Response management and teleprospecting (proactive cold-calling) are both effective ways to generate leads and build your sales funnel. With response management programs, there has typically been a marketing activity (trade show, webinar, whitepaper download, etc.) that has taken place before the follow-up call takes place and thus the call is deemed warmer. Teleprospecting, on the other hand, is more of a traditional proactive cold-call.
When developing lead generation plans, there is no need to implement an “either” “or” approach with regard to these two tactics. Instead, both tactics can and should be utilized. Most of our clients see the value in both response management and proactive cold-calling, and therefore utilize a “hybrid” model where both strategies are used in tandem to successfully drive funnel and pipeline development.
Here are a few keys that have enabled us to be successful with each approach:
Response Management:
- Scrub Data Prior to Launch – the challenge with responder sources is that they can be less targeted from time to time i.e. tradeshow badge scan or whitepaper download. Therefore, it is important to review the list of responsesand remove obvious out of target organizations (i.e. employees, partners, competitors, incomplete contact data), so that your tele team is focused on the most appropriate people and organizations.
- Leverage Campaign assets and background – most response management efforts include multiple sources. Arming your telemarketing team with background information on each campaign source, as well as the assets that may have viewed/downloaded, will empower a more productive conversation during follow-up efforts.
- Investigative approach – even with a targeted campaign, we’ve found that there may still need to be some navigation within the organization to find the “right” decision maker contact. Often times the contact that downloaded an asset or attended a webinar was tasked by their manager to gather information. Our approach is to find out who is ultimately calling the shots and then move onto the lead qualifying stage.
Teleprospecting:
- Hand-picked “whitespace” accounts from Sales – target list is often the most important element when it comes to a teleprospecting effort. We’ve found that when Sales is involved and provides hand-picked accounts that they are looking to penetrate AND will diligently follow-up on, we see the greatest success.
- Utilize relevant offers early and often – another key to teleprospecting is the use of relevant offers to help generate initial interest. Because the call is not warm, the use of offers and targeted value propositions will help build rapport, create awareness, and ultimately generate demand. Limited time offers can also help to expedite decision timeframes and help plan defined next steps with Sales.
- Call-Email-Call approach – having an initial conversation, sending relevant content via email, and following up with call to further qualify the prospect has proven to be an effective strategy in generating sales-ready leads when teleprospecting