What is Good Call Frequency?

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

Tactful Persistence is the Key to Success

How often should you reach out to a target prospect?  

This is a question we are asked a lot when setting up an outbound telemarketing campaign.

The answer depends upon several factors:

  • Is this a first-time interest in the conversation with the person or company?
  • Is there a known need?
  • Is there a known relationship?
  • Is the prospective company a high-value target for you?

For Dunlap Marketing, making multiple attempts is an important contributor to our success.  Mostly we reach out by making phone calls with the reinforcement of sending one-on-one emails and voicemails.  With calling we balance the number of call attempts over a duration of time.  Time becomes a good friend.  Over time you can call early in the morning, late in the morning, early in the afternoon, and late in the afternoon.  Mixing up your call times gives you a better chance of connecting.

The “How To”

Apply good common sense to call frequency. You want to avoid your target prospect feeling that they are your only prospect.  You have other prospective companies to develop, so find a balance between spending time with other quality opportunities. 

Back to persistence, this is an important trait to have because persistence is often necessary to reach the person you need to speak with.  Decision makers are very busy, and guess what, they are not waiting for you to call them.  It’s no secret that people are often difficult to speak with.  Our belief is you have to earn the opportunity to speak with them, and tactful persistence is often required to earn the opportunity. It is important to trust the fact that just because you are unable to speak with the person, does not suggest they are uninterested. Often, it just simply confirms the fact that they are busy!

To specifically address the question: how often should you reach out to a target prospect – with first time campaigns, where the prospect data file is not huge, it’s common for Dunlap Marketing to start a campaign with the agreement of making 5 call attempts over a 4 to 6 week period of time.  As a general rule, our belief is it’s good to penetrate the list by making multiple call attempts if possible.  It gives you a more accurate feel of what the quality of opportunities is going to look like. 

This represents just the tip of the iceberg based on call frequency.  This type of campaign can rest for a month or two, then you can start calling into it again.  Unless you spoke to the right person, the likelihood is no one in the company will ever remember you called in prior times.  On the other extreme, with campaigns that we have been working on for years, it is very common to see appointments that we set today as having 50 or more call attempts over the past few years. 

If a prospect is important to you, do not be afraid to be tactfully persistent with trying to make contact.  However, it is very important that you do not over call and always be courteous to everyone you encounter while navigating to the right person.  To state the obvious, when you finally do reach the right person, be prepared!

The Exception

When done properly, tactful persistence is almost always a good trait; however, when you have a larger prospect database to develop, it may not be as necessary to practice persistence, as with smaller data files.  The larger the file, the more you can play the game of numbers, meaning, there will commonly be a segment of your target prospects that are more likely to answer their phone.  The larger the file, the more you can skim the top of the list, connecting with those who are easier to connect with. 

You may find that you are successful in filling your pipeline by making 2 or 3 call attempts.  Take advantage of this if you can.  As you develop the prospect list over time, you will find the level of challenge will start increasing as it relates to connection rates.  This is very typical.  The offset is you do a better job of saturating the list.

Ultimately…

A byproduct of skillfully working through your target prospect list is you can create multiple silos of categories.  You can prioritize your silos by who may have short-term interest, mid-term, long-term, or no interest at all.  This is all very good information to know as it helps you determine how to spend your time moving forward.

Part of the value of tactful persistence is it allows you to be creative with keeping your name in front of target prospects and how you integrate other marketing methods to communicate ongoing.  This all becomes beautiful marketing and it will generate terrific results for you.

In closing, this article brings to mind two of my favorite sayings, both of which I firmly believe in relating to how we live our lives and how we conduct business:

  • “Tactful persistence is the key to success”
  • “You never get a second chance at a first impression”

Both sayings significantly play into the intent of this article; work hard, be patient, do not give up, and always respect others.

You can contact Mike Dunlap at miked@dunlapmarketing.com or call him at (281) 496-9870 x140.

Common Lead Generation & Appointment Setting Questions in 2022

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

As we talk with companies who are seeking guidance about outbound teleprospecting and lead generation services, the following 4 questions are the most common ones we hear.

1. How has the pandemic impacted prospecting behaviors? – Our world and our “back to normal” is evolving back to the way it was before the pandemic.  Not everything will go back to the way it was, but in business, most human behaviors seem to be going back to, or get close to, normal – “normal” defined as pre-pandemic.  In our office, we are as successful today as we were before the pandemic with scheduling appointments.  Things were confusing during the pandemic, mostly trying to determine if a target contact person was working in the office or working remotely.  People are still working remotely, but they have become reachable via phone calls.

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2. What do you mean, multiple call attempts? Persistence – we are firm believers in “tactful persistence is the key to success”.  If someone tells us they are busy and asks us to call them back, we call them back.  Most often we feel like a non-response to a phone call simply means the person is busy and is unable to talk, or they are not ready to talk.  This is fine.  We do not assume that they are not interested in what we are calling about.  We do a very good job of balancing persistence with politeness - with this balance we will continue to develop a prospect over time until they are ready to talk to us, and hopefully earn a scheduled appointment.

3. Does cold calling really work?  There are many terms for it – cold calling, outbound prospecting, teleprospecting – no matter what you call it, the question remains the same. Does it work? This is always a very good question and there are several key elements that factor into the answer.  The answer can be different based on these key elements: 

  • Outbound teleprospecting works if you have a good plan and process in place for making calls and managing the data (CRM)
  • It works if you have a sales team that hustles and goes after new business opportunities
  • It is a beautiful way to cover lots of territory and geography without having to travel
  • Lastly, and often overlooked, historically we have learned that there are fewer competitors involved when you generate opportunities through teleprospecting.

