The Great Guns Marketing Blog

Many companies ask us about minimum trial periods for telemarketing activity, or at what point they should start to assess whether their internal telemarketers are working out for them. This really depends on how quick your sales cycle is and you need to apply a bit of common sense to it.

Sales in the B2B world is still about building relationships and this can take a bit of time. We’re just about to finish a 3 month initial contract to deliver telemarketing services for an employee benefits company. Their objective was for us to generate 40 sales appointments a month to hit their growth targets. With employee benefits, it is difficult to create a message that is truly unique, as every provider will claim they offer the best solution – our job is to persuade decision makers to consider our client as a supplier over every other employee benefits specialist.

We agreed a 3 month telemarketing campaign with the objective to prove that 1 appointment a day would be an achievable task. In month 1 we delivered 15 days of telemarketing, generated 1 appointment every 5 days and converted 5% of decision maker calls to appointment. In month 2 we delivered 35 days of telemarketing, generated 1 appointment every 4 days and converted 10% of decision maker conversations to appointment. In month 3 we delivered 40 days of telemarketing, generated 1 appointment a day and converted 14% of decision maker contacts to appointment.

This shows that telemarketing in a competitive B2B arena needs to be sustained. Testing it over the course of a few weeks won’t give you an accurate reflection of what results you can achieve in the longer term through telemarketing. Ideally you need to give telemarketing between 3 and 6 months to really test its effectiveness. If our client had have stopped at the end of the second month they would have had the conclusion that telemarketing can’t yield the results they need to make it cost-effective. By continuing they have a solution which is working really well and helping them to meet their business objectives.

I spend quite a lot of time with fellow entrepreneurs and recently had the pleasure of interviewing Nick Claxson of Comtec.  Whilst speaking to Nick, it became apparent that although he is ridiculously successful and has managed to build an organization from scratch to a £12 million turnover business, he has little regard for material things.

Nick works really hard, long hours to achieve the ongoing brilliant results, and it has certainly paid off.  Thinking about it though, for a lot of people work is something they do to allow themselves to have a lifestyle out of work.  I have heard many people say things like “I work to live, not live to work”!

But as I sit here and write this blog at 4.00am with my family sleeping and my brain going a hundred miles an hour brimming with excitement about Great Guns it strikes me that perhaps I, and others, have an addiction to business.

Nick clearly loves what he does. He has started many companies in different fields and seems to have a genuine passion to grow them.  Even though this means he has to make sacrifices like working a 6 day week most of the time.  Of course Nick is well off and drives a lovely Bentley but that doesn’t seem to be much of a reward for him.  Building the business it definitely what excites him.

I believe some business people get the same thrill out of running a business as some sports people get out of running or working out.  I hate exercise and never understand when folks talk about being addicted to it as it’s my worse nightmare but I’m beginning  to see that I get the same buzz out of business that they get in the Gym.

I don’t think anything will challenge the brain and nerve like building a business. There’s definitely nothing more competitive than pitching, and the feeling of winning a deal and collecting an order form as your trophy makes you feel like Lewis Hamilton on the finish line.

So I don’t think we should ever feel sorry for business leaders who work hard and long. It’s their drug and even when business is hard you’ll find that some of these girls and guys will be buzzing and on a ridiculous high.

So is it wrong to have this love for work and this passion for business?  If it was a charity we would all be applauding, but people like Nick employ many and create secure, successful and honest working environments which I think is an incredible contribution to society.  Why then do you see so many civil servants and charity workers in the New Years honours lists while business people hardly get mentioned?!

Also here in the United Kingdom, unlike in the United States, when business owners achieve great success in their field we often say things like “well, they were given more opportunities than others” or try to unpick their success in some way.  Look at the bad press and judgement that leaders like Phillip Green and Alan Sugar get.  Whatever your view they have created many jobs and a great deal of wealth in the UK and world economy.  In my view, if we’re now heavily reliant on private business for economic recovery, I would like to see the business people who take the risks and ride out the recession creating jobs rewarded for their contributions.

Getting my MBE was a lovely reward for me and I appreciated it but I don’t think I was any more deserving than many other business people I know. Yes, ultimately private business owners aim to profit from their efforts but they also create employment opportunities for many thus contributing massively to our society.

It’d be great to see these contributions regarded with the same esteem as other national “heroes” such as Olympic Medalists like Kelly Holmes and scientists like Sir Mansel Aylward.

