What’s the best way to get leads for your sales campaigns? Consider these five lead generation tips for telemarketing. They’re a great way to ensure better quality leads even as you scale up operations.
1: Reach out with a variety of methods
Not everyone wants to be contacted by phone. There are plenty of leads out there who are interested in finding solutions to their problems, but often, they’re swamped. Some of the people who would turn out to be great leads are getting as many calls every day as the average sales agent makes. That’s why so many sales calls end at the voicemail box: most of them are being ignored out of sheer necessity.
The way around this is to make sure that your lead generation plan includes email, social media, and even live networking events. Each of these are opportunities to meet leads where and when they want solutions providers to contact them. Those kinds of encounters are often much more agreeable than the endless barrage of phone calls.
2: Don’t grill your leads too hard
When you do get a potential lead on the phone, don’t go in for the kill right away. Sales works better when it’s more concerned with what the customer needs, not with what the seller needs. That means that your qualifying questions should be as simple and as few in number as possible.
The majority of the necessary back-and-forth is the responsibility of the sales team. They’re the ones who will need more information leading up to deal closing. The lead gen team can provide them with plenty of valuable data, but you also don’t want to run the risk of exhausting the lead’s patience!
3: Fast follow-up
Once you do have a qualified lead, you need to get it over to the sales team as soon as possible. Failing to do so lets a warm lead grow cold. This, in turn, leads to confusion and lost deals.
What’s the ideal turnaround time? It varies depending on how qualified a lead is, and the needs of each organization. A good rule of thumb, though, is that anything longer than two days is risky. The exception to that rule is when you can set up a calendar appointment and follow up in between the first contact and the sales meeting.
4: Rank leads according to urgency
So, how do you know how urgent a lead is? It depends on their own budgets and timelines. Odds are they will be forthcoming with this information when asked. It’s important to use that information to prioritize your follow-up efforts.
As mentioned before, not everyone is ready to buy right away. Those who are should be put at the top of the list of the leads your sales agents will call next. Those are the leads that have budgeted for a solution, are actively looking for one, and have done their research. The next tier down are those who recognize that a solution is necessary, but are still on a timeline of several months before implementation. The final tier, if you want to differentiate it, is for those who are only interested in getting some more information they can use down the road.
5: Remember that everyone’s on the same team, but with clear roles
These lead generation tips for telemarketing mostly focus on the different roles of the sales and lead gen teams within an organization. It’s important to remember, though, that both teams have a common goal: grow the company!
Both teams need to have a mindset of working in harmony. There must be a balance between getting as many highly-qualified leads as possible and maintaining good working conditions for everyone. You don’t want to over- or under-schedule the sales team, and you don’t want to burn out the lead gen team.
Put these lead generation tips for telemarketing into action with Smart Funnel
All of these lead generation tips for telemarketing apply best when your organization has a specialized team for each process. But what if you don’t have your own in-house lead generation team to support your sales staff? For that, we recommend talking to the folks at Boomsourcing. They provide outsourced telemarketing resources that represent a significant savings versus building an in-house team.
Likewise, we here at Smart Funnel can help you supply any team, whether outsourced or in-house, with high-quality actionable data. Get in touch with us today to make sure your sales team can count on solid leads!