4. Why cold calls rather than social media or other digital approaches? – It does not have to be one or the other. Incorporating multiple methods can complement rather than compete against each other.  Both do a very good job of generating sales opportunities and together, you end up with more prospects to sell services to.  Both social media and teleprospecting have the ability to overlap and impact a larger group of people, where separately, they both touch people who respond to either digital approaches or phone calls, but not both.

There is a process that needs to take place when building a campaign – whether we coach you on building your own or build it for you. There is also a frame of mind that needs to be present.  You can do an outstanding job building your campaign but if you do not have the correct frame of mind, it becomes difficult to succeed with the campaign.  We will teach you both: the process and the frame of mind.

Maybe this article answered the question(s) that you have, if not, we are happy to talk to you. 

Decision Maker VS. Decision Influencer – Who Do You Talk To?

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

Teleprospecting for New Business Opportunities

The epitome of early-stage business development is making your very first teleprospecting calls into a new prospect list.  As you have likely experienced with B2B business development, at the beginning of the nurturing process, it’s highly unlikely to make a sale during your first few interactions with a prospect. Sure, “right place at the right time” scenarios happen, but not frequently. However, an outcome that is more likely to occur is identifying companies that will soon be in the market for your services. Because of this, it is wise to set your expectations as “getting the sales process started” when engaging in early-stage business development.

A conversation we have almost every time we build a campaign for a client is:

Who do we need to talk to?

Most commonly, our clients’ response is:

The decision-maker!

But, is this always the best approach for getting your sales process started? Our question then becomes:

Is it realistic to get the decision maker on the phone?

Usually at this point, our clients start scratching their heads…

Typically, decision makers are difficult people to get on the phone – as a general rule of thumb, the larger the company, the more difficult it is to reach the decision maker. If the objective of your cold calling efforts is to get the sales process started, and if a mid to long-term sales process is common, why not increase your likelihood of having a productive conversation and broaden your reach to include decision influencers.  These are people who may not be directly involved with the decision making, but are knowledgeable about future plans, and likely have a measurable contribution to the future decision.

In our experience, decision influencers are more willing to take phone calls and are more available to offer insight into the company’s future plans.  Because this is early-stage business development, a major goal in a conversation is to identify future purchasing plans.  It’s too early in the process to ask for a decision to be made – you are simply trying to determine the timing of future plans. 

We use this analogy frequently inside our office:

If you are on a first date with someone, is it normal to talk about wedding plans, or should you spend time getting to know each other?  Should you learn what the likes and dislikes are of the other person?  Should you learn about their needs? 

Over time, as you nurture a relationship, you then, start talking about the serious topic of a long-term commitment.

It is perfectly acceptable to start building a relationship with the decision influencer.  During this journey, you will be able to learn more about the likes and dislikes of the company, and what the important elements are that you can build your sales strategy around.  There is a lot to be learned, but do not lose sight that you still need to ultimately connect with the decision maker.  If you are successful at building trust with the decision influencer, chances are, they will introduce you to the decision maker.

In summary, this approach is most beneficial when your target prospects are large companies with layers of people.  If you are cold calling into small and mid-sized companies, keep working to connect with decision makers as well.

Introducing Consulting Services for In-House Prospecting

Posted on by Mike Dunlap

Dunlap Marketing has recently rolled out two new services we will consult you and your team on: internal lead generation and internal appointment setting.

We are ready to get your sales team geared up to do what we do best – prospecting. Whether you’re adding a prospecting branch to your current sales team, or just refining the skills of your current team, we’re here to help you be as successful as possible at in-house prospecting.

Okay, So What’s The Deal?

Let’s look at the overall sales process as a four-person relay race. Each person runs one lap, passing the baton to the next runner at the end of their lap. In a business environment, each of the four laps of the race represents a stage of the sales process and look something like this: 

  • Lap 1: Prospecting
  • Lap 2: Salesperson Hustle
  • Lap 3: Product or Service
  • Lap 4: Company Name and Reputation

Laps 2, 3, and 4 might look differently at various companies. However, the one consistent variable is that Prospecting is Lap 1. Without prospecting, there would be no other stages of the sales process. 

Dunlap Marketing is passionate about prospecting – it’s where we have made our living since 1996. We have developed and implemented thousands of campaigns – not to toot our own horn, but we know what we’re doing when it comes to prospecting. We can help you get your own in-house prospecting campaign launched within a few weeks.

Very interesting. You’ve caught my attention.

You might be thinking “what needs to be in place for a successful prospecting campaign?”

  • Overall plan
  • Proper messaging
  • Targeted database records (and CRM tool to manage)
  • Staff willing to execute the campaign
  • Staff training
  • Implementation and a set schedule for calling times
  • Calendaring and pacing
  • Reporting and measurement
  • Ongoing management 

That’s a lot…now what?

We’ve got your back. Dunlap Marketing can guide you through the complete process, or we can isolate specific steps inside the process. Our approach is unique, but simple. Prospecting is necessary for every industry, every business, and every sales team. 

Let’s get the ball rolling and determine if our skills are a good fit for your needs.  

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