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Category: Sales

Conversion expectations: are you being honest with yourself? (Spoiler alert: maybe not!)

Posted on by Tamara Rowley

A very wise person once said, ‘Honesty is the soul of business.’ And it’s reflecting on that honesty, at every stage in your strategy, that will lead to long-term success. You can apply the same logic to customer conversions. We’ve seen every business model out there, strategies propelled forward by sheer hope alone, while others prepare for the worst, so any wins, however small, smash all expectations.

When it comes to achieving goals, an in-depth look at how much of your pipeline converts into sales will arm you with the knowledge you need to plan, giving you a clear indication of what can be achieved when you break down the numbers.

Work backwards to go forwards.

How many new customers do you need to onboard a month? It can really help to work backwards. If it’s 10 new customers, do you know, typically, how many leads you need to bring in to achieve that? How many must convert to proposals, and from there, what’s your average win-rate? With a little working out, it’s easy to see where the gaps are.

And if you’re honest, do you consistently invest enough in your best-performing channels to regularly hit the number of leads you need to win those 10 new customers you’re shooting for? If you run seasonal campaigns that affect the number of leads in specific months, or your calendar has industry-wide buying trends, the answers may surprise you.

Setting achievable goals based on track record.

Many businesses have this ideal target figure for new business, but a few key considerations will affect how realistic achieving this will be for them. Firstly, have you ever achieved this before? If yes, what were the contributing factors to your success? If you regularly acquire 50% of your new business target, you need to look at what you need to do differently now to achieve your sales goal.

Data really does tell a story. Therefore, accurate data reporting and a proficient CRM system are essential to understanding historical patterns and any limiting factors in your business that might impact your typical conversion rates. Armed with this knowledge, you have a much greater understanding and visibility of your sales environment and any gaps you need to address.

Meaningful planning that delivers ROI.

We work with our clients to create a cash flow forecast, which leverages the aforementioned data insights and shows how an investment in their outsourced sales function will deliver over a 2-year period, showing expected (and realistic) ROI and timeframes. We know from experience that a consistent programme of activity will deliver results, some quick wins, but they will also be those prospects that will come to fruition months from now. In a quick-win culture, 2 years can seem like an eternity, but actually, it’s a virtuous circle, whereby the investment you make today will pay dividends far beyond the life of your campaign.

Honesty is a two-way street, so we’re always completely transparent about ROI and our projections. If you need a faster return on investment than our forecast predicts, it’s important to think carefully before investing in outsourced sales as campaigns do not deliver miracles and require time to deliver results.

If you’d like to have an honest conversation about your sales goals and how our outsourced sales experts can help you achieve them, get in touch, call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

The Sales Dojo Podcast – Human To Human Conversation

Posted on by Tamara Rowley

In this episode, Leon McCowan and Chris Dawson of The Sales Dojo welcomed our Founder & CEO, Owen Richards.

They discuss:
• Owen’s first experience of sales
• The top sales tips that we share with our team when they join
• How big a role personality plays in a sales call and whether this is coachable or trainable
• Owen’s prediction for the biggest change in sales over the next 5 years
• Human to human (H2H) conversation

Check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or listen below.

How outsourced sales can skyrocket the growth of your business

Posted on by Tamara Rowley

High-growth businesses have a few key common denominators. They’re usually born out of a great idea their core team really believe in and rally behind. Their growth often outpaces their recruitment and resources, so every team member could find themselves playing outside their comfort zone in those whirlwind early months. The ultimate ambition is simply exponential growth; the sky is the limit. And speaking of limitations, there comes the point in every startup’s growth trajectory where the curve begins to level off. So, what do you when this happens?

It’s at this point that businesses start to look at their sales and marketing machine. What worked when they were starting out, won’t be the secret to levelling up. An ad hoc and reactive approach to building brand and acquiring new business isn’t a solid strategy for success. Most companies seeking to grow do accept this to be true. But what’s the value of an outsourced sales agency over building an in-house team? Why not bring in a Head of Sales and let them handle it? In our blog, Outsourced vs Hiring In-House – The Debate Continues, we take an in-depth look at both sides of the debate and the practical considerations that most businesses will face when making this decision.

