Moonwalk Your Way to Sales Leads: A Michael Jackson-Inspired Primer on B2B Telemarketing

July 29, 2013/in Telemarketing /by Vivien Reyes

The amazing thing about business-to-business (B2B) telemarketing is that it pretty much opens up a world of opportunities for professional telemarketers to explore different types of people and conversations that lead to the discovery of one’s self. What better way to get a head start on this than being inspired by some of the memorable songs of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who, in his own right, lived and passed on leaving behind a message of internal peace and external harmony.

These mantras live forever, and it can serve as a guide for those who are up to the challenge of telemarketing and the dynamics that come along with it:

“Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin” – Preparedness always gives an advantage, as luck favors those who are prepared. But you wouldn’t want to leave the fate of your efforts to chance; a professional telemarketer puts considerable efforts into making sure everything’s ready and will start on a good note.

“Remember the Time” – Every campaign has an element of time. Though some projects give you more than ample time to produce numbers, there’s no reason for procrastination or delaying tactics. Time is money, and the more you maximize your time, the more productive you will be.

“Human Nature” – Now, effectively talking to prospects may be a natural talent for some people, but for those who were not endowed with such a gift, it should be taken as an art that needs to be perfected. The key is to never forget that whatever their roles in company may be, they’re still humans deep down, and you can only bring that nature out if you treat them like one.

“Black Or White” – The world isn’t divided into black or white, as is the vocation of telemarketing. When prospects say yes or no, it doesn’t necessarily equate to the truth. It’s a telemarketer’s job to probe on the undisclosed needs and desires of the prospect and of the business, and to get a clear understanding of whether or not they know what they are saying.

“You Are Not Alone”– In outsourced lead generation firms, teams are specially assembled to tackle a particular project. This includes team leaders, coaches, researchers and quality assurance specialists. The amount of support that goes into developing telemarketers has seen its growth especially since businesses are looking more into “personalizing” the call experience for prospects.

“Man in the Mirror” – despite the available support, the best resource is yourself. The will to improve or reinvent one’s self is something that cannot be taught. External motivation can only do so much as adding more fuel to the fire, the flame itself must come from within.

“Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough” – The strength of a warrior is not measured by his victories but by his failures. Getting a lot of rejections from prospects may sometimes be demoralizing, but each person has his own mechanism of resiliency and perseverance; you just need to find out what is yours.

The Three T’s Of Better Sales Leads Customer Service

July 23, 2013/in B2B Marketing & Strategy /by Belinda Summers

The secret to a successful lead generation campaign, as well as retention of customers, can be as simple as providing customer service. Believe it or not, an excellent customer service system can help your company establish a firmer hold in a rather volatile market, as well as identify potential sales leads that would otherwise not appear if the way you treat customers is generally sloppy. If you want to take to take your marketing campaign to the next level, make sure that your appointment setting team knows how to provide an excellent customer service. In case you are in the dark as to what it covers, here are the main points below:

Technology – here is the thing about business: it is too complicated in the minds of customers. Jargon, technicalities, inside jokes, etc. are stuff heard by prospects that you would rather keep to yourself. Your job, as a marketer, is to reduce the pain that potential B2B leads have to go through when having a transaction with you. Try investing in updated software systems, spend for a user-friendly website, buy new phones for your telemarketing team, etc. Your business prospects will thank you for that. There are so many things that you can do or attend to, once you have the right tools for the job.

Transparency – in any kind of relationship, but certainly most pronounced with businesses, being open and honest with your prospects can be a powerful aid in relationship building. Establishing good rapport with your prospects should be foremost in your minds. Remember, these prospects may not buy from you yet, but you would want to keep them in the record for future appointment setting campaign. And do not think that building trust is an overnight task. In some cases, it might take you years to reach the level of trust that will give business prospects the reason to do business with you.

Training – in marketing, employees mean everything. They are the people manning the frontlines, the face and voice that your business prospects see and hear. You would want to make sure that your front-liners are at their best, ready to answer questions and generally make life easier for anyone who gives them a call. To ensure quality service, you have to set up a monitoring and feedback system over them. Check how they do their work, and if there is something amiss, then you can help them improve their service later on. This is a great help for both prospects and you.

Of course, this is assumed that your people are skilled at these matters. In case you are not, then comes the time for you to look for outside help. There are a lot of B2B lead generation agencies that can assist you for this type of work. There is no loss for you if you can get in touch with a professional one. This is an excellent investment to your business, and further improves the effectiveness of your customer service.

