In Telemarketing, Be Careful With What You Pitch!

Posted on August 29, 2012 by

A challenge you will always face in telemarketing (and in fact, any form of marketing in general) is being careful with what you pitch. In financial planning services, one the biggest mistakes you can make is marketing bad advice.

If you need a reminder of how important it is to refrain from such bad telemarketing practices, you need only read this brief slideshow from Time Moneyland. The slideshow is a top ten list of financial advice that people shouldn’t follow. Here are just two excerpts from notable slides that can have clear applications when marketing B2B financial planning.

“Use a Debt-Settlement Company”

“Debt-settlement firms make an appealing pitch: Contract with us and we’ll chop your debts for you. Just funnel monthly payments to them instead of your creditors and they’ll battle the banks on your behalf, they promise.”

As you can see in the rest of the slide, this is a mistake and you need to avoid making similar lies. Honesty is the best policy and you do not want to attract your financial leads with false promises. Business owners (especially more experienced ones) are not likely to buy them anyways. And again, this doesn’t just apply to your telemarketing message. Check the rest of your marketing materials (website, direct mail letters, email templates etc.) and re-evaluate the message that you’re sending. Is it just as outlandish as the one mentioned in the slide? If it is, time to change it.

“Take Investment Advice from Friends”

“‘Any ‘investment’ a friend or family member recommends that could possibly earn the money back is likely way too risky to get involved in — and possibly not legal,’ says Cristy Cash, director of counseling at the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Central Oklahoma.”

Chances are, you may have already given the same advice to your clients! However, don’t think this just applies to financial planning. Turning this the other way around, you shouldn’t be too eager to encourage your own clients to pitch for you. The message can either get easily distorted or the word might just spread to more well-informed market influencers who will easily point out flaws that you’re still in the midst of eliminating. While it should be a call to keep improving, you should be wary about the negative impact such information will have on your market.

In either case, make sure your telemarketers don’t send the wrong message. You need to attract and convince prospects but it should never be at the expense of integrity. The loss of that integrity could only result in the following consequences:

Loss of Trust – Losing trust among your B2B customers has got to be one of the most painful experiences for any business. It’s what’s been driving their loyalty towards your services and confidence in your advice. Nothing is worth losing that.

Ill Reputation – Having a bad reputation in the market will divert its entire attention away from your business. And given the popularity of social media and the wealth of information on the internet, the effects of bad reputation can spread faster than you think (even in B2B).

Decline in Sales – With fewer market interest, there are fewer leads. With fewer leads, there are fewer sales. It’s not that complicated to understand why and how it could only get worse.

No good business would desire any of the three outcomes. Consider what message is being sent via marketing and be careful with what you pitch!

Sales Leads – The Dangers Of Data Overload

Posted on August 15, 2012 by

Big Data. You might have heard or read it somewhere (and most likely, the source was business IT-related). It’s a term that is seeing increased use in all areas of business management from marketing and sales to accounting and manufacturing. However, what does this have to do with financial services and more importantly, what’s the connection to making sales leads?

Well a few months back, Networkworld published a slideshow that might be of some interest to those in the financial services industry:

“When it comes to Big Data, the financial services sector has been somewhat slow on the uptake. Neil Palmer, partner of SunGard Consulting Services’ Advanced Technology Business, explains it as a cautious approach to innovation driven by the heavily regulated nature of the industry. But with data growth becoming a challenge and increasing pressure to bring down operational costs, Big Data is beginning to shape financial services too.”

Notice how the slideshow goes on to describe the rising demands and how it says that Big Data is supposed to meet these demands. If your financial service firm has already understood, then it’s likely you already have (or at least just begun) to incorporate Big Data for your functions.

The question is: Does your client know?

Not just your current clients either, but also the potential ones you’re qualifying and pursuing as financial leads. Going back to the slideshow, there’s a chance that they might understand one or two slides. However, what about the rest?

What you’ll see is the risk posed by Big Data and one of the things it’s supposed to manage: large, and large amounts of information. The problem is that same volume could overload the minds of your prospects and give them an unnecessary headache.