In our experience, it comes down to this; your most valuable commodity is time. Time to focus on your business strategy; time to focus on your product roadmap and value propositions and time to focus on the future and your vision. The overarching benefit of outsourcing sales to an expert partner is what you gain back, along with the reassurance that your sales strategy and delivery is in experienced hands with a track record of delivering results.

We’ve looked at the common constraining factors that limit growth and how outsourced sales can help.

Limited in-house resource and skills

Sales are vital to every organisation’s future, but it also takes dedication, consistency and experience to see results. This is where an outsourced sales partner can help you step up your game overnight. Building an in-house sales function is fraught with challenges from developing your onboarding process to retaining your best talent. The time investment required to create and cultivate a high-performance sales culture is significant, and that’s alongside day-to-day management and process development. An outsourced sales partner has already built that high-performing sales professional function, with experts motivated and able to start delivering value to your business almost immediately.

No time to dedicate to new business

Building a pipeline is essential to future sales success, but it’s challenging to generate leads without dedicated sales resource. If your existing team focuses on high-value immediate opportunities, they may be overlooking valuable opportunities that are yet to buy and require nurturing through the sales funnel. And without any sales expertise, even those precious opportunities may be challenging to get over the line. An outsourced sales expert can help you design a strategy that takes in the complete sales cycle and aligns with your growth strategy, helping you build pipeline, capitalise on the low-hanging fruit and free up headspace to concentrate on the exceptional opportunities.

Limited brand recognition

Breaking into new markets and building awareness in your target audience can be challenging for new brands. An outsourced partner can help. They can work with you to develop messaging that will resonate with your audience. Their sales experts will be skilled in communicating the key aspects of a business’s service and benefits, building rapport with your desired key decision-makers and nurturing relationships from cold prospect to engaged customer. This consistent activity will help establish your brand.

Lack of market insight

Research and insight are invaluable to any new organisation, but it’s tough to justify a research budget if you’re at the investment stage. A sales campaign can be a valuable accelerator to gather live feedback from your target audience, especially if you’re a disruptor in the market. It allows you to get closer to your prospects’ challenges, enabling you to refine your offer to better suit their needs. An outsourced sales partner will give you access to call recordings and valuable data insights that will provide you with greater visibility of your market.

Why Air?

We deliver a unique experience for every client who works with us, regardless of their size, product or industry. We get to know our client’s business, their goals, their market and especially their nuances! From here, we build a bespoke strategy that reflects all the above, considering their product value and sales cycle. We then create a plan that includes campaign content and messaging aligned to their brand, we train and immerse our team in the campaign’s goals and work with the client to clearly define the target market.

Could you benefit from using an experienced outsourced sales team? Whether you require a completely outsourced service or additional sales support for your existing team, get in touch, call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Sales Confidence’s SDR Managers Event – Driving Relentless Positivity In An SDR Team

Posted on by Tamara Rowley

Not only are we Gold Sponsors of Sales Confidence‘s first SDR Managers event of 2021, but our Sales Director, Marco Alfano-Rogers, was invited to give a 7 minute talk around driving relentless positivity in an SDR team.

Why watch?

  • You will gain the knowledge and insight that is necessary to confidently and competently lead your SDR teams

Who is it for?

  • Sales Development Representative (SDR) Managers and Business Development Representative (BDR) Managers
  • Those aspiring to these roles

The Importance of Training When Developing High Performance Teams

Posted on by Doug Roots

When it comes to training, I have often found that the main objection I’m met with is cost and the potential loss of investment – “what happens if we train our staff and they leave?” My response… what happens if we don’t and they stay?”

Yes, training can be expensive and in businesses, people come and go. However, if the training is right, the relevant benefits far outweigh the cost. Training is vital in the workplace as it aids both personal and company growth. Training also makes employees feel valued and invested in, resulting in a happy environment and increased productivity.

