Month: June 2019

The development in internet technology means that businesses who are looking for a product or service to support their organisation no longer heavily rely on sales reps in the initial stages of the customer journey. In fact, 62% of prospects will use a search engine to learn more and, when asked, 57% of sales reps agreed that they are less dependent during the decision-making process compared to 2-3 years ago.

With everything online, why would busy business owners or purchasing managers answer a cold call? When we also consider that when many prospects think of telemarketing the first thoughts that spring to mind are double glazing sales and PPI calls, it’s not surprising that only 3% of them trust sales reps. But, when used well, and conducted correctly, telemarketing can still have a beneficial impact on the growth of your business.

So where can telemarketing help?

With prospects faced with a multitude of offers for similar products/services online, they are increasingly tough to crack and so in order to be successful, telemarketing is best used as part of an integrated sales and marketing campaign. Integration isn’t just a buzzword to throw around, it could be the difference between a dynamic sales pipeline and a static one.

By combining telemarketing with tactical sales and marketing activity, such as email marketing, direct mail, appointment setting, etc, you will be in a better place to build meaningful relationships with prospects. Prospects value interaction now more than ever, the traditional hard sales tactics don’t have a place in the sales industry today. Prospects are looking for someone to build rapport and guide them through the sales process as a trusted advisor, as opposed to a cold caller offering a hard sell.

It all boils down to demonstrating that you know your customer and that your call is there to help them and nurture a relationship. In many B2B industries, a prospect may require a demo or an appointment for further explanation, by having this as an option within your integrated telemarketing campaign, you will be able to better understand the needs of your lead and decide quickly whether they are in fact a qualified lead. 50% of your prospects aren’t actually a good fit for your product or service, so it is important that you use multiple touch points to find out as much about your prospects as you can.

With 9 in 10 companies using 2 or more lead enrichment tools, can you really afford to be the one that doesn’t?

At Air, we often talk about the ‘magic mix’ of sales and marketing and, working closely with our sister company Roots to Market, we have seen the rewards that an integrated approach can have for a whole range of B2B clients.

To find out more about our integrated telemarketing campaigns, get in touch today. Call 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk

There is an open question posed in this title, “what is the purpose of marketing?” This may seem obvious – you may answer;

“to shout about your brand”, “to run social media”, “to create websites”, “to create campaigns to generate more interest”, “to reach your target market”, “to get your brand into magazines and papers with PR”, “to improve your search rating within Google”…

Essentially, these are all activities conducted by a marketing team, either internally or outsourced, but what really is the purpose of marketing in the eyes of the key stakeholders?

Sales Team

The sales team have a tough job on their hands. Most are tied into high targets which have a competitive monetary influence on the salary that they take home, this can both motivate and cause stress depending on the individual. So, in order to maximise their own success or reduce the pressure of the job, what are sales teams looking for from a marketing team?

Most salespeople I have met (and trust me, I work in the same office as 50 of them) need marketing to be aligned to their sales goals, supporting them to achieve their targets. But what does this mean in real terms?

• Marketing messages should be closely aligned to sales messages
• Marketing should be assisting sales in collateral support, such as pitch decks, proposal documents and sales collateral, ensuring it is on brand but also fit for purpose
• Marketing should be using intelligent techniques to create demand for a company’s product or service, when executed correctly this delivers marketing qualified (warmer) leads which the sales team can progress, rather than having to fish for cold leads
• Marketing should be using intelligent techniques to nurture and score leads, allowing them to determine when an opportunity is ready for a sales call, therefore only utilising the salespersons time when leads are most likely to convert

Marketing Team

Marketing is often a juggling act, balancing the key deliverables of your long-term marketing strategy, with ad hoc priority projects thrown into the mix, alongside the trialling of new technologies and theories. For both internal and outsourced marketing teams, it can at times feel like a thankless job, due to the age-old perception held that marketing is intangible and unable to report on the impact of activity or ROI.