First Call Resolution In A Telemarketing Campaign

June 21, 2013/in Telemarketing /by Guest

First Call Resolution In A Telemarketing Campaign

First-call resolution (FCR) is the immortal mantra of inbound marketing campaigns. If you cannot satisfy a customer’s questions on the first call, then your marketing campaign is not doing enough. While this is clearly applicable in the inbound marketing business, will it also apply to outbound lead generation processes? The answer is actually a ‘yes’. You can employ FCR strategies when looking for qualified sales leads.

The premise is actually simple: we want to resolve everything in just one call. This will save everyone the time, money, and effort involved in entertaining each call. The less repeat calls you make on a single person, the more people that can be contacted in a single day. In terms of marketing and appointment setting, qualifying leads with a single call can mean a big thing. But for this set-up to work in a lead generation campaign, you need to have initiative.

It is not bad to follow your sales script, especially if it comes from your client. In fact, you should follow it to the letter. But if you want to do better, then you have to take some initiatives and decide on your own if you should add more qualifying questions during the call. This will require some experience for you to do it right (not to mention a few experimentation), but in the end, this might be just what you need to generate more B2B leads. Such a judgment call may not be that bad to make, you just have to try

Maximize Sales Leads Generation In Three Ways

May 24, 2013/in Lead Generation /by Guest

Selling can be a pain, especially for people not used to this kind of work. Well, even veterans still find this profession a challenge. With the way markets move and trends change, adapting constantly can be a daunting chore. Even so, there are plenty of strategies that you can use to consistently stay at the top of the lead generation business. Generating sufficient sales leads is not that hard at all, as long as you keep in mind the following three tips:

Set you bar too high – yes, this is unrealistic, but if you constantly push yourself to reach impossible goals, especially ones that exceed the average of your appointment setting colleagues, then you will find yourself improving way better.
Keep yourself motivated – basically speaking, have an end in sight. Once you have reached that end, try creating another goal. Maintaining a proper motivation will help you reach your B2B leads goals much better.
Believe in yourself – this can be a real game-changer. How can you make people believe in what you are offering if you do not believe in it yourself? Before you go marketing your product to prospective sales leads, you should market to yourself first.

Another thing you should remember would probably be the content. Regardless of whatever marketing tool you use, be it social media or telemarketing, you need to stay consistent in your message. This would be the first thing your prospects would be looking for. As for the other three, well, now you know them, it would be easier to do it.

Keeping Sales Leads Through Stellar Customer Experience

May 2, 2013/in B2B Marketing & Strategy /by Guest

Generating qualified sales leads is hard work – there is no doubt about it. So it is only natural that you would want to find ways to keep the ones you have. And how will you do that? It all lies with your customer service. Yes, a successful lead generation campaign also depends on the quality of customer service you have provided to your current and past clients. If you want to get your B2B leads back, or find new ones through referrals, then you need to take a good look at the way you treat your customers and clients.

Being user-friendly – be it on the web or at your company’s doorsteps, how do you present your business to your clients? Is it easy enough for them to access, or do they have to navigate too much all the way to their intended page?
Accessibility and approachability – what kind of ambiance or image do you project to your customers? Is this what you want them to see? Do your employees treat your customers exactly as you envision it to be?
Presentation – in all customer and client interactions, how do you and your telemarketing team talk? How do you dress up or present yourselves? Are you approachable, informative, or professional? What kind of personal image are you trying to create?
Following-up – once your appointment setting team has found prospects, are you following up on them, or just sitting back and wait for them to call? A little aggressive marketing can do mean a great deal.

Providing an excellent customer service is crucial in keeping sales leads that you worked so hard to gain.

Why Sales Leads Prospects Doubt You

April 30, 2013/in Lead Generation /by Guest

It can be pretty hard to do business, especially with business prospects that doubt your offer. But all that is just a normal day in the office. The way you deal with them is what makes all the difference. To be successful in generating sales leads out of these types of prospects, you need to understand why they doubt you in the first place. Only then will you be able to come up with a winning lead generation strategy. To start with, B2B leads prospects do not trust you because:

You begin with a lie – a successful business relationship is anchored on trust. How will you be able to maintain that if you started the whole process with a lie? Sure, this might help you get more business leads in your appointment setting campaign, but it will not help you at all in the long run. In fact, it will lose you more leads.
Your claims are unbelievable – with so many companies claiming that they are the best, or the cheapest, in the market, it is only natural that business prospects would be tired of hearing the same song over and over again. If you really want to get their attention, show hard facts. Even if your outlandish claims are true, no one will believe you until you show proof.
Your opinions outweigh your facts – when all your prospects here are your own praises for your products, they would naturally be suspicious. To make it easier for them to believe your claims, make it a point to use testimonials from your clients, especially the big ones. Also, substantiate your claims by giving facts.
You focused too much on closing – yes, you need to get that deal, but if your focus is just that, without regard to what your prospects need, then you achieve nothing at all.