If you want to watch my interview with Nick Claxson, then take a look at the video casts below:

As a specialist B2B new business generation agency, we’re used to generating sales appointments for our clients. A meeting must be fully qualified to pass the Great Guns management checks, and we expect our clients to convert an average of 30% from our meetings to sale. Our telemarketing process involves us gaining as much information from decision makers as possible on every call to enquire such high quality of meeting.

Here are our top B2B market research questions our clients want us to ask:

1. Which decision makers are involved in the buying cycle (how many and all their contact details)?
2. Do they have a current solution in place?
3. Is this outsourced or internal?
4. Are there any areas they feel they want to improve with their current solution (requirements)?
5. What timescales are they working to?
6. What options have they considered?
7. If there is no requirement now, when may they be considering reviewing?
8. Would they be happy to speak to us when the time is right?

You may be asking why budget questions are not there. This is a sensitive question and one not many decision makers want to discuss at an early stage. If you feel you have a good enough bond with the decision maker then you can ask probing questions about how much budget they have. If you don’t feel it’s right to ask this questions however, if you know the options they are considering and timescales they are working to you can often get good feel of whether they are a suitable fit for the budget you need from them.

Here at Great Guns Marketing we work alongside our clients to ensure their telemarketing campaigns are a successful part of their overall sales activity. Calling upon our 12 years of telemarketing experience we know how to get the best results.

Here are our top 5 tips on how to run a successful telemarketing campaign:

1. Ensure you have good quality, clean data.  Much of the early work that goes on in telemarketing campaigns is identifying the right decision makers and checking what opportunities exist within companies. If this work is carried out with some data cleansing activity up front then the telemarketing activity can focus on speaking to the right people at the right time, making it much more effective.
   
2. Make your message relevant. Think about what keeps your target decision makers awake at night. Have a few solutions to their problems ready to discuss, and make them compelling rather than the same as everyone else’s.  This is what makes them want to meet with you.
   
3. Don’t push an appointment too early – give it time. A good appointment should come naturally. If you’ve found a pain, you can offer a solution and they like you then they will naturally want to meet with you and do business with you. Stick with the telemarketing activity and it will pay off, don’t throw the towel in too early!
4. Have the right attitude. People want to talk to people who sound interesting, listen and are passionate about what they are discussing. If you sounds like you don’t want to be talking to prospects then they won’t want to talk to you. Enjoy it and your prospects will enjoy talking to you and open up more, giving you all that important information you need to find their pain.
5. Have strong case studies to back up your message. It takes more than just one conversation for people to trust you, you are starting the “relationship nurturing” process when you are telemarketing so have some good case studies to back up your messaging and treat your prospect with respect.

I am looking for a PA at the moment and so I am spending a lot of my time reading CVs and interviewing potential candidates. Interestingly, I am doing this at a time where a record number of applicants are trying to secure a place at university – which leads me to think about what is important to me in a potential candidate?

Certainly one of my major considerations for anyone that I employ here at Great Guns is that they are customer centric, meaning that they have that sense of urgency about them in making sure that we particularly deliver on our promises to clients/prospects. This usually seems to link up with individuals that have great people skills. Therefore people skills are always at the top of my tick list, no matter what job they are applying for! The customer touches every area of your business when they engage with you, the accountant, receptionist, PA and even IT at times. This gives us an opportunity to leave a great impression as they touch each point.

So, do you acquire better people skills if you have been to university? My view is probably no. I think people skills generally come earlier on in life. I think children that are exposed to a wide range of age groups and walks of life and who converse with adults and not just their peers respectively generally are more versatile in their conversation skills. Children that are encouraged to step outside of their comfort zones and ask questions usually develop more of an interest in the world around them and the opportunities available to them. I think this generally makes them more interested in their surroundings and more ambitious in their own personal achievements.

Therefore, university education for somebody who is self motivated and has a desire for academia (and the pocket to pay for it!) would only enhance their people skills and obviously their education and put them at the top of the pile for an interview line up.   Having said this, if somebody already has excellent people skills and chooses to go down an apprenticeship route it is my belief that not only will they achieve great skills and job experience but ultimately they won’t build up debt for themselves. Certainly these people in certain careers will be ultimately be favorable.

In my profession, experience definitely tops academic achievement. Especially as so much of what we do is about the ability to engage with people through all mediums whether we are representing ourselves or our clients. In the main our job is to get people to like us, and people buy from people! Of course it stands to reason that people skills means nothing if you can’t read and write or can back up what you say with real delivery but it’s not that difficult to get a good accountant or administrator but add great people skills to the job spec and you’ve got yourself a challenge.