Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Is Inside Sales An Art Or Science?

For a lot of marketers, defining whether inside sales is an art or science can be a very contentious topic. A good number of them would say that generating sales leads is an art, where only those who are in tune with the market energies and flow would be able to make a sale. On the other hand, there are also those who say that such appointment setting work is a science, with rules and tools that can be used to generate the B2B leads that your business will need. In other words, this is the type of work that anyone can do. But really, which is which?

Frankly speaking, inside sales is an amalgamation of the two. Let us use telemarketing as the medium, for example. It takes some communication skills to get in touch with your business prospects, grab their attention, and turn them into qualified sales leads. This is something that requires sensitivity to what the prospects say. At the same time, the data you collect during the call are then collected, analyzed, and a conclusion derived from the results. This time, the task requires a calculated approach.

As you can see from the example, it is clear that inside selling is both an art and science. Take one away and you will not get anywhere. It is the harmonizing the two exclusive parts that can spell the success or failure of your marketing campaign.

All that remains is you and your ability to put them together.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

When Will Sales Leads Turn Into A Sale?

That is a natural question in the minds of all entrepreneurs during their lead generation campaign. It is a variable that has always affected the generation of sales leads. You want to be sure that your investment will give you rewards. After all, in today’s business environment, quality B2B leads is not just a strategy, it is also the meaning between staying open or closing down. But really, how can we be sure that your business leads really are going to become a sale or deal? All you need to do is to ask yourself these two questions:

  1. Check if they need your offer – if they do, then that is the opportunity for your telemarketing team to attempt an offer. If they do not, it is all right. You can say you just wanted to announce your presence, in case they might need your offer in the future. 
  2. Check if they have the budget for your offer – this is an important step in your campaign. You cannot force them to accept your offer if they really cannot pay for it. But if it is possible, you can offer a payment scheme that will work for them, in case they need it but have difficulty coming up witch the exact payment.

Still, your main goal is to make lead generation an easy tool to reach your business prospects. As a marketing investment, you just have to find out if such an agency can work well with your own business.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Turn Your Facebook Viewers Into Your Customers

If we are talking about market penetration, we can say that Facebook is at the forefront of it. After all, you can be sure that billions of people around the world have an account in this social media giant. This does sound like fertile grounds for marketers to tap for their lead generation and appointment setting work. It can be tantalizing to see all those sales leads ripe for the picking. That is, of course, if you know how to pick them. Converting Facebook visitors into B2B leads or paying customers is a challenge for many firms. So where will you start?

  1. Create content that can be shared – Facebook fans is all about sharing, be it news or photos. As a business trying to get some market traction, creating posts and news that can be shared increases its presence in the social media world. 
  2. Turn fans into sales leads – once you have engaged viewers and turned them into fans, you can then proceed to have them click on a link going to your business page, or sign up to an opt-in. You can then send them an email or have a telemarketing team call them. 
  3. Introduce sales opportunities through your communication mediums – emails and telemarketers play an important part here, since this is where the ‘sales’ part of your lead generation campaign comes in. So you have to work with the best people in the business.

Follow these steps and your business will be able to cash in on the market reach of Facebook. This is a great avenue for you in generating sales leads.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

How Direct Marketing Strategies Such As Telemarketing Can Help Your Business

With each marketing campaign that your company does, your sales and marketing people are often looking for the best lead generation strategy to reach out to the most number of qualified business leads they can find. There are a lot of options they can choose from today, what with so many online and offline marketing tools to choose from. Aside from the ever popular email marketing methods, they can also utilize videos, podcasts, and the ever popular pictures to share awareness of your brand.

Raising consumer awareness about your brand can be better achieved by investing in traditional direct marketing methods such as the highly effective b2b telemarketing campaigns. What’s more, a direct marketing method can easily work in conjunction with your existing online or offline marketing strategies. If you prefer using billboards, streamers and other printed advertising materials, you can have these working to generate qualified b2b leads for you alongside your professional b2b appointment setters and telemarketers. Your b2b telemarketers can also follow up on your email newsletters to identify which b2b sales leads are ready to be converted.

The benefit of using direct marketing strategies for your campaigns is that your marketing team will be able to connect with qualified sales leads right at the beginning. This proactive approach allows for a faster sales process compared to the reactive methods required by content marketing and advertising. You wouldn’t need to wait for your b2b sales leads to find you, like the traditional method, it is you who will seek them out.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

One Simple Tip To Lead Your Business To Success

You know the best way to keep your highest converting sales representative, your best b2b telemarketer, and even your best lead generation team. But why are you not doing it? Yes, I’m talking about their salary.

Here’s the thing, when you pay your employees enough money to keep them from constantly thinking about how to put food on the table, how to pay the rent, how to pay their health bills, and still have a little leftover for their savings, you’re not only helping them, you’re helping yourself. When your sales and marketing team are not troubled by other things, they can concentrate their efforts on finding good b2b sales leads for your business, getting you qualified business appointments, and making sure those business leads are actually converted into profits.

If you choose to be cheap with your employees, then your business will suffer. Hiring cheap employees will give you substandard results. Yes, you can still hire skillful people, but they will sooner than later leave you for more generous pastures. Why not pay your overachieving employees what they deserve? Even if it means going past the standard salary benchmarks, the important thing is that you keep the people who will help bring your company to success.

Take for example call centers. While some merely end up as stepping stones for their employees, the better and more reliable telemarketing companies have professional b2b telemarketers who have 10+ years of tenure, and these are the most productive employees to boot. Why is this? Because they are happy with their work and they are generously being paid. Unless you start doing the same in your company, you might just end up seeing your best employees leave.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Business Management Tips: It All Begins with Good Planning

Managing a business is not easy; it’s more than just generating business leads and marketing products and services. Business managament actually consists of a series of steps also known as POSDICON (Planning, Organising, Staffing, DIrecting and CONtrolling).

  1. Planning. This process begins with an in depth list which takes into consideration all the likely variables which may take place in any business organisation. For example, your firm can aim for a goal of sales increase of 15%. Planning involves resolving how to attain that goal. Having a business plan is imperative since it apportions all the company resources. Proper planning is useful in such a way that the desired outcome can be attained within a given timeframe.  
  2. Organising. This step determines if the firm’s structure match with the profit plan. This ensures that the organisation’s qualitative functions is achievable and decisions can be made on who will be held responsible and what they’re responsible for, such as with telemarketing team leaders and quality analysts..  
  3. Staffing. Staffing is appointing employees with their respective duties and responsibilities for a position and how it suits with their organizational structure.  
  4. Directing. An overall effective direction stems from having good communication plus harmonious relationship within the firm. Is everyone moving into the direction which the management needs them to so that they can accomplish the preferred results? Proper communication within the company is essential.  
  5. Controlling. This is the directive the firm uses in order to guarantee results. For owners to be in control, they should measure employee performance regularly and accordingly. They must also know how to establish the standards, evaluate results, so that they can also reward good performance if their staff deserve it.