If you’ve ever had the opportunity to call for appointments or sell on the phone from a list of contacts, then you know hard it can be. It’s not for everyone, but for those who master the phone techniques, it can be an incredibly worthwhile endeavour to achieve great returns.
With so many ways to market, from emailing, social media, webinars to exhibitions, etc. telemarketing is one of the least appealing because of the difficulty of the task. But many companies have a dedicated sales force and they continue to use the phone to make appointments and sales.
Telesales is still popular because you can get quick results and when combined with multi-channel marketing campaigns the results are even better.
If you’ve tried sales calling then you’ll know, all too well, that calling with non-targeted data is substantially harder than calling from a targeted list.
Here, we consider bad data as data not suitable for your ideal contact profile. Good data are contacts that precisely fit your definition of an ideal contact.
Let’s run through two scenarios:
(a) calling using bad data (non-targeted data); and (a) calling using bad data (non-targeted data); and
(b) calling using good data (targeted data)
Scenario 1 – Calling Bad Data
Let’s say you are targeting Marketing Managers, your list contains the correct companies, but you only have the names of the Directors of the business. You plan to call them and offer them your marketing campaign services. Here are a few ways the call can go:
- You call, but the director isn’t too interested in marketing and refuses to give you the names of the marketing team
- You call, and they mention that all the marketing is fine, but this is just to get you off the phone
- You call, and they ask you to send an email to [email protected], but these very rarely prompt a reply
- And so on…
You can see that not speaking to the right person makes it considerably more difficult to navigate to the right person.
It can take many more steps in your call to find the right person, that’s if you can get past the person you’re speaking to.
Scenario 2 – Calling Good Data
The primary advantage here is the instant contact with the correct person. The person’s role is marketing, they are interested in marketing and are likely to be interested in new marketing approaches.
You speak their language and can engage them straight away. There’s no having to find your way to the right contact.
You still have the standard objections raised with any non-solicited call. They’re too busy, they have no budget, everything is fine, etc. These objections must be overcome so they can hear your message clearly.
Looking at the Numbers
If you’re calling, certainly you’ll prefer good data. The poor-quality data is going to make you look bad.
Over the years we’ve created custom datasets that are accurate, current and targeted; it’s no surprise calling good data is substantially rewarding compared to calling bad data.
Here are some typical numbers we find when calling good and bad data. Typical metrics for calling are the number of phone numbers dialled, the number of people spoken to (not including receptionists), the number of engaging conversations and the immediate goal reached (in this example, it’s setting an appointment).
As you can see, there is a 400% better chance to reaching your goals by speaking to the right person in the right company with good data.
A salesperson job is a performance job, based on results. With this type of advantage of good data, your sales team will significantly improve their throughput. Equally, bad data can drag down your sales team.
This makes a huge difference on the confidence levels of the person calling. Calling is dis-heartening when the numbers don’t happen, but it is a process. A process that can be perfected, measured and repeated. A process based on good data can accelerate your results.
In the above example we looked at B2B calling where you’re looking to make an appointment, subscribe to a service or engage in a web demo. But the same applies to B2C calling.
This a story of good data powering your marketing campaigns. The same story can be applied to all types of marketing. Good data will win the day!
