So you’ve come around to the idea of telemarketing as a key B2B marketing strategy and invested the necessary resources. You’ve got a team of dedicated telemarketers working around the clock, calling anyone who might even remotely be interested in your product and pitching, pitching, pitching. But despite the time and money being spent, you’ve yet to see any tangible results. Are you doing something wrong, or have you overestimated the potential impact of B2B telemarketing?
We know this dilemma is an all-too-common scenario for B2B companies who are enthusiastic about telemarketing but lack the experience or know-how to execute it effectively. Here are three core reasons your telemarketing efforts aren’t getting the results you need:
1. You’re Relying On Cold Calling
No one wants to be rudely interrupted by an invasive and unsolicited marketing call. Cold calling a prospect is the equivalent of telling them that you value your own time more than theirs, which can come across as being flat-out rude and counterproductive. One of the biggest reasons many telemarketing efforts yield underwhelming results is the commonly held belief that telemarketing means little more than cold calling. (We’ve written about the difference between the two in our blog post, “Telemarketing vs cold calling — what's the difference?”) When in fact, telemarketing is all about contacting the correct person in a company who has a proven need for your service.
2. You’re Sticking To Scripts & Canned Responses
Humans are inherently social creatures; we’ve used spoken language to communicate with one another for over 100,000 years. This makes us particularly adept at picking up on conversational cues and subtext: we can tell almost immediately when the person we’re talking to is stressed, happy, sombre, offish — you name it. So if your telemarketers are reading off a script and stick to it no matter what, it’ll be almost impossible for the conversation to feel natural. As a result, your prospect will be less likely to warm up to the idea of doing business with you; they’ll feel more like a number on a page than a living, breathing person with needs and desires that you’re genuinely interested in. The most effective telemarketers have the intelligence and social aptitude to go off script as the need arises, ensuring a natural and mutually enriching conversation that leaves the prospect feeling listened to.
3. You Have Poorly Defined Goals & Expectations
If you don’t have a clear understanding of what your goals are for a telemarketing campaign, it’ll be difficult to achieve measurable and sustainable success. It’s also vital to set realistic expectations early on so that key stakeholders have a clear and unified understanding of what telemarketing can produce and how quickly they will see results. For example, it’s a common misconception that the initial call with a prospect should end with a closed sale. In practice, depending on your product or service, it can take weeks or even months of strategic telemarketing to take a prospect from lead to a happy customer.
If you would like to learn more about getting the most from your telemarketing team, download our free guide. If you have any questions about GCL and what we can do to help your business use technology to thrive, please get in touch.
