Brand awareness is a key part of business success. After all, if people don’t know who you are, they
can’t possibly utilise your business’ products or services! Read more…
Think telemarketing is all about the hard sell? Not these days.
Modern marketing has evolved beyond pushy sales tactics. Now, it’s all about building brand awareness, understanding your customers, and delivering exceptional value.
Telemarketing is no longer just for sales: it has evolved to become a valuable tool that can help grow any business. Whether your aim is to gain new leads, update your database or create more authentic relationships with your customers, telemarketing can deliver.
Learn about the many benefits of telemarketing for your business below.
The benefits of telemarketing – more than just sales
Nurture customer relationships
In the digital age, it can be challenging to build genuine, one-to-one relationships with your customers. Most marketing is done online, via commenting, emails and messaging, making it difficult to create a human connection.
But a personal, human connection is exactly what today’s consumers are looking for.
They don’t want to interact with a fake business persona; they want to hear from the people behind your brand. But most business owners don’t have time to call and chat with every customer to nurture those relationships.
Relationship building is one of the key benefits of telemarketing. It allows your customers to have a genuine conversation with a real person rather than a chat-bot. They can speak with someone who can directly answer their questions and address their concerns rather than having to search through a FAQ page on your website.
Better understand your customers
There are various ways to gather data about your customers. You can analyse the data from your different marketing channels, send out surveys via email, or interact directly with your audience on social media.
These methods can help you to understand your customers for sure. But, one of the best ways to get accurate, up-to-date information is to actually talk to them.
Why not use telemarketing to gain a deeper understanding of your customers? We can conduct a specialised campaign to gather reviews and measure the levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
We can run surveys to find out your customers’ pain points so you can better tailor your products, services, or marketing efforts to your ideal audience.
Enhance customer experience
Customer service and marketing are no longer two distinct concepts; they are inseparable. Satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal customers, and loyal customers are more likely to become advocates for your business.
One of the most underrated benefits of telemarketing is its ability to enhance customer experience. It allows both prospective and existing customers to feel like valued acquaintances, not just another number in your follower count.
Telemarketing can be used to follow up with your customers to get feedback after a transaction or interaction with your business. This helps you improve your customer journey and make sure your clients feel valued.
Keep your database updated
Did you know that it costs five times more to gain a new client than to retain an existing one? That’s why it’s so important to keep in touch with your current customers, even between purchases.
But many business owners don’t have time for this kind of one-to-one interaction. They might have a CRM populated with names, numbers and email addresses, but have no idea if that information is up to date, let alone if the list contains clients who are still interested in purchasing from them!
Telemarketing is a fantastic way to update your database. Experienced telemarketers can work through your customer list and ensure the contact information is correct. They can find out which clients are still engaged and active, and identify who might benefit from your offerings.
This is exactly what the Hot Leads team did for the NZTE in a specialised telemarketing campaign.
Practically updated
With a CRM crammed full of contacts that hadn’t responded to previous emails, NZTE weren’t sure which of the businesses were still active and who might benefit from their value-packed digital platform.
We updated contact details, created connections with customers, and provided 500 hot leads interested in doing business with NZTE.
Does your customer database need dusting off? Are you looking for cost-effective ways to build authentic connections with your customers? Why not experience the benefits of telemarketing by working with the experts at Hot Leads.
Contact us today to find out more about how we can help your business grow.
Competition in business can be a good thing
Having industry competitors breathing down your neck can motivate you to work harder and become more innovative, providing better services to your customers.
But increased business competition can also be scary, particularly if you’re working in an already over-saturated industry. How can you stand out from the crowd?
How can you ensure your business is successful during slow periods when so many others are vying for your customers’ attention?
Increased competition in business doesn’t have to leave you feeling defeated, regardless of your industry. Instead, use it as an incentive to build your brand and find ways to excel.
Here are some ideas on how to set yourself apart from your competitors.
Why you shouldn’t let competition in business bring you down
How to manage competition in business
Get to know your customers
Knowledge is power, and knowing your customers well is a valuable power move for any business owner. Spend time getting to know your customers and attempting to understand their challenges and needs.
The better you get to know your customers, the more you’ll be able to tailor your marketing and services to them.
Highlight your differences
Some industries are more competitive than others. Take real estate agents, for example. Not only are you competing against other businesses in your area, but you often need to build your own brand within a wider company.
In cases like this, where it seems like everyone is offering the same thing, it’s helpful to remember that your individuality can be your superpower. While you may offer very similar services to other agents, they are not you. Focus on what makes you unique, and use that to stand out from the crowd.