Training can benefit company growth in numerous ways:

  • Best practice: Training expands the knowledge base of all employees within a company. By sharing best practice within the company, all employees understanding of procedures and processes and how to deliver a high standard of quality, can then be replicated daily and maintained throughout the entire team.
  • Consistency: Best practice goes hand-in-hand with consistency. With constant and relevant training from day one, all employees should receive a solid foundation of knowledge, which can then be built upon. With this foundation, all employees will possess the tools and knowledge to carry out and deliver work of the same outstanding standard and quality. 
  • Motivation: It is important to keep employees motivated as it has a direct effect on productivity. An increase in motivation will directly increase the productivity of employees and their overall performance as well as that of a team. In turn, this will generate more return on investment (ROI) for the client and the company, representing the importance of investing time and resources into training.
  • Employee satisfaction: Morale is high when productivity and performance throughout the company are strong. This coupled with personal achievements brings employee satisfaction, whereby employees are happy and feel valued, in turn they perform well. It’s a full circle that all stems from and starts with training.
  • Weak areas: Identifying and addressing weaknesses in a company presents the opportunity to carry out refresher training or upskill sessions to educate and share knowledge. This ensures that everyone is comfortable in what is required from them and the level of performance is once again maintained.
  • Collaboration: We all know that ‘two heads are better than one’. It makes sense then to share knowledge and experience, both within specific teams as well as between them. Coming together to help one another, as well as bringing different perspectives and opinions can sometimes be beneficial for everyone involved and helps to present various aspects of the company in various ways. This can be a training lead collaboration, whereby everyone can learn and benefit while also feeling like they have a voice.
  • Reduced employee turnover: When employees receive the relevant and correct amount of training, they should feel more comfortable and confident in the workplace being able to carry out all aspects of their role with ease. Thus, reducing anxiety, unhappiness and a desire to leave the company.

Training doesn’t always need to be delivered in-house. At times it is necessary to seek out external guidance and assistance. External training really helps with:

  • Access to expertise: When specific training is required, it is always best to go directly to the source and get the experts in, as they will know all the relevant information and the current tips and techniques being utilised and will be able to share best practice.
  • Fresh look: External trainers may be able to provide valuable insight into inefficiencies within the company and help us to see opportunities for improvement that we could implement smoothly and efficiently. By bringing in an outside view, they can suggest changes that we may have otherwise not been aware of or thought of.
  • Stretching our comfort zone: External trainers who are new to the business get employees stepping outside of their comfort zones immediately, as someone new is around.

When our comfort zones are stretched, we find it fosters creativity making us more flexible and adaptable to unexpected change. It also motivates us and increases our overall productivity and performance.

So, if you’re considering implementing a training programme for your team, give it a go, you’ll only know once you try – ‘the proof is in the pudding’ so to speak.

Opinion Piece by Nicolette Karides, Learning and Development Coordinator at Air Marketing.

Morning Buzz Meetings – Demotivating or Motivating?

Posted on by Doug Roots

Motivation can be difficult to achieve in an office environment; hard work can often go unnoticed and the constant pressures of a competitive environment can begin to wear employees down. Research has shown, each day, 10% of employees are absent in call centres due to the lack of appreciation felt in the workplace. This research alone highlights the need, especially in my industry, for touchpoints which allow managers to show their appreciation to their staff, highlight individual achievements and deliver motivational objectives. In this blog post, I will share my experience and tips for achieving the above in one morning meeting.

So, how do you maximise your morning buzz meetings to encourage individuals and create high performing sales teams?

  1. Strategise

43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week, however, employee reviews should be happening more often and take less time.

There’s nothing worse than a long-winded ‘motivational’ meeting that is set to demotivate from the offset. It’s therefore important that you plan and prepare; effective buzz meetings should be concise and last no longer than 15 minutes, be armed with your objectives, focus on team wins and pinpoint your collective areas of learning.

  1. Set the tone

Our physical behaviour influences our mental and emotional approach to the day.