Prior to qualifying your sale leads, your marketing agents should go to the prospects first and ask just what is it that they want to know. Financial services cover a wide array of business functions but the top-most concern for an individual prospect might be a selected few. If not a selected few, they could still rank them all in terms of priority. If you’re going to involve Big Data, you need to prepare for the following questions:

How does this help? – This is one of the most popular questions posed for Big Data gurus. You don’t have to be at that level but it helps to at least have marketing inform sales that the relevance of Big Data is an issue for the prospect.

What helps where? – The slide show demonstrates how Big Data assists in the processes of several functions. But as stated before, these functions can have varying priorities for each, individual prospect. Demonstrate how Big Data aligns to these priorities.

Will this raise costs? – Big data can be expensive. And at first, that runs counter to companies like yours who offer cost-effective services for outsourcing clients. Marketers should be ready to warn sales of if this will be a concern for a qualified prospect.

Whether the qualification was done via social media engagement or B2B telemarketing, qualified sales leads should be for the purpose of helping sales teams prepare. Your use of Big Data in your own services may not always ring well with your prospect. That doesn’t mean you should reconsider it but it should mean that you must avoid the dangers of data overload.

Generate Accounting Leads By Upskilling Both In Your Business And In Your Telemarketing Support

Posted on August 1, 2012 by

In case you’re still not familiar with the term, upskilling is commonly defined in business as the practice of training one’s in-house workforce to have additional skills. For accounting, this can be an advantage during times when job requirements do not match the skills of the general population. Another advantage could be expanding the range of specializations of your accounting services by increasing the skills of your current employees. On the other hand, doing so should also be complimented by adding variety to the way you generate accounting leads.

For example, if you’ve only been using telemarketing so far then you can either try and upskill if it’s in-house or outsource to a company that is already in the midst of upskilling their call center agents. And yes, they’re out there. Besides, the costs of training could be high and it could still take time just for your own accounting personnel to learn the new skills. You wouldn’t want the cost of your services to skyrocket as a result because your raised up the costs of your own accounting leads.

Now with regards to upskilling itself, here are a few things that marketing can teach you:

Make sure the basics are covered – Be careful about just upskilling anybody. Start first with those whose current skill set can match the new ones you’d like to add. It’s only common sense that if you’re going to add variety to the accounting skills of your work force, that work force needs to know accounting basics.

Pick skills that give you an edge – Be aware of current events as well as the current state of your target market. Use market research to help you predict new demands for a certain type of accounting service. After that, you’ll now know which kind of skills you’ll need to invest in.

Keep an eye on costs – Naturally, you have to make sure that upskilling doesn’t eat too much out of your finances that they’ll raise costs. A rise in cost might not work to your advantage if a lower one was supposed to be your main selling point.

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that you don’t necessarily have to market these new skills. Despite how you’ve predicted a rise in demand for certain accounting services, not all businesses have any real need for them. Don’t present them with too many options that aren’t relevant to their more immediate needs.

Now with that said, it’s now time to see how you (or an outsourced provider) can upskill your current telemarketing service. It can arguably be a lot simpler compared to upskilling your accountants because it’s just about integrating additional forms of marketing:

Email marketing – Some telemarketing firms are already integrating the use of email so that it can offer support to telemarketing efforts. For example, emails can be used to request permission to call instead of calling directly first.

Social media – The telemarketing industry has also begun to use social media to a certain degree. The online engagement can be considered as a form of qualification before taking it into the next phase of actually talking with the prospect on the phone.

Websites – Managing websites and optimizing their content can attract more calls but it takes additional IT-marketing skills to completely succeed.

As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life so upskilling to increase the variety of both your services and B2B lead generation can be a good idea. Outsource though if you want to play it safe.

Verify The Truth With An Insurance Call Center

Posted on June 21, 2012 by

If there’s one thing you can learn from insurance fraud, it’s to never underestimate the possibility of deceit. And as always, the best way to counteract deceit is by being sharp in finding out the truth. So what does this have to do with lead generation (or a call center)?

As you’re well aware, a lead generator is supposed to tell you everything you need to know about a prospect in order to make a sale. You don’t just learn about an opportunity. You learn things that will help you achieve success with this opportunity. Things like the needs, the size, and the budget of a prospect company are just some of the interesting facts you can use so you’ll know (and show) how to be of best service to them.

The problem comes when businesses have become too lazy and would rather speed up the process in certain areas. One of these areas is the form of communication being used to connect with prospects. You see it when they automate their marketing messages and become purely dependent on attracting inquiries with as little outbound effort as possible.

