I was recently asked what sets apart our most successful clients – those who yield the highest measured ROI from telemarketing activities. Assuming that at TeleNet, we provide all of our clients with the same high quality leads, why do some of our clients boast ROIs as high as 64:1, while others may not be able to pinpoint their ROI at all. Is it luck? Or is it strategy?
The answer to that question is as follows: companies that closely align telemarketing efforts with the needs of their Sales team, and set up a formal and regular mechanism for continual feedback, including direct verbal feedback, are the most successful.
Not too long ago, I profiled one of our clients who has yielded a very significant ROI and found that their marketing and sales teams are linked tightly together. In fact, telemarketing is viewed as a sales-support function and thus, the sales team is just as involved with each telemarketing program as the marketing team. Here how they make it work,
- A Sales Manager and a Marketing Manager are jointly responsible for the telemarketing efforts. They work together closely on content and messaging. However, not to complicate direction and communication to TeleNet, they’ve assigned one person to be our go-to-person.
- Call Monitoring Sessions are not solely done at the management level. Instead, Account Executives are invited to listen to the telemarketing agents and offer their advice based on their real-world sales experience.
- A regular team meeting takes place and includes the TeleNet team, as well as our client marketing manager, sales managers and individual account executives (invited on a rotating basis). An agenda is set for each meeting, however, topics generally include:
- Individual and Overall Lead Feedback from the AE Perspective
- Discussion of what working/not working on the telemarketing messaging
- Review/Discussion of which market segments are yielding best results
- Discussion of tactics and pertinent adjustments