Tag: hot leads

Telemarketing with a Sprinkle of LinkedIn

Who doesn’t like sprinkles, anyway? Here at The Lead Lab, we think it’s important to go the extra mile and offer something a little bit different with our telemarketing. After all, our tagline is ‘We do things differently’, and we make sure we live up to that.

TELEMARKETING WITH A SPRINKLE OF LINKEDIN

As an optional add-on, we team up with The Social Media Lab to supercharge our services to a different level. The Social Media Lab is our sister business and specialise in all things digital marketing, including Social Media Management, Facebook Advertising, Social Lead Generation and much more. We use their ‘LinkedIn Lead Machine’ to go hand-in-hand with our telemarketing process to maximise results.

 

The ‘LinkedIn Lead Machine’ is a new method of targeted prospecting to find potential new clients on LinkedIn. The Social Media Lab establishes a set criteria to match your target market and then connects with the appropriate contacts on your behalf, before sending them a personalised 2-staged message to explain the offering and why it would be suited to their business.

 

If a prospect responds positively, they are passed immediately to the telemarketer to follow up via a telephone call and/or email marketing. Evidence shows that a hot lead which is left for more than 48 hours becomes cold and uninterested, which is why this process is paramount.

 

Using a range of marketing channels is key because it allows us to achieve the best possible results. Utilising different touchpoints to reach the prospects who are most likely to be interested in your product, and by using multiple platforms to do so, you can appeal to the prospect in a way that is more suited to them as a personal preference; Heightening conversion rates and, in turn, increasing your sales.

 

We have had great success with this process, and although it is completely optional, we highly recommend this to get the upmost out of your campaign.

 

To find out more about this service, get in touch on 0333 207 0540, or alternatively, you can get in touch with the Managing Director of The Social Media Lab, Joe Rowbotham, on 0333 207 0549.

GDPR Storms ‘A Coming!

The four letters that have been branded into everyone’s brain. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)  is coming into action on May 25th,2018 and it’s a subject every organisation is making sure they’re ready for (or should be!). The regulations are being brought into place with the intention that individuals will have better control over their personal data, and will be enforced throughout the whole of the EU.

Although the sound of the acronym will currently be giving a lot of people ‘the shivers’ due to the sheer severity of the breach fines (up to 2-4% of your annual turnover – yes, you read right…turnover, not profit) it will ultimately be beneficial for everyone. Having control over your personal data will bring spamming and unsolicited contact to an abrupt halt, which is good news for everyone, including those in the marketing industry. It’s good news for consumers because they will no longer be harassed by businesses, and it’s good news for organisations because it will bring back that element of trust, with consumers knowing their data is being handled correctly and professionally.

 

Here at the Lead Lab, everyone in our database has the right to access to all of their personal records on demand, when requested. This is a policy that we have always had in place, however, it becomes even more relevant with stricter laws coming in to place. As an extension to this, it’s important to recognise that all of our records are stored on a server based in the UK, with regular backups and restricted, safe password access.

 

All of the data we use for our telemarketing campaigns is kept with an audit log, so we can demonstrate exactly where our data came from and when we obtained it. It’s important to note that all of our records are direct opt-ins; meaning there is no assumed opt-ins or pre-ticked boxes. All of this information is currently being prepared for our website, so anybody can familiarise themselves with our policies and rest assured that we go above and beyond to make sure we are compliant with all regulations.

 

We always ensure that our processes are in the best interest of the people we are engaging with, which is why we think it’s important to talk about GDPR and make people aware of the changes that are going to occur in the now very near, future.

 

If you have any questions around the subject of GDPR or are interested in learning more about our lead generation services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on 0333 207 0540.

Our Solution to Telemarketing Taboos

The telemarketing industry is awash with bad practices, from salesy one line openers to not listening attentively to prospects on the phone.

We take a more honest view to phone conversations and work very hard to steer our telemarketers away from bad telephone practices. Right from the get-go, our approach to phoning prospects is upbeat, professional and all about personal engagement. Lochlan Choules, one of our most experienced telemarketers, talks us through some key potholes to avoid;

 

“You need to avoid coming across as ‘salesy’, so we don’t open a call with ‘how are you today?’ as this instantly shows you are trying to sell something which can annoy your prospect. Also, we don’t use ‘closed questions’, which is any type of question that would warrant a yes or no answer, as it doesn’t create an engaging conversation. For example, we don’t ask ‘is that something you would be interested in?’, because the prospect can say ‘no’ and then the conversation is hard to pull back in your favour.

 

The best way to engage with a prospect is to have an honest conversation with them. This means not talking over them, or rushing to get your message across. The other thing we have learnt is the importance of listening. If you listen attentively, you can pick up and talk about matters they have raised and you start engaging on a personal level, which is more likely to deliver results.

 

Some telemarketers are so used to ‘reading a script’ that they rush through the call and forget that the prospect is hearing your message for the first time, and it needs to be delivered at a good pace. Rushing through your pitch means the prospect might not understand or take in what you are saying, this irritates them and the call is, therefore, less likely to convert.  Rushing is also very unprofessional, as you must give the listener the time and space to respond, they aren’t just another number on your call sheet.

 

Another key practice is to steer away from unprofessional buzz words. A buzz word is a word you use to fill a gap in the conversation, such as ‘ideal‘ or ‘awesome’. This has recently become a bad habit in the telemarketing industry.”

 

We have created a culture of continuous improvement at the Lead Lab, so we regularly choose a few calls – a mix consisting of calls that have been converted, calls to clients who are not interested and agreed call backs – and listen back through them with the Account Manager. When calls are listened to retrospectively, we can really pick up on areas to improve and learn from. By listening and taking the time to analyse our telemarketing, we can avoid bad practices and allow our staff to benefit from the best practice of their experienced peers.

 

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If you would like help with your lead generation and appointment setting, call The Lead Lab on 0333 207 0540.