B2B Telemarketing defined

1. B2B Telemarketing defined The process of contacting prospects or customers over the phone and making a sales pitch is called B2B Outbound Telemarketing. It is one of the best marketing mediums when done ethically. But not all companies go about it in the right manner. This process involves a telemarketing team that gets trained for the job and makes calls diligently throughout the day. However as with all things, modern times have ushered in the era of automated calling systems. This is a system that automatically places calls to prospects and plays a recorded message to them. The advantage is that the number or calls that are made far exceed what a human could make. The downside is that it gives no scope to the customer or prospect to ask questions or engage further if they are interested. Telemarketing calls are perceived as pesky by many people and hence the industry is heavily regulated by governments. However the better companies use ethical methods and perform their tasks diligently resulting in rich rewards for their customers. The world is filled with various types of industries and each of them has its own intricacies. They all use various marketing methods to achieve results and B2B outbound Telemarketing is one of the most effective ones on offer. Demographics plays a very important role when using telemarketing. It becomes extremely important to segregate the prospects into various buckets and target them with customized strategies. Most telemarketing targets a specific demographic. Companies must conduct some form of on ground study to understand their target audience and decide on the kind of message that has the best chance of connecting with them. The nature of the campaign and target audience also helps to decide whether a telemarketing team needs to be hired or whether an automated message would work better. The onus of ensuring the success of a campaign is on the company itself as it needs to be very clear on the message that needs to be conveyed and the target audience that needs to be engaged. This ensures that the marketing team starts off on the right foot and is better equipped to deliver positive results. Once the company has ensured that the Specialist Telemarketing Agency is ready with all the required information in terms of the target audience and message that needs to go out the next step is to define the goals and targets of the campaign. All companies have different marketing objectives, some want closures and sales while others prefer the setup of appointments and others want market insight into customer behavior. The target helps the telemarketing company to impart the relevant training to the telemarketing staff equipping them to achieve the desired results. The company also needs to provide the material that shall be used for training the agents. The sales pitch needs to be devised so that it conveys the right messages in the first few seconds of the call and hooking the prospect in a manner that they do not become dis-interested. However some products are such that an agent can be given flexibility to go with flow and conduct the call in a manner that best engages the prospects. B2B outbound Telemarketing has 2 forms. Inbound telemarketing is where the customer reaches out to the company after learning about them via other marketing mediums or promotions where a contact number is mentioned. Here the prospects are already aware of the message being conveyed and need further information. Callers are usually hot leads since they have shown an interest on their own and can be converted by an astute agent.

2. B2B Outbound telemarketing is where the agent reaches out to the prospects and conveys important information about the product or service on offer. Here the prospect needs to be educated and then enticed to buy or book and appointment. These leads start out as being cold and then get further segregated into warm or hot based on the operators own judgment and experience. Follow up calls are important here as prospects may not be available at times or may need some time to think over the proposal. This necessitate a return call. Whatever the purpose of the campaign a company should always conduct a detailed analysis at the end of the campaign. Call recordings must also be reviewed to determine areas where the telemarketing staff can be better equipped and if any unforeseen scenarios are being thrown up during the calls. This exercise helps to gain valuable insight into how future campaigns can be made better.