The cost-effectiveness of telemarketing and appointment setting is really dependent on your goals, industry, and intentions. While some get cautious or hesitant, those who close their minds to wider opportunities risk missing out. Done properly, telemarketing will give you better quality market information than any other source. This, in turn, will benefit your appointment setting campaigns. So why are these two types of marketing important?
Business to Business Telemarketing, Where Can It Work?
Telemarketing can form an integral part of a sales and marketing campaign. Either as a tool for gathering the data that will be the foundation for your direct marketing approaches. Or a follow up to other forms of direct marketing. And maybe as an up-front weapon for identifying your best sales prospects. The most common functions and creative uses of business to business outbound telemarketing include:
Improving marketing data
At a basic level, this may include gathering the contact details of decision makers. Furthermore, also their use of products and services relevant to your market. But further probing can deliver more in-depth information perhaps on distribution channels for example.
Cleaning your existing data
Well, it’s your data, but is it a valuable asset? Only if it’s clean, usable and accurate. A professional team of telemarketers can ensure that your data doesn’t embarrass you or let you down.
Lead generation
Using a team of dedicated telemarketers to do this tough, up-front work can make be cost effective. And efficient than draining your sales executives. All this allows them to focus on closing sales rather than chasing prospects. Also phoning up prospects from follow up emails is proven to increase returns. Sometimes by between three and seven times as much in some cases.
Event planning
If you’re investing money in marketing events, perhaps a conference to introduce your company. Maybe presenting a new product or service to potential customers. Then telemarketing is an effective way to ensure the right people turn up in the right numbers. This method is often used as a follow up to a targeted mailing.
Point of sale promotion
For those distributing products through multiple channels, regular contact with distributors or resellers has numerous benefits. And telemarketing can come in handy. It can ensure that they are familiar with your products and have the right marketing materials to sell them successfully. But can also achieve the difficult goal of keeping your product/service at the forefront of their minds.
Company profiling
This offers the opportunity to go beyond the type of superficial prospect data held by most businesses. And also gain a full understanding of how potential customers operate. Information on aspects such as their decision-making processes and who they currently purchase from. This enables much better tailoring of sales and marketing approaches.
Customer contact
Well while all of the above functions are relevant to existing and potential customers. There is scope for more creative uses of telemarketing that have particular relevance to previous/existing customers. For example, when you’ve set up a new website, call your customers to introduce them to it. To this new way of doing business with them. Or if you change your location or company name, telemarketing can be the channel.
So what’s Telemarketing and Appointment setting Relationship to Other Marketing Functions?
- Telemarketing is an extension, but not a replacement, for outside sales.
- Effective use of telemarketing and appointment setting supplements inside sales effort
- Telemarketing is used to support advertising functions, check the awareness level of the customer to the firm’s advertising campaign. And finally to assess the effectiveness of the advertising campaign
- Telemarketing is a follow-up to sales promotion efforts of the company
- Creating and maintaining effective customer relations through telemarketing and appointment setting.
So Well What Questions can you Ask Before considering appointment setting and telemarketing?
Who am I selling to?
Remember not all leads are the same, so it is important to carefully identify your targets before considering. Work with your own sales team and key stakeholders to create an ideal customer profile. So you can tailor your lead gen team to target the right prospects.
What do I want to accomplish?
So, do you want to expand into new markets? Similarly, do you want to breathe new life into your sales process? Want to build brand awareness? Outbound lead generation can accomplish many things in addition to growing your pipeline. So make sure you know what you want to achieve before moving into it.
What Structure – in Marketing or in Sales?
Appointment setting and telemarketing teams are great at fine-tuning your messaging and generating leads. However, lead gen reps also work closely with your sales reps, and must, therefore, be closely aligned with Sales. So it’s important to understand this for execution and an effective campaign.
When do I need more sales?
What is your time limit? How long do you want it to run? Remember a prospecting team will not contribute results immediately it typically takes a few months at times. So it is important to think and plan ahead if you want to maximize your results.
So What Can Telemarketing and Appointment Setting Do?
- Direct selling to customers, both retail and commercial
- Perform seasonal selling
- Special promotions and creating awareness
- Setting appointments for field sales force
- Reactivating dormant accounts
- Account management
- Opening new sales territories
- Cleaning prospect lists
- Developing prospect lists
- Qualifying prospects
- Generating new leads
- Backing up field sales force
- Collecting overdue accounts
- Market research
- Defining markets
- Positioning and pricing products
- Refining engineering values or product development
- Fine-tuning marketing strategies
- Learning about competition
- Maintaining customer/shareholder relations
- Overcoming negative publicity.
- Taking reservations (seminars, entertainment)
- Tracking advertising/promotion/publicity among customers, prospects and third-party influences
- Collecting overdue accounts