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Worldwide B2B marketing organizations–78% of them–say that generating high-quality leads is their greatest challenge. Yet even after search engine optimization (SEO) and social media lead-generation efforts–diligently applying cutting-edge online marketing techniques–the marketing team’s work too often goes to waste.
Sales reps admit to never following through on 70% of the leads. There’s a serious disconnect there, wasting time, money, and opportunity.
The source of the problem is often failure to connect to people–real people. After all, people make purchasing decisions, not search engines and social media apps.
The Internet has changed the B2B buying cycle. According to a recent study cited in Harvard Business Review, B2B customers now complete 60% of the buying cycle before they’ll even talk to a person in your company. So a good SEO, social media, and content strategy is essential. Prospective buyers demand a lot of information up front to find and evaluate your products and services.
But while lead scoring based on online activity is a good beginning, there are problems inherent in formulating scores:
In other words, buying decisions are ultimately made by real, idiosyncratic people, not algorithmic models. At some point after prospective buyers have reached that 60% mark, they need the human touch–they need to talk to someone from your company to become qualified leads.
Qualifying a high-scoring lead is really about discovering the answer to two essential questions:
To make efficient use of your sales team’s time, the answer to both questions must be “yes.” If your sales team doesn’t trust that the leads sent by marketing have that double “yes,” we know, statistically, that they’ll ignore them 70% of the time.
The reality is that sales staff are results driven, and time is their enemy. They don’t want to waste time on “maybes.”
What your company needs is an organized, cost-efficient strategy to connect with and qualify those high-scoring prospects. Then, your sales team will make use of marketing’s leads–with gusto!
Marketing Sherpa’s 2011 B2B Benchmark Report states that “88% of B2B businesses say telemarketing is either very effective or somewhat effective in generating leads.”
I believe in the human touch–actually talking to people. Building relationships between prospective buyers and your company is a people process. That’s why tele-services are so effective.
The reality is that human beings’ buying decisions aren’t entirely fact-based. How people feel about your company, brand, product, or service–and your staff–greatly affects their decision-making. Relationship building is essential.
Tele-services let you cost-effectively build those relationships through:
That’s the short list. You’ll note that only the first two bullets are what I’ve focused on in this post so far. But the rest are significant.
After prospective buyers do their research and make contact with your company–that magic 60% mark in the buying cycle–there are many opportunities to build strong, personal relationships before, during, and after the sales team’s direct involvement. And some of those make the sales team more efficient, as well.
For example, let’s say your sales team wants to schedule an in-person demo. You can use tele-services agents to set an appointment with the client and call them the day before with a warm reminder.
Or suppose your company is going to participate in or host a trade event that is likely to interest a segment of current customers. Tele-services agents can call the customers and invite them to the event, even answer specific customer questions about it.
There are many more possibilities for well-trained, organized tele-service agents to engage with prospective and current clients, ways that keep the sales team focused on negotiations. And more well-managed interpersonal engagements will translate into more sales.
For more information about how tele-services can be used to qualify leads and build relationships with current and prospective customers, download our e-book: “Bridge the Divide Between Sales and Marketing: Lead Generation With a Human Touch.”
About the author:
Jeff Kalter is CEO of 3D2B, a global business-to-business telemarketing company that bridges the divide between marketing and sales. He leads customer acquisition programs for Fortune 500 companies, and is passionate about building strong business relationships through professional phone conversations. Follow him on Twitter: @jeffkalt
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