Another example would be when they rely too much on online conversations to learn about prospects. They start conversations by going to social media sites or sending emails with interesting subject lines. Granted, these forms of communication aren’t without their perks. Emails don’t disrupt decision makers when they’re in the middle of important management tasks. Social media has the power to grant both exposure as well as insight into how the whole of the target market is behaving.

However, remember the issue of trust? This is where you need to question the reliability of these methods. You’ve probably read and watched many an advisory telling people to be careful about what they read online. It’s even more critical when it comes to having online conversations with someone. These warnings aren’t just limited to children or to keeping people safe from sex predators. It applies to businesses and professionals too. You shouldn’t be too trusting of the messages you receive from a prospect or the things you read up on their social media profile. In fact, even the networking sites themselves encourage their users to use real pictures and other means to show that they’re real people. That says a lot about how easy it is to put up false and misleading information on the Web.

This is why it’s very important to really verify the information you’ve gathered from online sources by using more real, more direct forms of communication. A phone conversation is one such form. It’s not that complicated. You’re hearing a real person’s voice. They’re confirming the things they’ve said in their messages, the addresses on their profiles, and what their company does. If that’s not enough (and sometimes it really isn’t), you can even set insurance appointments so that you’ll be meeting these people in the flesh.

Costs aren’t an excuse to not go to these necessary lengths. (Professional telemarketers can just be outsourced anyways so you don’t have to worry about hiring them all by yourself.) If you want to protect yourself from fraudulent information, then you must do everything to verify the truth.

Expand Your B2B Lead Generation To Where The Market Is Shifting

Posted on June 7, 2012 by

Appointment Setting Two weeks ago, CNNMoney published this brief article on the global economic shift, indicating that money is moving in Asia’s favor. With a primary focus on Singapore, Peter Pham writes:

“If traders would stop and look beyond the U.S. and Europe, they would see what legendary investor (and current Singapore resident) Jim Rogers sees: money is fleeing the West and heading East.”

For insurance companies (and all other B2B organizations), this obviously means that there is a growing market over there and the potential for success is high. On the other hand, with these insurance prospects located nearly half the world away, attempts to contact them would require only the latest in communications technology.

First, you have websites. In the old days, exploration and expeditions shrunk the world by filling up the blank places on the map. Today, the world has shrunk even further as the online realm bridges gaps between nations.

Following websites, you also have email. Not only is it less intrusive compared to previous methods, communication through it can allow enough space and time to fully write out the complex concerns that usually arise from insurance.

Thirdly (and speaking of previous methods), telemarketing is still also viable because while you might have to adjust to a difference in time zone, telemarketing in Singapore can reach a busy prospect during moments when internet-based attempts aren’t faring so well.

You also have a bit of advertising on your side. Web banners that are attractive but at the same time can provoke further inquiry could be all you need to start qualifying B2B sales leads. On that note though, it’s important to always emphasize on that: further inquiry.

If there’s one thing a time zone can indicate, it’s that time itself is scarce in business. It still doesn’t matter how fast your message gets sent or how accessible your website is during any part of the day. The actual time that a foreign prospect will encounter you either way is when you’re fast asleep at home. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the one contacting them or you’ve outsourced lead generation companies to represent you. Time must not be wasted during the entire exchange. When you’re trying to attract foreign attention, it must be the type that sparks further inquiry and not keep them hanging about when they still have other things to do.

You can’t afford to waste time yourself so it’s only right that you don’t try and take up too much of other people’s time. Regardless of how you reach out, engaging a prospect musn’t demand too much of their busy day. This goes from the moment you first try to connect with them, all the way to setting an appointment.

Expanding your market beyond national borders has always been a big step. But with a wider market, that only means you have more targets that will divide your attention many more times than when you were still catering to local businesses. Still, with the way the market is now shifting, it might be your only chance of keeping business afloat. Don’t wait until the economic environment around you dries up. Expand your horizons and use what you can to reach out across the world as quickly as possible.

Category Archives: Telemarketing

In Telemarketing, Be Careful With What You Pitch!

Sales Leads – The Dangers Of Data Overload

Generate Accounting Leads By Upskilling Both In Your Business And In Your Telemarketing Support

Verify The Truth With An Insurance Call Center

Expand Your B2B Lead Generation To Where The Market Is Shifting

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