Happy New Year!
2019 marks twenty years in business for TeleNet. In recognition of this major milestone, we’re planning a series of helpful articles, videos, and special promotions all year long. To get things started, here’s a list of our Top 20 tips to maximize your tele strategy, build pipeline, and increase revenue.
Go ahead, take a look and let’s kickoff 2019 the right way!
1. Win-back your customers – Utilize tele to strategically target accounts that haven’t made a purchase recently, focus on the benefits of your most recent innovations, coupled with special offers and strong competitive positioning.
2. Revitalize your marketing data and past leads – Renew past marketing leads, as well as inactive marketing and sales data. Tele will effectively update your account and contact data, identify low-hanging fruit and lay the ground work for an ongoing nurturing.
3. Attack your whitespace – Capitalize on unrealized opportunities by targeting net-new accounts using special offers & competitive differentiators. Gear up human-touch nurturing to realize the full potential of your whitespace (see #8 for more on this!).
4. Optimize your ABM data – Overlay teleprospecting lists with your ABM data to tee-up accounts which are most likely to purchase. Prioritize teleprospecting targets, optimizing your contact strategy.
5. Align messaging with top verticals – Incorporate precise, industry-focused messaging to the unique business situations of your target prospect’s industry.
6. React to your source and asset performance – Examine your 2018 results to know which sources (content syndication, events, etc.) and assets are worth further investment in 2019.
7. Schedule real-time appointments – Leverage tools such as Calendly to allow your tele team easy access to your sales team’s calendar. Schedule appointments real-time in order to reduce the “no show” rate.
8. Incorporate human-touch into your nurturing strategy – Make sure your nurturing has a “human-touch” element, designed to move prospects into the sales funnel. Don’t rely solely on digital nurturing – buyers want and need to TALK with you!
9. Improve your response time – Leverage webhook technology to get your web-based inquiries quickly routed to your tele team for immediate follow-up (your improved metrics will thank you!).
10. Leverage your tele team to manage/monitor online chat – Prospects navigating your website will get instantaneous access to support and service. Tele agents are trained to spot “buying questions” and can engage in 1:1 conversations. Early engagement with interested prospects leads to a higher conversion to pipeline.
11. Understand your metrics – Know what it takes for your tele team to be successful. Have a solid understanding of all relevant metrics, including per day touches, right-party connections, interviews and qualified leads. Don’t forget data usability statistics and referral rates!
12. Listen to your callers – Set aside time to listen to audio recordings of your tele agent’s conversations. Assess their skills, your messaging and the market’s reaction. Adjust your approach accordingly.
13. Augment your data – Look closely at your data usability – are you setting your tele team up for success? Seek ways to effectively augment your data, including leveraging your tele vendor’s data sources, as well as reliable third party sources.
14. Set expectations with your sales team – Conduct an in-person or virtual introduction between your sales representatives and your tele team (particularly important if you outsource) in order to set expectations, provide helpful MQL follow-up “tips” and supply a central point of contact. If you’ve done this in the past, do it again – start the year off with a round-table discussion between key members of your tele and sales teams.
15. Create a feedback loop with sales – Obtain feedback on a formal/regular basis from your sales team to help ensure long-term success and high pipeline conversion. Implement “tweaks” to your MQL definition, as appropriate, based on feedback.
16. Build a marketing matrix – Improve your nurturing results by creating a marketing matrix aligning your content and assets to major business issues/situations. Your tele agents will use this matrix in order to provide relevant and valuable communication to your nurtured prospect, avoiding the “just checking in” phone call.
17. Conduct ongoing training sessions – Engage your product marketing experts to provide a fresh training session at the beginning of each quarter, focusing on what’s new, what’s hot and what’s not. Arm your tele team with the latest product knowledge, messaging and offers.
18. (Re)Define your measurement of success – Ensure you have a clear definition of success, which is measurable and achievable. What will make your tele efforts successful? CPL, opportunity conversion, pipeline achievement, return on investment? Make sure everyone understands what constitutes success.
19. Hold EVERYONE accountable (including yourself!) – Implement service level agreements with your marketing team (i.e. relevant content, messaging, contact/account data), tele team (i.e. MQL quality, MQL quantity, turn-around-time) and the sales team (i.e. follow-up cadence, CRM documentation, feedback)
20. Hire TeleNet! Saving the best for last…if you’re not already one of our customers, it’s time to jump on board. With 20 years of experience, TeleNet has a wealth of best practices focused on optimizing results at every step, positively impacting the E2E lead lifecycle and increasing your marketing-generated revenue. Contact TeleNet today!