Monthly Archives: August 2012

Use Appointment Setting When Marketing B2B Travel Insurance

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Appointment Setting, Insurance Appointments, Sales Leads“Business or pleasure?” On the subject of travel, you may have already heard this line a few times. If you’re in travel insurance, however, it should give you something to think about when it comes to targeting a market. Are you still mainly catering to tourists or have you realized you could also target business travelers? If it’s the latter, you should know that appointment setting will play an important role in your marketing campaign.

 

The B2B market for travel insurance can be reflected in the possible risks that occur in travel. If you’re still not sure there’s not enough demand to warrant B2B appointment setting, take a look at this excerpt from FoxBusiness:

 

“Many health insurance policies don’t cover medical costs incurred overseas, and for as little as $100, travel insurance can cover where you’re health insurance leaves off.”

 

Illnesses acquired while in the middle of a journey are just one of the many risks that business travelers take. The rising costs of healthcare (and to an extent, healthcare insurance) could be pushing the demand for alternatives such as those mentioned in the article.

 

On the other hand, don’t forget that when marketing to businesses, they could be more scrutinizing than even the most well-informed consumer. Therefore, make sure that your marketing agents are equipped with sufficient information and execute proper targeting. You might not even require them to have specialist knowledge but simple capacity to take the following steps:

 

Step 1 – Identifying Industries

 

As stated, proper targeting will be important and a good place to start is by identifying industries that are likely to employ many business travelers. Airlines are one good example but if you still want to go down to the individual level, you can still target CEOs or other company positions that are likely to warrant much time on business trips. Also, another important fact about appointment setting is that you should really take note of their preferences for communication as well as the appointment itself. These are busy people so you don’t want to be an inconvenience.

 

Step 2 – Basic information

 

Giving basic information is not only impressive, it shows that your marketers are capable of something that more technical experts might not: presenting your services in ways that another decision maker can understand. If you’re contacting a prospect for medical travel insurance (be it via B2B telemarketing or email), your marketers should know a few tidbits like this:

 

“There are two kinds of medical travel insurance: travel medical and medical evacuation. Typically they are sold as package policies and also include trip cancellation and trip interruptions. Travel medical insurance generally covers medical bills up to a certain amount while medical evacuation picks up the tab if you need to be transported from a hospital, removed from a cruise or evacuated from an emergency situation.”

 

Step 3 – Clarification

 

During the conversation, there are still clarifications that need to be made. Your salespeople would probably want to be the ones covering that given that it needs a lengthy discussion. Therefore, why not have the marketers relay that same message? This helps measure their interest and brings them closer to becoming qualified insurance leads.

 

Travel isn’t only for tourists. Many in the business world do it regularly as well. And despite their different reasons, they all face the common risks covered by travel insurance. This makes them a promising B2B market for insurance appointments so start marketing businesses today!

Outsource For Your Accounting Leads The Same Way A Customer Would Outsource Your Accounting

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B2B Lead Generation, Lead Generation Services, Outsourced TelemarketingIf you’re outsourcing to get your accounting leads, then it’s only natural that you apply the same BPO standards to them as your own clients do to you. There’s no doubt that the processes can be different but as far as outsourcing goes, you and your outsourced lead generator will have a lot in common.

 

Now there are many ways to generate accounting leads. From a simple, singular approach to a complex, integrated, multi-channel approach. But for simplicity’s sake, try first comparing yourself to a telemarketing company. You’ll find that you both still share the following basic requirements:

 

  • Database Technology – The first is the obvious. Both accounting and lead generation depend on information. Therefore, the standards of what makes quality information hardly differs between you two. It should be constantly thorough, detailed, and also well-maintained. Information must never grow stale. For accounting, it’s to make sure that financial reports are accurate. For telemarketers, it’s to make sure that their CRM database informs the clients of a lead’s status in the sales process. Don’t forget about security either. Both accounting information and customer information can be considered very sensitive and many people wouldn’t want hackers to get a hold of either.

 

  • Dedicated Work Force – Aside from information, you have the people who are charged with using and managing it. With regards to the latter, diligence and productivity are critical. Diligence means that your employees are capable of being consistent in their duties (whether it’s in calculating and tabulating accounts or cold calling a list of prospects). Following that is productivity. It’s what distinguishes diligent tasks from pointlessly repetitive ones. Both telemarketers and accountants shouldn’t be just grinding away at their job. That grind should be able to produce good results.

 

  • Cost-Efficiency – You can’t just forget about lower costs now. If it’s one of your primary selling points as an accounting service, then it should also be a selling point for your outsourced lead generator. Otherwise, what’s the point if outsourcing isn’t going to be any more expensive than doing the process in-house? It’s not only redundant but it also compromises the cost-efficiency of your own business.

 

  • Industry Expertise – Telemarketers and accountants take pride in their industry expertise. That means your bark should be as good as your bite (or better). Make sure your outsourced telemarketers are familiar with accounting services and have prior experience in promoting them to other industries. (More specifically, industries that you’re currently targeting.) This will not be much different from when these same prospects soon demand your own bookkeeping expertise in relation to their line of work.

 

So far, there’s barely a mention of how different your services are from telemarketers. It would be the same had you compared yourself to other forms of lead generation, even multi-channeled ones. It doesn’t matter whether it’s onshore or offshore lead generation either.

 

Perhaps that’s a good thing. Since you both are familiar to the common standards expected of all BPO firms, you will know what to expect of them when it’s your turn to to do the outsourcing. They must have a secure database, a dedicated, work force, cost-efficiency, and top-of-the-line expertise. Outsource your lead generator, the same way your customers would outsource to you.