you to get caught up in lead generation. After all, you often get measured on the number of leads you generate and even the cost-per-lead. But the truth is, none of that matters unless the leads convert. Inbound leads without a strategy for conversion are like kindling and logs without a match. One won’t ignite your sales. The other won’t start a fire.

The leads, however, are the starting point. If you have them, that’s great. Now you just need the match that ignites leads and transforms them into sales. You can find it in these inbound lead conversion tips. 

“More than 60 percent of companies plan to invest in technology for ABM to better align sales and marketing over the next twelve months.” — Sirius Decisions, 2015 State of Account Based Marketing

Account based marketing (ABM), a term coined by ITSMA in 2004, is not new. As shown by Sirius Decision’s research, however, it is gaining traction. Companies are voting with their wallets by investing in technology to support the strategy.

What Is Account Based Marketing?

Account based marketing recognizes that large organizations have tremendous sales potential, and each should be treated as its own market. Instead of fishing for business with a net, this strategy is like fishing with a spear. There is no waste.

Vendors identify their targeted large accounts and focus on each holistically. With some Fortune 500 companies reaching revenues higher than the GDPs of some nations, there’s a strong rationale behind this approach. 

“If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.” — Lee Kuan Yew

With today’s technology, work can be done anywhere, not just within the walls of your company. This new reality opens the door to many possibilities for achieving business goals. For one, you can outsource your telemarketing program. But how do you know if outsourcing is the right decision for you?

If you’re not sure, look for these signs. Any one of them could mean that you’d be better off outsourcing your telemarketing than trying to tackle the task internally. 

There’s a misconception about inside sales that I believe is rooted in its name. And it’s hurting many businesses. It’s the “inside” that leads people astray. Too many people think that it must mean that the salespeople are within their company’s walls. This belief is understandable, but it’s not always true. Inside salespeople are simply the opposite of field salespeople. They are not road warriors. They sell remotely and work inside an office, however, that office doesn’t have to be within your company.

Why is the idea that inside sales must take place within the organization hurting some companies? Because inside sales is more important than ever and many companies don’t have the skills or resources to institute or support a robust inside sales department. So they either go without this valuable function, or they stitch one together and limp along.

The B2B Sales Landscape Is Shifting

In recent years, a tidal wave has overrun the B2B sales landscape, changing it forever.

Sales organizations have shifted resources from field sales to inside sales. That’s according to the Harvard Business Review (HBR). They conducted research with over 100 vice presidents of sales in high-tech and business services companies. While some are moving resources to field sales (21%), more than twice as many (46%) are moving in the other direction. 

Other figures are even more startling. An InsideSales.com study of sales and marketing managers in 30 non-retail industries shows inside sales growing 300% faster than field sales.

Why Inside Sales Is More Important than Ever

What’s driving the change? It’s all about technology, competition, scalability and results.

• Buyers Are Educated
  Because of the internet, buyers have access to more information than ever before.
  
  
• Technology Is an Enabler
  They can be more productive than ever due to technology such as CRM systems, dialers, predictive analysis, marketing automation, online conferencing, social media platforms, appointment setting software and more. All these tools help inside salespeople develop intimate customer relationships even though they do not have face-to-face meetings.
  
  
• Inside Sales Is Cost Effective
  The pressure to be competitive is ever-present, and inside sales people cost less than their on-the-road counterparts. When companies analyze return on investment, inside sales often proves to be the winner.
  
  
• It’s Easier to Scale
  HBR also discovered that sales leaders felt it was easier to bring new inside salespeople onboard than field sales people, train them and scale their organizations.
  
  
• It Gets Results Because companies can increase the number of calls they make, inside sales results increase sales volumes.

Inside Sales: Keep It in or Send It Out?

Given the advantages, going without an inside sales team or using one that’s not up to par, can put your organization at a significant handicap.

So, should you build up your inside sales organization or outsource the function?

First, you’ll want to consider the costs. The investment in an inside sales organization goes beyond salaries, benefits and commissions for agents. You also have management, recruitment and training expenses. Then there’s the infrastructure: phone systems, CRM solutions, office space and computers.

It adds up.

But that’s just one side of the equation. You also have to think about the productivity of doing the job internally. After all, is inside sales a core competency of your organization? For companies that offer outsourced inside sales, it’s often their entire focus. They have the know-how and the systems in place to optimize results. This foundation enables them to make more calls and set more sales appointments. Also, since they qualify the leads better, the appointments are likely to result in higher sales close rates.

How about inside sales turnover! When an inside sales person leaves, you are left with a huge hole. That hole can be even greater if you have a team with multiple languages. If you lose an inside sales person who was responsible for a specific language, you are in trouble. This is mitigated when you outsource to a professional, international outsourced provider. They will have qualified replacements ready to jump in when needed. Scaling is not a problem, and you never lose the business intelligence.  

When you crunch the numbers, you’ll discover that in many cases, outsourced telemarketing is less expensive and produces more closed sales, thus delivering a higher return on investment.

To learn more, get our free white paper, “Telemarketing Execution: In-House or Outsource?” Find out how to evaluate the cost and ROI of outsourcing inside sales.