Level up your marketing
Need to reach more customers? Don’t be afraid to invest in your marketing to help you get in front of the competition in business. Brand visibility is crucial, so getting your name out there should be a top priority.
If your existing marketing campaigns don’t seem to be working, experiment with something new. Telemarketing is one tactic that can give your brand a boost.
Recently, Vangie Philpott from LJ Hooker Huntly used the Hot Leads service to try and generate leads in a slow market. She had experienced an increase in competition with an influx of new agents in her area, so she wanted to stand out and put herself ahead.
The results were fantastic. After a telemarketing campaign, Hot Leads were able to generate 43 appraisal appointments for Vangie. While her colleagues were struggling to connect with customers, she was busy doing appraisals, making connections, and building relationships with her new leads.
Focus on what you can control
At the end of the day, you have no control over how many competitors you have or how they run their business.
But you do have total control over your brand, your marketing, and your services. Instead of wasting time and energy worrying about what the competition is up to, focus on the things you can do to help your business succeed.
Getting your name in front of customers, understanding their needs, and building relationships is never a waste of time. Telemarketing is a great way to achieve all those things, and provide you with an extensive list of warm leads to keep you busy while the competition are twiddling their thumbs.
If you’d like to be proactive about getting ahead of your competition in business, reach out to the Hot Leads team today.
Fundraising campaigns are a lifeline for many not for profit organisations and charities.
They rely on donations made by the public, corporate organisations and kind hearted souls to carry out their important work.
But, those donations don’t flow in like magic. It takes consistent work and follow up to maintain existing donors and generate new ones.
Unfortunately, this can be a job that doesn’t get the full attention it needs as it is so time consuming.
It is especially hard in a time of uncertainty where some fundraising opportunities are cancelled or postponed.
So, what is the solution?
Donations are required to do valuable support work. Yet, the support work takes up much of the organisation’s time so they can’t dedicate time towards encouraging
donations.
Luckily, if you find the right resource, it is a job that can be outsourced.
Partnering with the right callers
We have all had that moment where we pick up the phone to a number we don’t recognise and find ourselves trapped on the call with an aggressive salesperson.
That is telemarketing done wrong.
Rather than choosing someone who is all about the sale, you should select a telemarketing partner who actually cares. Not just one that cares about the results they are going to achieve for an organisation, but one who also cares about the people they get on the other end of the phone.
For us here at Hot Leads, it is an honour to help amazing organisations source funding so that they can carry out their valuable work. Which is why we treat everyone involved with the utmost respect.
We know that there are people out there who want to contribute to your cause and we are passionate about finding them for you in a respectful and professional way!
Testing interest
Cold calling can be hard if you aren’t sure what you are doing. If you don’t arm yourself with the right tactics, then you are unlikely to have much success.
You may find your call recipients hanging up on you or giving you a hard, flat no. That can be really disheartening and off putting! However, if you enter the call to have a conversation, rather than going for a hard sell, then you’ll enjoy greater success.
Creating a conversation about donations takes practice and skill. AND a well-crafted script. These are the things that professional telemarketers have in their back pockets. They have been trained to create opportunities for your team, whether it is a call back opportunity or joining an email
database.
By having a telemarketing firm test interest on your behalf, you don’t waste internal resources. It also helps you to gather valuable insight into where your organisation is positioned. Armed with extra insight and sentiment about your market, you can then make informed decisions.
Maximising your resources
Most charity organisations do not have the internal resource to make hundreds of calls a week. And to be honest, that wouldn’t be the best use of their time!
Especially when you may have a number of campaigns with different audiences and objectives. Each one will require a different strategy and calling objective. You need people with diverse and flexible calling skills.
Maximise your resources and allow your team to focus on what they do best by sourcing some help.
By engaging a telemarketing firm, your team will get to focus on the quality, warm leads only.
As a reputable telemarketing firm, we can utilise your own databases or you can gain access to ours. We make initial fact finding calls to gauge the interest of potential donors. Once we have compiled a shortlist of those that are interested, we pass them on to you for the next stage of communication.
Working in an uncertain market
No one truly knows what the coming months have in store for us. With a new protection framework to understand, new variants of the virus evolving, and uncertainty about how long this health crisis will last, your usual marketing methods may be off the table. And even if you can still utilise those methods, they may not be as effective as they once were.
So, what can you do?
There is one marketing method that will always cut through and generate results. That method is having valuable conversations with people. Conversations create a connection and an opportunity to build trust, plus they allow for a question and answer situation.
