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Ten ways to improve business-to-business lead generation by phone
by Bill Herr
Here are ten factors that will affect the success of your telephone-based sales lead generation programs.
1. Sales rep participation
Unless the sales force (direct, inside or channel partners) has a hand in determining the lead qualification criteria, the entire lead generation program is doomed to fail. If you are responsible for producing leads for the sales force, they are your “customer” and the qualified lead is your “product” – so find out what they say a lead is!
Conversely, the sales rep needs to learn how to hunt with a bird dog. The telemarketing rep’s job is simply to identify decision makers in the right firms who want to discuss issues your product addresses – or in other words, a qualified lead must have a) attributes, b) position, c) need and d) readiness. The telemarketer should not be responsible for identifying all issues, uncovering all objections and iterating all potential solution scenarios prior to turning the lead over to the sales rep. Sales people mustn’t expect the bird dog to carry the gun.
2. Process
You will need well thought out procedures, infrastructure and tools for a variety of issues including but not limited to: recruiting, training and managing telephone reps; database development, list research and procurement; developing lead qualification criteria, scripts and call approaches; leaving messages and receiving return calls; grading, scoring and distributing qualified leads; getting loop-closing feedback from sales reps and prospects; handling referrals; incubating longer-term leads; exception processing; managing success metrics; reporting content, frequency and distribution. In other words, the world-class orchestra still needs good sheet music and a skilled conductor to sound good.
3. Quality list
Test your lists of prospects to call to ensure they are highly accurate with regards to telephone numbers, contact names and relevant company attributes (business type, size, geography, etc.). With many people changing companies or at least positions within their company each year, many lists do not have correct contact names for the titles and positions you want to reach, requiring you first to obtain names from receptionists and secretaries.
4. Brand awareness
All else being equal, getting someone to accept a call from Microsoft® is much easier than from Acme Software Company. The higher the brand recognition the greater the likelihood of reaching the right person and engaging in a relevant conversation instead of being blown off with a "We’re not interested." hang up. Of course if your firm does not have strong brand recognition, don’t give up, just set your expectations accordingly.
5. Product life cycle
Lead generation rates are likely to mirror your product’s position in its life cycle curve: fewer leads if your product or service is in the early adaptor phase, increasing with mainstream acceptance, then falling as the market matures and eventually declines. For instance, sales leads for Customer Relationship Management solutions are much quicker to come by today than 10 years ago when the CRM industry was so new the term wasn’t even invented yet. Like brand awareness, your product’s position in it’s life cycle is not something you can easily effect, so it becomes a matter of setting expectations based on your market reality.
6. Prior marketing
A lead generation call integrated with a prior direct mail or other advertising campaign will most often produce better results than a stand-alone call. For example, let's say the direct mail piece offers an invite to a valuable seminar. A seminar registration call shortly after the mail drop might offer a related white paper, and then segue into qualifying questions. Such an integrated program will generate considerably more leads than a call without the mailer.
7. Hook
In the first few seconds of a lead generation call, the prospect makes up their mind about whether or not to engage in a conversation. An opening statement with a good "hook" is absolutely necessary to gain this engagement. A hook can be an appropriate offer (“Would you be interested in attending a free seminar on the top five reasons why design projects fail?”). It can be a success snippet (“Are you interested in hearing how we help engineers reduce time-to-market by 75%?”). It can be name-dropping (“IBM® and Cisco® solve design issues possibly similar to yours using our solution”). It can be a referral (“Fred Smith suggested you may be challenged by design issues”). Without a good hook, the decision-maker is less likely to feel the call will be worth their while and will refuse to engage in a meaningful dialogue at that time.
8. Rep skill
The telephone rep must not only have a clear understanding of their own company's products, markets and competitors, they must also have a firm grasp of general business, sales and marketing practices. Selling skills - part detective, part counselor, part artist - are critical. So is common sense and plain old life experience. But be careful not to over-emphasize rep skill versus the rest of these factors. Even the most skilled carpenter can’t excel in their craft with caveman tools.
9. Learning curve
Regardless of skill and experience, every cold call rep needs to come up a learning curve on a new program. So too must the program management staff. And, if you are outsourcing lead generation to a competent third party, both organizations must come up a learning curve regarding how they interact with each other. Every individual involved will start with certain expectations only to adapt, adjust and improve as time goes on. The learning curve phenomenon is why sports all-star games are so often disappointing – while they represent the best players in their sport, the all-stars don’t have time to learn the playbook or how to work with their temporary coach and teammates.
10. Pipeline cutivation
At the same time everyone is coming up their respective learning curves, the call reps are also filling their pipeline with prospects. A few leads are low hanging fruit ready to harvest. Some have recognized issues but undefined initiatives for solving them. Most leads are less developed prospects that need more information, attention and time before they are ready to engage with a sales rep. Successful lead generation programs allow time to both fill the pipeline plus apply discipline to cultivate those previously identified, but underdeveloped leads. In other words, let’s pick the red apples now but water the green ones until they ripen.
Successful B2B telephone lead generation is not magic. Nor is it easy. But it can very productive business development tool if executed properly. Managing the dozens of variables as well as everyone’s expectations is of critical importance. Successful telephone lead generation programs require diligent and proactive attention with a healthy dose of professional patience to address issues that come up in the course of the program. Resist the urge to judge results of a program too early. Three months is usually a good benchmark allowing for the inevitable program adjustments and adaptations to yield predictable, replicable and ultimately thrilling results.
Bill Herr is business development director for the B2B practice of Protocol, an integrated direct marketing services firm. Bill can be reached at 303-369-5500 or bherr@protocolusa.com.
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