Are you still relying on traditional telephone campaigns?
Once upon a time, old marketing tactics taught us to procure a “good list” of people to call, whether it is from list brokers, associations or good old internet search. From there, we readied ourselves with a “script” of what to say and how to say it, and presto, prospects or sales would be made! For some, this works quite well, but for the rest of us….read on.
Let’s digress for a moment. Let’s say you procured a list from a list broker and had the list drilled down to who you thought were your ideal clients. My question is how big was your list? Let’s say you were ecstatic about the “1000” names on your list of leads and were ready to hit the phones with your script in hand. Sounds good so far, right? Wrong!
The common sense approach to a successful telephone campaign
If someone approached you on the street and offered to paint your home, are you going to be ready to buy right on the spot? Of course not. The same concept works for the leads you are contacting. One can not expect that the people they contact are going to be ready to buy. It’s just not going to happen. Well….it does, at about a 2% – 3% success rate.
Are you managing your call volume effectively?
Also, there is another point to consider and that is staying top of mind. Just because someone isn’t interested now, that does not mean that they won’t be interested in the future. Have you considered how you plan on staying top of mind? Let’s go back to the 1000 contacts. So, say you want to “follow up” with your 1000 leads after your initial call, now you just increased your call volume from 1000 calls to 2000 calls. Unless you are a call center, do you have the capacity to handle that kind of follow up? What about tracking your calls, do you have time to log 1000 calls in to your CRM system? Oh, Excel spreadsheets to track these types of campaigns do not count and are a disservice to you! Also, consider the fact that you may be leaving voicemails or asked to call back, now you have increased your call volume yet again.
Boost your telephone campaign success rates
I think you get the point, so let’s move on and talk about increasing telephone campaign success rates to about 8% – 11%. Let’s take a look at the following bulleted list.
- Start with a small list. It’s okay to have a larger list, but break the list down to manageable chunks or groups.
- Send your pared down leads an intro letter, post card (easily seen!), email or some other “touch” to introduce your services.
- Send a follow up “touch” about 2 weeks later.
- Prepare talking points and not a script to use as guide. There is nothing worse than listening to someone drone on and on from reading a script. Think about some of those telemarketing calls you’ve received and run the other way from a script!
- Start making calls after the second touch goes out. You will have more to talk about after sending out your “touches”, your leads will have had a chance to “see” and get to know you, and they will probably have a better time frame, if they aren’t ready to purchase, to when they will, as oppsed to calling someone “on the spot” and trying to get them to make a decision without “knowing” you.
- Follow up, follow up, follow up! For those people who aren’t ready to buy, ask them if you can stay in touch with them and then do it! I recommend at least once per month or at the very least once per quarter. Note that depending on how your ideal market likes to receive communication will definitely have some weight as to the frequency of follow up.
Remember, not everyone is going to be ready to buy on the spot, but months down the line, how are they going to remember you if you are not staying top of mind with them, much less remember a single phone call from 4 months ago!
This telephone campaign method yields results
I have personally used this method not only in my business, but with my client calling campaigns as well with success averages of 8% – 11%. I have had numerous occasions where I would get call backs from my follow up and have had people thanking me for staying in touch as they are now ready to move to the next phase.
To your success!