Unfortunately, conversations take time to have. And there is no way to speed up that process. You can’t hit fast forward on people! The best option is to outsource the initial conversation process to trusted telemarketers like the team here at Hot Leads. We love conversations. And the conversations we have with people open the door for your team. We start the conversation for you to continue.
Want to have a conversation about how we can make conversations for your organisation? Then reach out to us today!
What is a sales pipeline?
Funnels, pipelines, leads and conversions – sometimes sales lingo sounds more like a plumbing job than a marketing process!
In the practical sense, a sales pipeline describes the process you use to deliver consistent leads (aka potential customers) into your business.
It can help to visualise your pipeline as the journey a prospective client takes with your business, from the first time they become aware of you to developing interest and (hopefully) making a purchase.
Every business is different, but when it comes to sales, there are generally five stages to the salespipeline:
- Initial contact
- Qualification
- Meeting
- Proposal
- Close
How a hot pipeline can help your business
Wouldn’t it be great if all your prospective customers found you on the internet, approached you, and made a purchase on the spot?
This may happen once in a blue moon, but to really grow your business, you need to be proactive about discovering and nurturing your leads as they move through your sales pipeline.
A study by the Harvard Business Review revealed an 18% difference in revenue growth betwee companies that had a defined formal sales process and those that didn’t.
When you have a healthy pipeline, you’ll have the data necessary to improve your sales process and forecast business results. Plus, you’ll have a better idea of how and where to allocate resources to close sales and get a more precise overview of the health of your business – now and in the future.
Why outsource your telemarketing?
In the real world, pipes allow something (such as water) to travel from a source to a destination. But of course, you need there to be a source! If your water pipes are connected to an empty tank, they’re not going to be able to deliver.
The same goes for a sales pipeline. You need a steady flow of interested customers to grow your business.
One of the most important aspects of a sales pipeline is the number and quality of leads. Naturally, you’ll get the most value out of sales-ready, warmed up customers rather than people who aren’t really in the market for what you have to offer.
But getting these high-value warm leads requires skill and time that many businesses just don’t have. Would you rather have your sales consultants spend hours every day cold calling to come up with a list of warm leads? Or would you rather hand them a list of prospects who are already interested in buying and let them spend their time closing deals?
By outsourcing your telemarketing, you can do just that.
This is what New Zealand’s largest independent insurance brokers, BrokerWeb Risk Services (BWRS), discovered when undertaking a test campaign with the Hot Leads team.
Hot results
Throughout the telemarketing campaign we ran for one of our insurance clients, we were able to quadruple the number of leads for one of their key referrers and finished up the campaign with a mindblowing conversion rate of 55%!
Thanks to this investment in outsourced telemarketing, our client created a smoking hot sales pipeline with more than 80 telephone appointments and 75 email enquiries to follow up with.
A telemarketing campaign with Hot Leads helps your business skip to the good part: you spend less time cold calling dead leads and more time closing deals with clients who actually look forward to hearing from you.
Sound good?
If you’d like to work on your sales pipeline with a hot telemarketing campaign, contact Hot Leads today to find out how we can help.
Cold calling sucks
As a real estate agent, you have probably perfected your marketing funnel. After all, there are plenty of options to promote visibility and get in front of your ideal audience.
There are traditional marketing methods like letterbox flyer drops, sponsoring events in the community, making connections with people at open homes and then following up with them via phone or email… it’s like you are running a well-oiled marketing machine.
But then, pesky old Covid pops up again and spoils all your plans.
Letterbox drops are off the table. Open homes are out of the question. And all of those amazing community events have been cancelled or postponed. What can you do?
Well, you could try and pick up the phone for some cold calling. But the thought of that probably sends you into a downward spiral. Who would you call, what would you say?
What if you could have all the benefits of cold calling leads without actually making any of the calls yourself? That would be pretty amazing right?
Now is the perfect time for telemarketing.
Now, is quite literally the perfect time for gaining visibility through telemarketing. Especially if you are using an expert, professional company. Why?
Well, there are a number of reasons:
- The property market is booming – despite lockdowns, homes are still selling above CV
- During lockdown restrictions, people are spending a lot more time in their homes. So,
- You can get them on the phone easier
- They are thinking about their life and property circumstances
- They have plenty of time to consider what their next big life changes will be
- The weather is starting to get warm and people are making plans
- New property valuations are just around the corner and people are interested in maximising the return on their investments
But, you need to ensure that your telemarketing campaign takes the right approach. People don’t want to be bombarded with pushy phone calls.