Think of ways to get your team moving, have a walking meeting, introduce a quick-fire game or play uplifting music to get the blood pumping. Increased blood flow creates a positive mood, resulting in employees being more equipped to handle objections, take on new challenges and meet personal milestones.

  1. Spotlight success

69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognised.

This is the perfect opportunity to feature the activity which you want to encourage. Celebrate your teams wins, even if they don’t lead to a direct sale and avoid focusing on losses. Recognising individual and team achievements has become my common practise, as I know this makes the individuals in my team feel more confident and in turn, pushes them to set bigger targets.

  1. Support and encourage

41% of companies that encourage colleagues to support one another experienced a significant increase in customer satisfaction.

If you want to create a great support network and boost team morale, encourage employees to praise fellow team members, this assures no one’s hard work slips past management and brings the team closer together. If your team is feeling positive it will show in their client conversations, resulting in better relationship building, more sales and higher ROI for the company.

  1. Strengthen from learnings

92% of employees agree that negative feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.

Remember, the key for creating a great buzz meeting is positivity. Take negative feedback from the day before and turn it into takeaways and learnings for the team to overcome together. If a client isn’t happy with an element of your team’s performance, encourage your team to think of tactics that will better engage them and the people they are selling to.

  1. State the day’s focus

90% of business leaders believe that an engagement strategy could positively impact their business, yet only 25% of them have a strategy in place. It’s therefore no surprise that only 40% of employees are well informed of their company’s goals, strategy, and tactics.

It’s time to hit the reset button and introduce a new action plan for the day. Ask each individual team member, “what do you want to achieve today?” I have found that when the whole team acknowledges personal targets, that individual immediately feels more accountability to meet their goal, success is more likely to be achieved and goals are more likely to align to the company’s bigger picture.

 

At Air Marketing, we have experienced great success from our initiative to focus on our internal company culture. Achieving £18 for every £1 our clients invest, we are performing higher than the industry’s £11 average. I personally believe this success is down to the time we take out of selling to promote appreciation, individual achievements and team objectives. The culture at Air is one that I haven’t experienced anywhere else, our team’s positive and supportive nature is infectious, thanks to our daily buzz meetings we continue to deliver fantastic results for the companies we support.

Opinion Piece by Annie Blundell – Account Director, Air Marketing

10 Point Checklist: How to Brief a Telemarketing Agency

Posted on by Doug Roots

Each and every outsourced campaign brings with it a different client briefing. Some may be efficient and give the telemarketers the tools they need to produce results, and some may see a few implications further down the line from a rushed briefing process.

If you’re looking at briefing a telemarketing agency for an up and coming campaign, there are a few elements that you need to be completing in order to run an effective outbound operation.

So, without further ado, here is our 10 point checklist that can help your business when briefing the telemarketing agency you’re working with.

1. Regular Communication

Ask your telemarketing agency how often you’ll be in touch. Dropping communication can lead to potential opportunities to improve the campaign being missed.

Suggest a guideline, perhaps every couple of days, where you speak to the account manager to stay up to date.

2. Monitor and Review

Regular communication also helps you to monitor and review what’s happening with the campaign.
Ask your agency how they are monitoring what’s happening on the campaign, and what their review process is in order to check changes are being made where necessary.

3. Set and Evaluate Targets

Work with your telemarketing agency to set targets for the timescale of your campaign. And, look deeper in to whether these are realistic based on your industry.

Both KPI and team targets can help you to give the agency you work with an extra push to hit those all important objectives of the campaign.

4. Set Key Messaging

Without discussing the messaging that will be communicated over both verbal and non-verbal channels, you may get different callers with different ideas of what the messaging should be.

Be concise with the messaging, making this clear to your provider. And, take out any unnecessary add-ons or information that will confuse a prospect rather than advise.

5. Outline Product Benefits

You and the agency should on the same page when it comes to what benefits are being promoted during telemarketing calls.

Provide them with any information that might support the benefits of your product and service. For example, a results statistic, testimonial or case studies.

