Telephone lead generation—calling those prospects with
which you would most like to do business to schedule an introductory meeting—can
be just the tactic to rev up your firm’s ROI on marketing activities. But
getting partners to make the follow up calls, whether following up to a mailing
or following up with e-marketing activities or recruiting to an event for your
firm, can be difficult at best. Even if your firm has a full time business
development professional, savvy marketers understand that those professionals’
time is often better spent face-to-face meeting with interested prospects than
dialing from inside their offices.
Partnering with a firm with the right experience in
telephone lead generation calls can be the perfect solution for those firms who
are looking for a jump start to their growth efforts. Once you’re sold on the
concept, the next step is to find the right outsourcing partner from among the
hundreds of possibilities. Here are seven points to consider as you evaluate
candidates:
1. Make sure the firm has experience with
business-to-business calling for professional service firms. Making phone
calls to C-level executives and business owners requires a different approach than
calling consumers—and a different skill level of caller. Companies that try to
convince you that calling is calling may not make the best representatives of
your firm.
2. Ask how the callers are supervised and
measured. Professional call centers will have systems and staff in place to
make sure that certain performance levels are being met. If the firm can’t give
you a specific answer for performance expectations (number of dials per
hour/day, number of decision makers reached, appointment goals, etc) it could
be an indication that calling is not a core service and that you should look
elsewhere for a calling partner.
3. Be leery of pay-per-lead programs.
While the pay-per-lead model may sound like a good idea on its surface, when
the focus of your call partner is to deliver a bounty of leads you (and your
partners) could wind up wasting your time with a lot of unqualified prospects.
Incentive programs and bonuses for performance are ok, and can be great
motivators—but basing compensation purely on the quantity of leads is asking
for trouble.
4. Likewise, suspect any sort of guarantee of
results. Like most marketing, telephone lead generation is part science,
part art. The science is the process, benchmarks and measurability of the
program. The art is the timing of the calls, the nuances of the prospects’
prior understanding of the topic and your firm’s brand awareness among the
target market. There are so many combinations of factors affecting your results
that a calling firm who guarantees your results is either not knowledgeable
enough about the process or has a way to manipulate results which may not be in
your best interest. Either way, if you hear a company guarantee results, you
may want to direct your attention to other options.
5. Expect deliverables beyond leads. The
best telephone lead generation firms deliver more than just appointments (all
though that is usually the highest priority). In addition, ask how you will
receive list updates, if the callers identify longer term opportunities to be
nurtured and what kind of documentation you receive for each call. Often,
documented conversations with those prospects who were not interested in a
meeting with your firm offer some of the best market intelligence about
competitors, forces affecting the industry, buying cycles, etc. that money can
buy. That information can be a goldmine for your marketing efforts.
6. Work with a partner who has a broader
understanding of marketing practices. First and foremost you must be
confident that the calling firm understands telephone practices and how to
generate interest in your firm. But beyond that, an understanding of how
telephone lead generation fits into your firm’s overall marketing efforts can
help you make good decisions about incorporating the tactic into your plan and
leverage your overall investment in the calling.
7. Demand open and honest communication. Like
any good partnership, open and honest communication is imperative to the
success of the relationship. The best calling firms have a plan for constant
communication—before, during and after the active dialing. You should know
exactly what kind of results you’re getting, understand any challenges early in
the process, and have the opportunity to work with the callers to make changes
if needed to improve results. If things aren’t going the way you’d planned, the
calling firm should be straightforward about why and proactively offer ideas
for how to deal with the results—up to and including stopping calls if needed.
Keep these seven tips in mind as you seek partners for
your calling endeavor, and you’ll likely find the right fit for your firm and
build a relationship to deliver positive ROI for years to come. Remember that
not every effort will be a home run—or will deliver the same kind of benefit for
your firm. The more you work together with a calling partner, the more you’ll
learn, the smoother the process will become and the better your overall results
will be over time.