Correct these bad habits and your sales lead generation campaign will be more credible.

How To Secure Your Sales Leads In Cyberspace

April 29, 2013/in Tips and How To's /by Guest

It can be a real pain to be a victim of cyberspace hacking, but it is a reality you need to face in today’s modern business environment. All those years of hard work in lead generation, all those gigabytes of customer and market data, and the lists of sales leads you have collected, all these can disappear at just a click of a mouse button, and you cannot do anything at all once that happens. That is why you need to prevent hacking in the first place. You need to improve your security. Only then can you fairly say that you have taken steps to deal to protect your B2B leads.

Load on tech – as a business owner, you need to invest in the right equipment. You need to have the latest technology, like firewalls and antivirus, installed on your computer and communication equipment (like the phone lines used by your telemarketing teams). This makes securing them easier.
Lock everything down – clear cache, create passwords, use secure back up, etc. are just some of the things you need to observe in order to secure your systems. In case an actual hacking takes place, the damage can be put on the minimum.
Spread the word – not everyone gets the same information as you do. If, say, your appointment setting representative is using VoIP to make calls, recommend them a powerful antivirus or firewall to prevent illegal access to their VoIP account.

There are other things that you need to do to protect your lead generation campaign, but these three will top that list. Follow them well.

Lead Generation In the Post-Internet World

March 19, 2013/in Lead Generation /by Guest

The Internet has totally changed the way we do business nowadays. Now, we can reach out the most number of business prospects, increasing our chances of generating B2B lead, in a manner that is not available to us from five or ten years ago. This is a great opportunity for your B2B lead generation campaigns, helping us convey more information to those interested. Of course, along with the ready availability details, there is the risk of what we call the ‘tyranny of choice’. What is that and how will you deal with it?

The tyranny of choice, as psychologists call it, is a condition where customers have so many alternatives to choose from that they practically cannot make a choice any more. Give the numerous products and services offered by a lot of marketers during their appointment setting campaigns, it is only natural that business prospects will have a hard time choosing which to buy or sign up for. This impairment can have a serious impact on your generation of sales leads. Of course, this can also have a positive outcome for your campaign as well.

It all depends on your ability to best represent your brand. People, especially the busy ones, tend to have too little time to analyze the products or services that their business will need. For them, it would be more cost effective if a seller can more as an information source, and help them make the right decision. At this point, it is also important to remember that sales leads are not everything. You need to establish a relationship with them.

When Not To Solve Problems During Lead Generation

February 13, 2013/in Lead Generation /by Guest

Solving problems is only natural when we are conducting lead generation campaigns. After all, if we do not solve problems, how can we turn prospects into qualified B2B leads? That is why we need to offer the right business solutions to your prospects. There are a lot of things you would want to say to your prospects, offer answer to their problems. But have you ever thought of those rare moment where you do not need to solve problems? Sometimes, not solving a business issue can get you the sales leads you wanted. The idea behind it is actually sound.

To begin with, you must first understand that some of your prospects may be aware of their problems already. They might just want to have a sounding board, or probably a second opinion on whether this is their real concern. Also, it is possible that they know the solution already. Your telemarketing team may not need to talk much. Your team will just have to listen, and the answer will present itself on its own. And would it not be a much better appointment setting tactic. At least you will get the full cooperation of your business leads. All you need to do is to be sharp at the details.

While it is possible that you have a lead generation team ready for the task, it may not be economically feasible to have a large one for a seasonal campaign. Perhaps outsourcing the work will do you good. There are a lot of telemarketing, advertising, and other agencies that can do the job for you.

How To Start An Interesting Blog For Your Small Business

July 2, 2012/in Online Marketing /by Guest

This week, we’re going to tackle the basics of how to set up your own blog for your business. A good blog will attract quality sales leads using your content and can eventually become the main lead generation channel of your business.

Every day, there are about 2 blogs created every second around the world, and a significant percentage of these blogs are by beginners. Due to the popularity of online entrepreneurship, most of these blogs are probably connected to a company website from a fledgeling business, much like yours. If you really want to make a significant dent in your target niche, then you have to make sure that your company blog will be able to attract your sales leads. To help your businesses get better returns for your efforts on blogging, we have provided here the essential tips on how to start a company blog from scratch.

