In recognition of our 20th Anniversary, we’ve put together another valuable “top 20” list of guidelines to help you create and deploy successful B2B Teleprospecting campaigns.
The first step is to build an effective conversation guide, which will help your lead development representatives (LDRs) steer and direct each conversation in a meaningful and productive manner. Consider these elements when developing your guide…
- An enticing opening – 90% of conversations are made or lost during the first 10 seconds of a phone call. Thus, creating an effective opening statement is critical. Your opening should include immediate value for the prospect, giving them a reason to take your phone call.
- Open ended questions – arming your LDRs with appropriate open-ended questions will help to create a meaningful dialogue with your prospects. Consider phrases like “tell me about…”, “how are you addressing…” and “what are your thoughts about…”
- Tailored value props – create value propositions that can be easily customized on the fly for different roles, industries or types of businesses that are within your target market, as well as business situations uncovered during the course of a conversation.
- Data points – delineate “must know” vs. “nice to know” data points within your call-guide, allowing the LDR to prioritize critical questions when conducive to the pace of the conversation and prospect’s tone.
- Offers – a well-placed offer can create a sense of urgency with your prospect, driving them to take action sooner and advance to pipeline more rapidly.
- Actionable dispositions – once a conversation is complete, the LDR should have a list of predefined dispositions to accurately categorize the prospect and more importantly, the next step. Each type of disposition should include a next step, whether it’s engaging a sales rep, funneling to nurture or emailing information.
Along with creating an effective communication guide, you’ll want to arm your LDRs with the knowledge and skills for creating conversations that are meaningful and conducive to yielding positive next steps. A few of our most critical LDR tactics include…
- Easy does it – aggressive selling rarely works in teleprospecting. Instead, the LDR should use words and phrases which will put the customer at ease in order to have an honest, open conversation without feeling pressure.
- Active listening – teach your LDRs how to reign in their desire to speak in order to allow the prospect to talk freely without interrupting or rushing. Encourage LDRs to take notes while the prospect is speaking so they may circle back to important points later in the conversation.
- Recap – ensure your LDRs are recapping significant aspects of their conversation (particularly elements of BANT) before closing the call. This step will allow the prospects to correct of any misunderstandings and/or expand on their situation in more depth.
- Expectations – Equally important to recapping, your LDRs should also set expectations for next steps – whether an appointment, sales follow-up phone call, or email – the prospect should know what to expect and verbally agree to the pending action.
In conjunction with a well thought-out call guide and call-handling tactics, you must also train your LDR team thoroughly on your solution. Training should not only include features and benefits, it should also consist of…
- Use cases – LDRs should have a solid understanding of the business pains and challenges that your solution will help to solve and alleviate.
- Objection handling – arm your team with common objections that are encountered in the very beginning of the sales cycle, as well as effective ways to address them in a respectful and insightful manner.
- Competitive differentiators – provide details on how you stack up against your major competitors, including competitive positioning against internal or in-house developed solutions and/or end of life, legacy solutions.
- Evaluation criteria – provide details of how decision-makers typically evaluate your solution and what essential steps are taken during the sales process.
- Knowledge test – it’s not enough to administer a training session, you should also test the LDR’s understanding and absorption of the material by conducting a written test. This step will identify any areas that need further explanation prior to making a first phone call.
Once you’ve completed your messaging, prep work and training, it’s time to launch your B2B teleprospecting campaign. A few things you must do right away, include…
- Live monitoring – the best way to understand the challenges and successes of your LDRs is by listening real-time. Not only will you be able to assess their approach and techniques, you’ll also be able to gain immediate insight into the quality of your data and how your message is resonating with the market.
- Call calibrations – in addition to live monitoring, you’ll want to hold call calibration sessions to jointly review recorded conversations. This technique is an excellent way to check, adjust and determine, by comparison to a standard, the quality of your phone calls.
- Market assessment – a campaign’s overall effectiveness is greatly dependent on the accuracy of your target data. Thus, you must analyze your call connection rates and call dispositions (usable and unusable data) in order to assess whether your list will allow you to effectively reach your intended market – or if adjustments are necessary.
- Feedback – once the first leads and appointments are provided to your sales team, proactively seek their feedback in order to identify where tweaks to your approach, lead criteria and/or lead-to-sales handoff will optimize results.
While these tips and guidelines will certainly benefit your B2B teleprospecting efforts, we’ve just scratched the surface of what’s required for optimal success. Thus, the best tip we recommend is…
- Engage TeleNet! – With 20 years of B2B teleprospecting expertise, you can confidently offload your tele needs to TeleNet and reap the benefits of our knowledge.
Want to learn more about how TeleNet can help your organization reach your marketing and sales goals? Contact us today to schedule a discovery session with one of our account executives.
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