Whether you call it telemarketing, telesales or teleprospecting, using the phone as part of your direct marketing strategy can increase response rates by a minimum of 25% and get sales people’s foot in the door which leads to more closed deals. According to Douglas Karr, founder of the Marketing and Technology Blog, “most direct marketing strategies fail because they’re not persistent in calling on the clients who are within their key firmographic.”
To prove the point, Karr cites an experiment where operators called up key prospects as many as 12 times over a 10-12 week period trying to get them on the phone to drive a conversation. More than once a week can seem a little bit overreaching; however the results of this study were illuminating. This experiment proved to be an enormous success. Tenacity allowed the telesales operators to connect with the key prospects they needed to. These telesales reps would not have had a conversation with these prospects if they had not maintained their persistence in calling.
Apply a phone contact strategy
Marketing and outside sales reps ideally shouldn’t be making telesales calls. The calls should be made by either an inside sales team or an outsourced teleservices provider that has proven skills to qualify prospects, that then hands them off to sales as real opportunities. To optimize results here at North Star Marketing we pair a high impact ‘break through the clutter’ direct mail piece with telesales. Either one alone does not pull the same results as when combined. What we have also found is critical to our success is the North Star’s telesales team uses a multi-touch strategy that includes outbound calls, voicemail, personalized emails and direct mail. With our prospects we typically need 8-12 touches before there is engagement, so persistence by our telesales team is critical. How important is this continued persistence? We have seen a steady 25% – 40% conversion to first meeting by including calls to our outbound mix.
Combining an experienced and talented phone team with a multi-touch, multi-media contact strategy will allow you to realize gains in closed deals and revenue. Do you use the phone as part of your outbound marketing tactics? Why or why not?