The best way to start a blog is by using available free platforms for blogging, the most popular of which are WordPress and Blogger. Both platforms have their own strengths; Blogger, being affiliated with Google, allows for faster integration with Google-owned business tools while WordPress, being a bit more for professionals, offers more customizability for your blog. Using free hosting sites such as these will save you from the expense of purchasing the services of a hosting company. If you have funds set aside for you blog however, you can make use of a self-hosted WordPress blog for a few dollars, the cheapest web hosting service being about $3-$4 a month.

After you’ve selected a good blogging platform, it’s now time to create the design of your blog. A free hosted blog provides free templates from which you can choose and easily apply to your site. A self-hosted blog will let you create a more customized blog or, if you want, you can hire a web designer to design your blogsite for you from scratch. This is the best choice if you want to integrate your blog design to that of your website.

The important things to consider about design are:

It should be user friendly – you don’t want your sales leads to have a hard time finding previous or recent posts on your blog, much the the RSS button.
The colors should be appealing to the eyes and, ideally, reflect the colors from your website.
It would be best if you have a responsive design for your blog so that the template automatically adjusts when your leads view your blog through their mobile devices.
All elements of the site should load quickly so that your readers won’t bounce off, so as much as possible, keep flash designs to a minimum.
Integrate good SEO tactics like using meta and title tags in the framework of your blog to make it search engine friendly.

Do not forget to include a call to action on your blog. A splash page which instructs your viewers to sign up for newsletters will allow you to easily add them to your business list in case you have to email them or need your telemarketer to call them about product updates.

The next post will be all about what to write on your blog, what your posts are about, and how to make these easily searchable through search engines.

Company Profile

January 21, 2015/in /by Guest

ABOUT US

You have sales and growth targets.

We have the people, strategies and technology to help you reach them.

OUR COMPANY

Callbox is a B2B marketing company that offers full-service lead generation, appointment setting, and data-related solutions. We help you exceed marketing and sales goals by deploying targeted prospecting campaigns that deliver qualified leads and opportunities to your funnel.

With our expertise across a wide range of B2B verticals, our proven multi-channel philosophy, our proprietary data resources, and our full suite of marketing tools, we plan and manage results-driven marketing programs that let you:

Connect with your target buyers in any market
Keep your funnel consistently filled with potential customers
Shorten your sales cycle and improve overall productivity
Increase both win rates and deal value
Scale and adapt to developments quickly
Make more informed decisions with actionable intelligence

OUR STORY

Callbox started life as a Los Angeles, CA-based startup in 2004. That year, the company set up shop in the sleepy little town of Iloilo, Philippines with fewer than 20 employees doing inbound contact center work.

In 2005, we branched out into outbound call center services, and things pretty much picked up from then on. We pioneered many of the tactics that would become standard practice in multi-channel strategies.

This allowed us to rapidly expand our operations and grow our customer base, and the company soon established offices in Singapore, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. Today, Callbox is home to more than 700 employees and has carried out over 10,000 campaigns.

OUR STRATEGY

Callbox carries out targeted, one-on-one outreach with your potential customers to gauge solution fit and buying intent. We do this using a multi-channel, multi-touch approach. Multi-channel means combining different ways to reach your target buyers, while multi-touch ensures that we leverage every opportunity to qualify or convert your prospects.

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OUR DATA RESOURCES

Callbox maintains a large in-house database of over 44 million business contacts from companies across the world. This enables highly-targeted marketing campaigns for our customers. We guarantee the accuracy and timeliness of our data with a full-time staff of 300 data specialists that collect, validate, and update each database record.

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OUR TECHNOLOGY

Callbox campaigns are powered by Pipeline, our cloud-based CRM and marketing automation tool. Pipeline allows you and your Callbox team to get the most out of your campaigns, with built-in features like Lead Nurture Tool (a drag-and-drop marketing automation platform) and SMART Calling (algorithmically-driven call schedule and analysis).

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OUR CUSTOMERS

Callbox has now successfully completed 10,000 marketing campaigns, and counting. We’ve now worked with companies of different sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 organizations, as well as from a wide range of industries and geographic areas.

OUR ACHIEVEMENTS

With a 14-year track record of helping B2B companies grow, Callbox has consistently been recognized as a top marketing agency through awards.

7k

Clients Served

520k

Delivered Appointments

44M

Records

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