But what would marketing tell you their purpose was? From my experience, this is a really interesting question, as it can differ depending on the focus of the team. For creative, brand driven marketing teams – they want to be trending, they want to win awards for their creativity, and they want their brand to be talked about across the digital space for maximum brand awareness. For campaign and opportunity focused marketing teams – they want to be maximising ROI for their spend on campaigns, generating exciting opportunities for sales teams and maximising customer spend through trackable campaigns. Ultimately in real terms this means:

• Demonstrating the importance of marketing for the whole organisation
• Enhancing metrics, whether this be in delivering opportunities or growing brand awareness and traffic
• Creating a smooth, brand cohesive user journey for prospects and clients

Business Owner

A business owner is often working long hours to make the business a success, pulled on by many people within the organisation as the ultimate decision maker, when it comes to spend and investment. Time is therefore very previous but also very scarce.

A business owner thinks less about the separated individual functions (and therefore activities) within the business and more about how these functions work with each other. Results focused, a business owner is looking for increased opportunities to be generated, and client/customer spend to deliver more revenue, whilst maximising the profit margins of the business. This is one of many functions within the business, and so they are likely to be seeking the guidance of a marketing team, internal or outsourced, to deliver the right activity to meet the desired metrics. What does this mean in real terms?

• Marketing should be working closely with sales to deliver tangible results for the investment
• Marketing should be building intelligence on competitors and the market before coming up with creative ideas on how to reach the target audience in the most effective method
• Marketing is a central function within the business and should be involved in cross-function conversations on communication and brand

What does this mean?

To sum this up into a neat conclusion for this article, the purpose of marketing can differ depending on the stakeholder who is viewing this function. There is, however, one common theme that runs through all three – that being alignment to opportunities generated for the business. Sales need these opportunities as part of their prospecting, a business owner needs to be assured of return before investing and marketing want to prove that their creative ideas can deliver results.

Why do we care so much about this? Because Roots to Market are a Demand Generation agency with a sales attitude. Born from a sales background, we develop strategies that are focused on delivering marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales teams using a mixture of direct, automated and inbound marketing.

Are you in need of more opportunities and looking to partner with a marketing agency who are serious about results and driving opportunities? Get in touch today, 01392 796702, or email verity@roots2market.co.uk.

Appointment setting is a vital component if you want to build your business. After a prospect enters your sales journey, they need to convert into a lead to then become a sale, and what better way is there to do this than by setting aside time to talk to prospects and understand exactly what it is that they need or want?

However, appointment setting can often be a time-consuming challenge, both for small companies or those growing at speed, who lack the resources to manage and nurture their opportunities.

If this sounds familiar, then outsourcing your appointment setting to our team is a simple and effective way of giving you back the crucial time that you need to sit with prospects to ensure a sale through a meaningful interaction.

Our campaigns are straightforward to set up, all you need to do is give us a call and we will do all of the hard work for you – you’ll receive a proposal within 24 hours and then we can begin the process of allocating your account director, your dialling team and forming your campaign. On average, our client’s campaigns go live in just 4-6 weeks.

How can an appointment setting campaign help you?

Data Analysis: A call list is only as good as its quality. You may have hundreds of records, but if these aren’t qualified leads then you aren’t likely to get many appointments out of your calls. Our team will help you to gather and analyse data, ensuring that you are speaking to the appropriate decision makers who have a real investment in your offering.

Technology: You may be worried that in outsourcing your appointment setting campaign you lose that brand focus, however at Air we are able to replicate your internal teams processes and free them up to work on gathering leads. Our software allows us to mimic your local caller ID, use your personalised voicemail messages and track your prospects calls.

Skills: If you don’t have the capacity to hire an internal appointment setting team and you are currently passing this task to your sales team, you may be doing yourself a dis-service. Whilst they may be excellent sales people, appointment setting requires different skills. Cold calling requires dedicated diallers who aren’t demotivated by the perseverance that navigating discussions with gatekeepers requires. So, even though you may have an exuberant and energetic sales team who are brilliant at one-to-one discussions after the gatekeepers have been bypassed, this energy may not be maintained with the repetitive nature of appointment setting.

Automation: Much of the appointment setting process can be easily automated by our team so that we can process as many leads as you can send us. By automating parts of the process, i.e. calendar invitations, we can swiftly work through your data ensuring that as quality many appointments as possible are set.

Cost: At the end of the day, business boils down to money. In investing in outsourced appointment setting, you know the upfront cost of your appointment setting campaign and know that you can upscale or reduce those hours at any time. However, if you keep this in-house and hire a whole team, it will cost you a lot more in the long run.

If you feel that you could benefit from outsourcing your appointment setting to our expert team, get in touch today. Call us on: 0345 241 3038 or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.