Which is why using the experts can really help you create successful results. Recently, we ran a campaign for a local Franklin agent. The campaign was completed during level 4 lockdown, so we tailored our approach to maximise positivity in a time of uncertainty and ensured the appointment process was pivoted to work within lockdown restrictions.
The end result? In a 40-hour test campaign we generated 18 appraisal appointments, 70 email opt ins, 72 requests for follow ups and 2 requests to discuss the purchase of a property. So, the time is right!
The sun Is shining so make hay!
Franklin is a farming community, so this cliche is very appropriate… You gotta make hay when the sun is shining!
Right now, the sun is shining for a targeted telemarketing campaign. With many other marketing tactics off the table for realtors, telemarketing allows you to stay visible and generate enquiry. While all those other agents are fading into the background, you could be getting yourself out there and generating visibility. Whether people are wanting to sell their homes now or in the new year, you want to be getting in front of them now.
A targeted telemarketing campaign can secure qualified appraisal appointments, build your email database of property decision makers, and keep you active and visible.
Our professional team plant the seeds for a long term relationship of trust. That way, when you contact the warm leads for a follow up, they already feel like they know you a little bit. You start partway down the trust relationship, instead of floundering at the beginning.
It’s true you can’t do open homes and mail drops right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still market your real estate business. If you are interested in chatting more about getting yourself out there, then get in touch with the Hot Leads team today.
Yeah, but nah. We understand that you may have had trouble finding the right mix of resource to bring onboard.
But while we agree that it’s hard to find that elusive person who can understand your technology, clearly articulate the business benefits it offers, and talk engagingly to your target market, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They just work for us!
Case in point
Meet ecommbi. They deliver fully integrated ‘best of breed’ omnichannel eCommerce and Online solutions. Their enterprise-scale platforms provide the all-important single customer, single product and single inventory views, with a focus on middleware and data management.
General Manager Glen Moody says their business considered and abandoned several potential sales models, including hiring salespeople to focus on pipeline building. “The people we found who had strong lead generation skills didn’t have the grasp of technology we needed. And the ones with great technical sales skills didn’t have the cold calling experience or initial contact skills. It was a real issue for us.”
Finding the right sales model (and people) was an exercise in frustration. Then ecommbi met us.
We do technology, and we do it well!
Now Hot Leads is not known for shying away from a challenge. Our investment in hiring local businesspeople to do lead generation has paid off time and time again when undertaking campaigns for the technology sector. We not only offered ecommbi the skills and experience to run sophisticated campaigns, but the ability to reach and have intelligent, robust conversations with the people they’d identified as hot prospects.
Our immersion approach to learning about their business and solutions paid off. “Our Hot Leads’ consultant now probably knows more about sales in our business than 90% of the people who work here, which is a powerful thing,” says Glen.
That’s a win in anyone’s books. But even better, we delivered ecommbi real business value. “Using Hot Leads has been extremely cost-effective because of the high value of each sale. Our ROI is much better than if we’d had to find, hire, and train an in-house lead generation resource.”
(Glen also said lots of other really nice things about us which you can read here).
We’re not a one-hit IT wonder
Glen and ecommbi aren’t the only ones to appreciate our expertise in the technology space. For example, Lisa Nicks, GM of Sales (NZ) for Australian business solutions company, Fusion5, also gave us the big thumbs up.
“Fusion5 provides ERP, CRM and HCM business applications into SMB and Enterprise organisations across Australia and New Zealand. Recently, Fusion5 hired Hot Leads to execute a telesales campaign in order to generate and drive new business leads specific to the ERP space. We found Lisa and her team extremely professional in their approach in understanding our requirements before the campaign kicked off, as well as the execution and follow-up. At all times, we were in sync with Hot Leads on the expectations and co-ordination of next steps, as there was constant communication. The campaign has been a success to Fusion5.”
So, if you’ve always thought that you’d never find the IT sales skills you need in a lead generation company, think again!
lisa@hotleads.co.nz.
Sadly, it often takes a bad experience with a telemarketing service to appreciate a good one.
One of the most constant pieces of feedback we get from new clients is the difference they experience working with us compared with their previous lead generation partners.
In our latest case study, Brendan Drury, Orbit World Travel’s Managing Director said: “From my perspective, the difference between using Hot Leads and our results from the previous two to three years is like comparing night and day.”
Here comes the sun again.
After outsourcing their lead generation services to a local company for several years, Brendan wasn’t happy with the results. A lack of quality information combined with a disappointing volume of appointments led them to pull the plug on their investment. Dark days, indeed!
And he’s not alone. We’ve won the hearts of many clients who have been just about ready to give up on finding a telemarketing company they can trust to deliver results.
