How to find the needle in the haystack when telemarketing

Last year, Sven Sachsalber, an Italian artist took a metaphor to the extreme and literally searched for ‘a needle in a haystack’. Although this was part of his work as an artist, it sparked a fantastic phrase from one of our Account Directors, James, that I believe is spot on for helping you to generate more leads:

“Telemarketing is like finding a needle in a haystack. You just need to reduce the size of your haystack so you can actually find that needle.”

Here are some tips for helping you to do this:

Targeting the right companies

Give plenty of thought on who you are targeting and about getting the best data possible. Consider criteria such as sector, location, size and decision maker role. Particularly if you are using data for telemarketing, the cost of data is a fraction of the cost of actually making calls, so it’s worth buying the best you can get.

Pre-qualification information

Decision makers are hard to reach. If you’re lucky you will to speak to two or three every hour, so it’s a costly and time consuming exercise to finally speak to a decision maker only to be told their company has no requirement for your product or service. For every decision maker that’s not available when you call, what information can you glean that will indicate whether a company should be a priority for you to call back or actually totally unsuitable for your services? The main sources I use are checking a company’s website, doing a Google search for the company to see what else comes up and the asking the reception or other colleagues in that company a couple of questions.

Confirm you have the right decision maker

Have you ever tried a contact ten times, finally get through and be told by them you need to be speaking to someone else? It’s well worth confirming that the name you are calling is the correct person for your line of enquiry.

Here’s to smaller haystacks.

About Prospect Research

This blog was bought to you by Prospect Research. We are a business development and B2B telemarketing company based in Cambridge, specialising in lead generation, appointment setting, telesales leads and market research.

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