Brian Carroll Brian Carroll is founder and CEO of InTouch, a B2B marketing firm and one of the first companies to provide lead generation services for the complex sale. Brian is a recognized expert in lead generation and author of the popular book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw Hill, 2006).  Brian's been profiled and regularly quoted in numerous publications and he speaks to thousands of people a year on improving sales effectiveness, marketing and lead generation strategies. His acclaimed, B2B Lead Generation blog , was named the Best B-to-B Marketing Blog by MarketingSherpa readers and is read by thousands each week. Follow Brian Carroll via Twitter

If you’re ready to take that dialing leap and start making phone calls then this primer should serve as a good how-to for ensuring you’re utilizing the power of direct dial as a real tool to connect with prospective customers.

The rules of calling have changed significantly in recent years and it’s harder than ever to reach executives on the phone, primarily because in the past pushy salespeople and poorly trained marketers tarnished the image of the phone. Also, today’s busy executives have less time and more to do, making them highly selective when deciding with whom to speak. But don’t despair; reaching out via phone can still be an effective lead generation tool if used effectively.

In business today, phone calling is still one of the best ways to reach an organization’s senior executives for enabling dialogue but for real success, cold-calling needs to be finessed and understood in terms of its empowering and effective lead generation strategy.

Newly released studies by leading marketing research firms like MarketingSherpa show that 92% of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the sales person is relevant and 50% of buyers have short listed vendors from cold calls.

These statistics reveal that cold calling is a viable method of reaching out to prospective customers, but you must also be certain to keep relevancy at hand when dialing so that your outreach is intrinsically useful to your prospect as well. In other words, cold-calling is not another word for “time-waster.”

Getting Started:

To truly use phoning as an effective lead generation strategy, consider creating a specialized teleprospecting function within the sales or marketing group. Make certain that your cold-calling is aligned with other ongoing marketing and reputation-building activities. And before a phone is picked up, make sure that your team understands what the business does and why they are calling.

There is nothing more frustrating to a potential customer than being “telemarketed to” instead of  “teleprospected.” What that means is do your research before you make that first call, and make certain that everyone on the team understands everything they can about the business and the role of the people they are talking to. Teleprospectors must be smart, articulate, engaging and organized. Their training should focus on making them a consistently productive and sustainable extension of the selling effort.

The phone is an extension of your lead-nurturing program and thus every opportunity including cold calling to a potential customer should be treated with great respect. Lead nurturing is all about having consistent and meaningful communication with viable prospects (those that are a fit for your solution) regardless of their timing to buy. It’s not using pressure tactics in the first phone call and then upon hearing “no” never calling again. Rather, it’s about building long, meaningful and trust-filled relationships with the right people.

Each time you pick up the phone, whether it be the first call or subsequent calls, it’s important to create value by giving your prospects useful information in digestible, bite-size chunks.

Studies show that salespeople who become trusted advisors and understand the needs of the economic buyers are 69% more likely to come away with a sale.

Teleprospecting calls, in the truest sense of prospecting, are those that are employed in the mining of new potential customers who probably have not expressed interest in being called and may not even know of your company or what it has to offer.

For teleprospecting to be successful (in terms of the cold call) you must offer a fundamentally sound message together with the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation on the subject at hand.

Your prospects need to believe that you always have their best interest at heart and you should, if you want to use cold-calling as part of the bigger complex sale. Understand too that you can reach out to multiple contacts and don’t limit your cold calling to just one title or one individual in the company. The more complex the sale, the more willing you should be to reach out to multiple contacts.

Steps for Improving “Teleprospecting” Performance:

Step 1: Sustain the calling – be in it for the long haul. Teleprospecting works best if it’s long term and consistent. Don’t pressure your prospects to make a decision on the first call. Take your time and follow-up with more information. Listen to what they’re asking and if you don’t know the answer, let them know that and follow up again with them to provide them the answer. A second phone call is always easier than the first.

Step 2: Make every call count – Teleprospectors should never terminate a call upon hearing the targeted individual is not available. Imagine taking time to be helpful to the assistant or updating and verifying your database by working to share information for this source. Always ask if there is an alternative decision maker available as well.

Step 3: Throw away the scripts: Telemarketers use scripts. Teleprospectors use call guides. Scripts leave little room for conversation. Call guides are strong outlines to perpetuate conversation with areas to be discussed and questions to be asked. They must be built with flexibility and assume variable outcomes while still staying on message and promoting key relevancies to the customer.

Step 4: Respect the Executive Assistants – You should never look to the EA as a barrier to initiating dialogue. On the contrary, executive assistants can occupy a significant place in the sphere of influence, not to mention the boss’s ear. Don’t treat them as lesser and don’t be afraid to develop a relationship with people titled “assistant”.

Step 5: Always be relevant and uber-informed – When you’re making a call the worst thing you can do is to call someone and know nothing about them. You must have a sound working knowledge of each potential customer and the company and most importantly, the issues they face and how your product can help solve them. This personal interest goes a long way in establishing meaningful dialogue.

Step 6: Gain opt-in – When you are speaking with a prospect it is proactive to request permission to e-mail subsequent helpful information. More often than not, the answer will be in the affirmative, which provides another building block for staying in touch.

Step 7: Always follow-up – It is crucial that you follow up in a way that is precise in terms of promptness and relevancy toward your prospect’s needs. Keep in mind when you follow up that you also need to ensure you do so in the manner requested. If they decline a follow up phone call, but ask you to email them then make certain you do so.

Teleprospecting is a much more rewarding way to reach out and initiate contact with prospective clients. By providing engaging and meaningful conversation you are also building the bridge to a much longer relationship. In sales, a bridge always enables taking another step toward a client/customer relationship.

Can InTouch help you with your teleprospecting needs?  Give us a call at 1-800-810-7710, send us an e-mail, or use our contact us form.