So what makes us shine so bright?
1. We keep a tight focus on the quality of the data we collect – making sure it’s accurate, current and appropriate. As far as we’re concerned, near enough is never good enough.
2. We find the people you need to connect with – we’re great at tracking down those hard-to-find-and-even-harder-to-reach decision-makers. Yes, we’re rottweilers of the telemarketing world, smart, strong, tenacious and well-trained!
3. We make you look good – we’re professional, local, friendly, approachable and take pride in representing your brand and explaining your value proposition. We think on our feet and don’t use scripts, so the people we call won’t even realise that we aren’t your employees. Our consultants get rave reviews!
4. We help you break into new markets – we’ve delivered significant, high-value opportunities to our customers in industry sectors they’ve only dreamed of penetrating. We’ve literally seen jaws drop when our clients see who we’ve arranged for them to meet.
5. We generate detailed reporting – we collect a wealth of valuable information, so you always know what’s in the pipeline.
6. We give valuable advice – we can help you improve outcomes through our knowledge and experience.
7. And we do it all with a smile. Because we’re doing what we love.
Ready to walk into the light? Call us.
lisa@hotleads.co.nz
However, that’s exactly the problem one of our clients recently had after engaging us to generate leads for their sales team. Keen to increase membership numbers, but lacking the internal resources to run a telemarketing campaign, Master Plumbers asked us to work through their contact list to identify hot prospects.
So, we did. Except we did the job a bit too well – if there can be such an outcome!
Overachieved and over-committed!
It was a hugely successful campaign. Of the 1033 calls we made, we talked to 400 decision makers and made 125 prequalified sales appointments. The only issue was that we generated so many meetings that the (very happy) Master Plumbers sales team had to reschedule some of them just to keep up with demand!
That’s what happens when you have a good list, the right message and offer, and a professional approach. Having too many sales appointments is a greatproblem to have, but we all know that following through in a timely fashion is critical to the end success of any campaign.
The uptake test
If you’re unsure about what volume of leads to expect or feeling under-prepared for a heavy uptake of the offer you’re asking us to promote, then we recommend you consider either a trial run or a staggered approach to your campaign.
Undertaking a trial campaign to a sample of your contact list will give you a good indication of how many prospects we can generate for you – and how much activity you need to allow for at your end to follow through. And it also gives you the opportunity to tweak (a technical term) your offer and potentially improve overall results.
Alternatively, a staggered or drip-feed approach divides the campaign into manageable stages. This strategy gives your sales team time to draw breath, regroup and refocus before we drop more leads in your lap. It also ensures that you don’t drop the ball, or have to perform triage on the prospect list and potentially miss opportunities that just need a little nudge to turn from warm to hot.
Tap into great results
We loved working with Master Plumbers and were delighted to be behind boosting their membership numbers, even if we stretched the capacity of their sales team. Sorry – not sorry!
“It would be fair to say that we were very surprised by the level of engagement,” said Margaret Dawson, Operations Manager for Master Plumbers, “and probably a bit under-prepared for it!”
If you’d like to read more about the Master Plumbers campaign, then check out the case study.
We’ve just published our first Hot Leads ‘Essential Guide’ to Lead Generation. It’s packed full of practical, step-by-step ‘need to know’ stuff that you well…need to know, to run a telemarketing campaign that will seriously boost your sales pipeline. As written by the experts (that’s us).
Why do you need to read up on telemarketing? Isn’t it all pretty straightforward?
Telemarketing is one of the most effective methods of lead generation. But its success isn’t random, and it doesn’t come without planning.
Great marketers and sales professionals apply best practice to deciding on, setting up, running and measuring a campaign that delivers value – and, importantly, a return on investment. They understand how to amplify a campaign’s impact and to present their brand professionally and consistently.
Become a lead generation know-it-all – for FREE
It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced sales or marketing manager looking for new tips to boost your campaign outcomes, or you’re just exploring the possibilities for your business and want to understand the process.
Either way, we’ve got you covered. Because one thing is for certain – when you download and read our FREE eBook you’ll improve your know-how, starting with:
- Know your objectives and define what constitutes success
- Know your target market
- Know how to get a great prospect list
- Know how to design and test a compelling campaign
- Know how to work your CRM
- Know how to put together the perfect lead gen team
- Know your next steps! (Your campaign checklist).
Get your FREE DOWNLOAD here! Happy reading!
We specialise in telemarketing & telesales, CRM & admin support, fundraising & event support, as well as database acquisition. Our services include market research, sales promotions, appointment setting and customer surveys. To see how we can help you with more leads, read more…
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