B2B Web Strategy Blog - eMagine

Bringing Cold Callers in from the Cold

February 7th, 2007 Posted by: Bill Gadless

We sometimes gloss over the critical importance of telemarketing (aka cold calling) as a key step in prospect acquisition and nurturing …possibly because we here at eMagine do it as a matter of course, so we tend to imagine that other firms must, too.  But as we were reminded by Sandy O’Dell’s excellent post at RainToday, “Restoring Respect To Cold Callers, The Black Sheep Of Business Growth”, we’re actually in quite a small minority.  In fact, most B2Bs flat-out avoid telemarketing, either unconsciously or by design;  and those that don’t tend to do it poorly …in fact, they often set it up for failure, whether wittingly or unwittingly.

A big reason for this, according to Sandy, is the stigma associated with B2C (aka residential) telemarketing, with which all of us have more experience than we generally want.  This inhibits marketing staff from even trying, much less getting sufficient practice to build the needed skill sets.  We agree, and would add even more factors probably at work, such as…

• a lack of peer group models/support:  “My competitors/vendors/clients don’t do it… there must be a good reason for that.”
• an unexamined feeling that doing this will somehow work against their “enterprise” image-building effort
• especially among high-techs, a nearly religious belief that it’s actually goodness to automate, as much as is technically possible, the human elements out of all transactions …because humans just slow things down and screw things up, right?

But it’s simply a well-documented fact that businesses who use this tool do substantially better on lead acquisition/conversion than those that don’t.  People – even those in big companies – still buy from people …and a very important dimension of people-ness is actually talking.  So the flip side of that “lack of peer group support” objection is a real opportunity:  if your business were to establish an effective cold-calling/telemarketing effort (and the sky did not fall in …which, we can assure you, it won’t!), then you will steal a march on those more reluctant competitors and very likely gain marketshare.  They may (wrongly) feel smugly superior, but you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank!

Sandy also gives some tips that good B2B calling programs use – like having your phone scripts leverage the same kinds of thought-leadership teasers (white papers, webinars, etc.) that your e-marketing program probably uses – but we’re not going to give all those nuggets away here.  You really should go and read this outstanding posting now  …there’s a good chance you’ll be thanking Sandy later.

Entry Filed under: Converting, Lead generation