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Like most B2B marketers, you probably agree that the most successful way to create qualified leads is by using a human touch.

In its study, B2B Marketing found that 40% of marketers believe telemarketing is the best vehicle for generating high-quality leads. That’s second only to live, in-person events that were cited by 43% of respondents. Even in the era of online marketing these traditional tactics, where we talk one-on-one with prospects, stand out.

It’s one thing, however, to know that you need to add telemarketing to your marketing initiatives. It’s another to make it happen.
Selling telemarketing to the powers that be and ensuring it pays off comes down to executing it the right way — the way that’s most likely to maximize ROI.

While some marketing leaders want to test the telemarketing waters by doing it in-house, this isn’t a fair test. Why? Because statistics show that the ROI of in-house telemarketing isn’t as high as when it’s outsourced. Read more.

The Early Bird Gets the Lead

In my last post, The Secret of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale — Part 1, I told a tale about two different sales approaches. One salesperson works like a sprinter, looking for a fast sales cycle and a quick close. The other takes the approach of a marathoner, running slower and longer, pacing himself just right to reach his destination.

Top executives are visionaries. They know where they want to take their organizations. But it’s not always easy for them to show their team the way. After all, they don’t have a GPS that tells them the exact steps they need to take to get there. If they don’t know what they want, how can you sell them?

Become their GPS.

A Tale of Two Sales People

Joanne, a sales executive for a Fortune 500 company, envisions her sales people being empowered with instant, unencumbered access to the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) data. Joanne also knows that tools such as instant messaging, chat, and e-signatures could help them to shorten their sales cycle. And she loves the idea of tablets with sales presentations uploaded on them, allowing the sales team to pull a customized presentation together on the spot, when they need it to close a sale.

There’s a problem though. It’s just a vision, not reality. Visions without execution don’t impress stockholders.

Preparation Precedes Performance

The saying “today’s preparation determines tomorrow’s achievement” certainly applies to the creation and maintenance of marketing lists.

After all, if you rush into a marketing campaign without cleaning up your list and collecting critical data first, you end up wasting time chasing duplicate leads, trying to reach contacts that are no longer in the company or looking for incomplete information in the midst of a campaign.

It’s like putting your revenues through the paper shredder.

To achieve a successful marketing campaign, you need to purge duplicate leads and ensure your list has complete, accurate data so you can reach your targets easily and with the right message.

The 4 Steps to Success

Take these four steps and get all the information you need at your fingertips for successful marketing campaigns.

Why Your Script Doesn’t Work

If you’re not getting results from your business-to-business telemarketing calls, it’s time to throw out the script. It might sound scary because your script is your crutch. It makes you feel completely comfortable that you’ll know exactly what to say when you get on the phone.

But while your crutch helps you walk more smoothly through the call, if you’re not succeeding, you’re walking in the wrong direction.

How can a perfectly crafted script lead to poor results?

Email marketing isn’t dead, but to make it work you need a sound email marketing strategy.

Email marketing is actually alive and kicking harder than ever. The Q1 Email Trends and Benchmarking Report by Epsilon reports that open rates in Q1 2014 climbed 5.7% over the previous year.

That’s good news, but how do you increase your response rates? Like everything else in marketing today, it requires processes and advanced systems that enable you to deliver relevant and timely content to prospects and customers. Also, rather than thinking of email marketing in a vacuum you have to blend it with other marketing tactics, such as telemarketing, for optimal results.

One of the most rewarding aspects of email marketing is that, unlike its more glamorous cousin, social media, it’s measurable. This means you can analyze results and work for continuous improvement. 

“The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it,” said Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Since business development is all about influence, that’s a statement worth etching into your mind.

But first, how do you know what other people want to talk about? Ask questions and listen.

So, listening is a critical skill for all business-to-business telemarketers. It enables them to understand a prospect’s situation and respond with relevant questions and insightful answers. And because we lose the ability to use body language on the phone, listening is even more important on the phone than during an in-person sales call. When you listen, you can more easily empathize with a prospect. Also, when you listen, you demonstrate respect, enhancing the chances for business collaboration, problem solving and developing a win-win situation. 