6. Define Audience Pain Points

Continuing on from the benefits, inform the telemarketing agency of what pain points your target audience have and how your product answers these.

Think about the perception of the audience; advise the agency on why your company is the best solution for problems they are experiencing.

7. Set Audience Action

Brief the telemarketing agency on what you want the audience to do. Be part of a meeting? Will this be over the phone? Face to face? What is the booking process?

Tell the agency exactly what the prospect needs to do, in order for a successful sale or meeting to be made.

8. Outline Profiling Questions

You know your perfect buyer, but does your telemarketing provider? Look to set up profiling questions that callers might ask in order to define whether a prospect is the right fit.

The better information both the agency and sales team has on the prospect, the better they can assess the needs and wants of that potential buyer.

9. Seek Relevant Data

Whether you or the telemarketing provider is supplying the data for the campaign, it will need to be accurate and relevant to your target audience in order to justify seeing any results.

10. Set Meeting Quality Guidelines

If the outsourced agency is booking appointments or setting meetings, you need to let them know what an ideal lead looks like.

Quality beats quantity every time, so avoid setting meeting targets without knowing how a quality lead may look.

Outsourcing your telemarketing to an agency may come about for a number of reasons; Lack of skill, lack of time, or simply because you would rather set your sights on other operations within your business.

Whatever the reason, the campaign setup and briefing are crucial to ensure effective results and, of course, a better return on investment for you.

Want to know more? Call us today on 0345 241 3038 or get in touch here.

Six Telemarketing Myths Debunked

Posted on by Doug Roots

The telemarketing industry carries with it some pretty strong stereotypes, which is unfortunate for one of the most direct routes to market with a huge amount of results to back it up.

Additionally, and as a consequence of stereotyping, there are several negative myths which are associated with telemarketing. As a company that sees our clients get great results out of telemarketing campaigns, we’ve set out to debunk these and explore why they really are just myths.

Telemarketing calls always use scripts

Sticking to strict scripts does not result in conversations that are tailored to each and every individual on the phone.

Although there may be some structure to the calls, a strict script is not adhered to, enabling real conversations that adapt to the prospect’s needs.

There’s no emotion, each call is just a number

With no emotion, and with people on the phones that didn’t care, we wouldn’t get much done. Each call isn’t just a call; it’s a conversation which looks in to pain points and reasons why a service or product might help someone.

This therefore requires a deeper and emotional understanding that goes beyond statistics.

Complex products can’t be sold over the phone

This all comes down to training. We would agree that without the right training, no product can be sold over the phone.

If you’re looking to work with an outsourced telemarketing supplier, it’s important to understand that full training is carried out in order for telemarketers to be confident on what they’re talking about.

At Air, we work on a vast range of products, which means we have to be seriously clued up on the details of each and what they could potentially offer a prospect.

Inexperienced staff that don’t stick around

The phrase ‘call centre’ brings with it connotations which surround the idea of young and inexperienced staff members who leave not long before their seat is warm.

At Air, we have ex-directors, business owners and sales professionals from a variety of backgrounds, spanning a wide age range.

Dishonest or aggressive methods

Telemarketers hammer the phones, they’re aggressive and their practices are dishonest, with some assuming information about the prospect.

A powerful myth and again, one that is far from true. Before any campaign, we at Air ensure that our data is as clean as possible with the right information and that we adhere to any TPS registers.

Cold calling is dead

And this is the biggest myth of them all. There is an ongoing debate which is based on the concept that cold calling just doesn’t work anymore.

This simply isn’t true. What’s more, the results from both telemarketing and multi-channel marketing campaigns proving this ideology wrong every year.

In fact, our clients made an average return last year of £18 ROI for every £1 they spent.

Air Marketing Group – Nurturing prospects is a large part of what we do

We don’t throw mud at a wall and hope some of it sticks; we look to nurture leads to encourage conversions.

We’re passionate about the way we work with your business. We’ll ensure that any questions or uncertainties you may have surrounding a campaign with us are answered.

Get in touch today or call 0345 241 3038.

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