Bad telemarketing vs intelligent lead generation
We know that ‘telemarketing’ has a bad rep.
It conjures up visions of tightly-packed call centres with clinically symmetrical desks, and perfectly aligned dividers. It makes you think of automated dialling systems, and transient individuals who earn minimum wages and have little enthusiasm for the product or service their client has to offer. And it definitely says ‘paint by numbers’ telemarketing scripts.
I’ve got to say it. In these circumstances, the term ‘dynamic team’ is actually code for ‘high staff turnover’, rather than indicating a collective ability for fast thinking.
I call this the churn and burn mentality. Churning through call after call, hour after hour, day after day, as rapidly as possible to get through the numbers in the hope of gathering a few positive results, qualified or not. This type of calling is sadly a hit and miss process which just collects ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. It doesn’t add value for the client, and burns through data, rendering it useless for the future.
It’s not about numbers
We are all about fast, qualified results. Our absolute first tier goal is always to create as many ready-to-action leads for the client as possible in the allocated time. But as well as focusing on meeting our clients’ immediate lead generation objectives, we care about what’s in their pipeline a week, a month, or even a year down the line. And we do this by establishing if a ‘no’ really is a ‘no’.
Therein lies the difference between playing a numbers game with call centre people who don’t care (and aren’t in all honesty, paid enough to care), and engaging with a team of professional lead generation consultants.
You see, in a consultative situation, we don’t believe that ‘no’ means ‘no’.
More often than not, it means “not now”, and that is a hugely different answer. If your lead generation team, whether in-house or externally resourced, don’t pursue a ‘no’ with the same enthusiasm as a ‘yes’ they are essentially destroying the opportunity for a forward-looking pipeline. The value of the ‘no’s’ and the ‘not now’s’ is enormous for a client with vision. Our consultative approach delivers information about competitors, market awareness and above all the ‘when’ of it all.
Double your leads
Through simple, yet brief conversations (as opposed to scripted surveys), we establish a timeline of ‘when’ the prospect may be open to changing or upgrading their current product or service.
We generate immediate appointments, and by also capturing the ‘not yet’ prospects, provide another wave of appointments in the future which, when tracked and nurtured, often doubles the total number of leads generated in the initial campaign. So our clients get twice as much value from their investment in us, and from their data.
Consultation, not churn
After years in the business, I know that the success of lead generation isn’t to do with the volume of phone numbers dialled. It’s about the number of engaging conversations we have with decision makers. We’ve proven time and again that prospects respond more positively to an intelligent, non-threatening dialogue with an experienced sales and marketing consultant who is able to discuss their business with understanding and knowledge than they do to a “5-minute survey” from a script-reading call centre worker.
We believe that our value to you and your pipeline lies in our proven ability to generate instant ‘yes’ results, and our inability to take ‘no’ for an answer.