When building your lead generation system, remember that the early bird gets the worm…and the first salesperson involved in the executive’s decision-making process likely gets the sale. It’s all about “first-mover advantage.”

First-Mover Advantage Leads to Market Dominance

The theory of “first-mover advantage” asserts that the company that is first to enter a market gains a substantial advantage over potential competitors. Think of eBay, for example, the first company to offer online auctions. They defined a new market space and became the leader. There are, of course, associated risks of a first-mover strategy. If you don’t meet market needs effectively, another company can seize your idea, perfect it, and commandeer “your” market. 

A marketing manager, Susan, was doing a stellar job with her online and offline marketing campaigns, generating leads by the bucketful. As soon as she received them, she passed them over to the sales manager to distribute among the sales force, expecting to receive praise and thanks for her outstanding efforts.

But she heard nothing. Complete silence.

Eventually, she stormed into the sales manager’s office and asked, “What’s going on? Aren’t the sales people happy with the leads? Why aren’t they out there closing the deals?” 

The Danger of Data-Deprived Decisions for Event Marketing

Picture this. It’s the late 90s. A friend comes up to a wealthy businessman, John, at a summer barbeque, smiling broadly. He has started a new business. It’s a search engine that helps people to find what they need on the Internet. He’s just registered a crazy name for it, Google, tells John it’s going to make a lot of money and asks if he’ll invest $100,000 in it.

The friend doesn’t tell John how he plans to spend the money, how this Google thing is going to generate a profit or how much money John could potentially make. John apologetically tells his friend that he cannot offer his support, not knowing he’s missing out on a money-making opportunity.

While this story of loss is fictional, it illustrates data-deprived decision-making which is what is happening to many B2B events today. Marketing and sales leaders know events are essential to grow sales successfully, but sometimes they go underfunded because it’s difficult to forecast returns, costs and expected ROI.

Play the Numbers for Marketing Tactics You Can Leverage

By calculating your event ROI, you’re able to play “what if?” with alternative marketing scenarios and examine how adding new tactics into your event-marketing mix can increase your return.

Here’s how you can do ROI projections.

Calculate the Costs

• The Ballpark Estimate

  The first step in calculating the predicted ROI is to project the costs. If it’s early in the game and you don’t know the specifics, you can generate a ballpark estimate. Typically, the ideal tradeshow expenditure is three times the cost of the exhibit space. So, if your space costs $10,000, you can approximate the total expense, including travel, booth-creation and setup, staffing, utilities and other incidentals will be around $30,000.

• The Itemized Cost Sheet

  However, you’ll probably feel more comfortable with an itemized budget. In this case you enumerate each of the following costs:

  • Booth creation, storage and packing
  • Shipping
  • Labor for booth setup
  • Promotion and marketing materials
  • Show services
  • Ancillary events
  • Booth staff
    
    
• Predicting the Payback

How can you get a handle on the return on your investment? You’ll need to forecast the number of booth visitors, leads, and sales. Multiply the closed deals by the average sales value for total revenues. Then calculate the ROI as follows:

(Total Revenues – Total Event Costs)/Total Event Costs = ROI

• Ramping Up Your Return

Now that you have the costs and revenue of your current event plan, you can play around with alternative marketing scenarios to see if you can generate increased returns. If so, request the funding to support more ambitious goals or reallocate your budget from other areas with a lower payoff.

For example, a highly successful but sadly underused tactic is telemarketing. You can use it to:

• • Increase event attendance
  • Set appointments at the event
  • Follow up promptly and personally on show leads
  • Nurture leads until they’re ready to buy

Our calculations on event return on investment show that telemarketing can increase returns by a phenomenal 857%. Don’t go bare bones when a little extra investment in event marketing can mean big bucks. Get our eBook: “The Complete Guide to Calculating and Maximizing Event ROI.” Discover how to calculate event ROI and evaluate the profitability of leveraging additional event-marketing tactics.