Recipe for creating a successful telemarketing campaign

1. Scrubbed and peeled target market
Rather than throwing mud at a wall and hoping some will stick, telemarketing will allow you to be more specific in terms of who you target and the message that is conveyed to each of these prospects. The first step is to identify who are the prospects are. Who you think you will have the most success with, you could look at things like industry, decision maker type, company financial information etc.

2. 1000ml of data
You may already have 1000’s of records of data lying around, but when was this data last updated? Can you be sure that this will fit your ideal prospect target profile? Data is a highly influencing factor to a successful telemarketing campaign. If you can get your hands on good quality, up to date, specific data – this will hugely improve your ROI, but remember volume is also important to keep a telemarketing campaign running on a long term basis.

3. A few tablespoons of criteria
Now you have your target market and data, you need to decide what makes a good quality appointment/lead. Are you happy to travel and meet with a prospect on a purely exploratory basis? You may want to start building relationship’s or would you prefer them to have a specific requirement within the next 6 months? It is very important to clarify what you expect to receive in terms of quality from your telemarketing supplier/team as this will reflect how you calculate your ROI and pipeline.

4. 500g of probing
It is important to ask relevant, open questions in the call in order to qualify the prospect to assess if they fit your criteria and expose their reasons for needing your business/service/product. Try not to ask any more than 5 questions, or this can turn a prospect off!

5. Ripe key messages
A telemarketing call should typically last no longer than 7-8 minutes if an appointment/lead is generated, so you only have a few minutes to sell the concept of your business/products/services. You need to the stand out from the crowd rather than the prospect saying “so what, everyone says that!”. Think of 5 key messages that you feel are important or are individual to your business and the reasons why these messages would be important to the prospect, e.g. feature – advantage – benefit to the end user.

Written by Lindsey Goodger, Account Manager at KMB. Contact 01527 518373