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. 

7 Steps to Implementing a Smart Calling Program

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

What is Smart Calling?

A smart calling program incorporates the discipline of making prospecting sales calls with a plan. It’s having a targeted approach and a game plan that will guide you to a desired outcome.

A smart calling program has a plan that utilizes a known process that you can trust.

7 Steps to Your Smart Calling Program

The following are seven steps, developed by our team, that you and your team can follow as you prepare your own smart calling program:

  1. Data Records: clearly identify the businesses you want to call 
    • Common starting points are utilizing either a current customer list or an idle customer list
    • If you’re building a fresh list, common list-building criteria are: 
      • Specific industry categories (such as SIC codes)
      • Specific company sizes (revenue and/or employee count)
      • Defined geography
  2. Identify the Decision Maker: know who the right person is you want to talk with; if this information is not available to you, know the proper title and/or department – in today’s environment, it’s also helpful to find out if this person is working in the office or remotely
  3. Messaging: prepare a message that is brief, quickly gets to the reason for your phone call, asks good qualifying questions, asks about current satisfaction levels, and defines their future plans
  4. Utilize Technology: have a data-capture tool, such as a CRM, that allows you to efficiently document the valuable information you gather, a tool that allows you to define and schedule next steps, and might allow you to send follow up emails
  5. Train: be properly skilled to make the phone calls, roll play, and practice.  Record your live calls and listen to them and have peers listen to them  
    • If you are new to making business calls, don’t feel like you must be an expert – you do not.  Prepare yourself to answer basic questions, and this will get you much further than you think.  Remember, these calls are the beginning of the sales cycle, not the end
  6. Schedule: develop a schedule for making your smart calls and enter these times in your calendar. Create a schedule that is reasonable and achievable, then follow your plan and be patient
  7. Commit: trust your plan. If you do the work, you will start to see the results

If you follow the above steps, you will be implementing a smart calling program with a smart plan – a plan that is targeted specifically to a group of companies, some of which might become your future customers. There are common industry phrases that describe this type of work such as cold calling, telemarketing, teleprospecting, or lead generation. No matter what you call it, when it’s done properly, it is an excellent way to fill your pipeline with qualified prospect opportunities.

We live in odd times right now.  Normalcy is something that people are looking for, an example of this is human-to-human conversation.  With all of the bells and whistles that can come with sales and marketing, sometimes the simplest thing to do is call and have a conversation.

Dunlap Marketing has been in the business of building and conducting smart calling programs since 1996. Over the years, we have developed a process that we utilize with every client we serve. For more information on our programs, email Mike at miked@dunlapmarketing.com.  

How to Write Quality Notes While Teleprospecting

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

 

[We] were just discussing how invaluable your team’s discussion notes were to understanding what’s going on with our target attendees. Very insightful. – Rebecca, Los Angeles, CA

 

Knowing how to write quality notes while teleprospecting is a necessary skill required to achieve positive outcomes from your calling efforts. Frankly, cold calling is a waste of time if notes documenting the conversations are not a factor. If you have a list of 1,000 prospects to call, how can you expect to remember the conversation you had with Mr. Smith at 123.456.7890? It’s nearly impossible!

The good news is if you keep the following tips in mind, it’s simple to take useful notes while teleprospecting.

How to Write Quality Notes While Teleprospecting

Brief, yet thorough

Remember that these are notes; therefore, they do not need to be overly extensive. Keep them brief and to the point. To help make sure you don’t leave out any pertinent information, keep in mind the 5 W’s and 1H – who, what, when, where, why, and how. For example:

  1. Who did you speak to / who do you need to speak with next time / who is the decision maker
  2. What did you speak about / what are your next steps (ie: follow up call, send email with more information, etc.)
  3. When did you call / when is a good time to reach the decision maker / when did the decision maker ask you to call back
  4. Where is the decision maker located (important to note time zones when a follow up call will occur) / if a face-to-face appointment was scheduled, where are you meeting
  5. Why was the prospect interested in your product or service
  6. How did the prospect sound – very interested or somewhat interested? This can be defined as a hot, warm, or cold lead, depending on interest level

Easy to read

While reviewing notes, it is easier to read short blurbs or bulleted lists as compared to long paragraphs. The eyes can quickly skim when the information is spaced out. This is not the time to see how many words you can fit on one piece of paper!

Quick to write down/capture

Shorthand is a great tool to use while taking notes. Dunlap Marketing’s president, Mike Dunlap, is a fan of using shorthand and frequently uses it himself. Here is his shorthand key:

  • TT – talked to
  • SIT – still in touch
  • CB – call back
  • TA – try again
  • LVM – left voicemail
  • DM – decision maker

Need to “spark” your memory

The bottom line is your notes need to be able to jog your memory or inform the person you’re passing them along to of the conversation you had. They also need to clearly state what the appropriate next steps are.

Don’t waste the time you dedicate to cold calling – take quality notes to make sure you achieve the best possible outcome of your teleprospecting efforts.

The Difference Between Qualified Leads

Posted on by Kaitlin Dunlap

As a sales professional, the origin of a lead is important to know, especially when establishing expectation for a lead. Lead generation is not a cookie-cutter process and because of this, all leads are not equal. Understanding the difference between qualified leads helps to properly layout your sales strategy for each individual opportunity as you advance it through the sales process.

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The Origin of Leads

First, let’s look at common ways leads come to life:

  1. Referral/word-of-mouth
  2. Online research (i.e.: website, SEO, PPC)
  3. Social media
  4. Self-generated (i.e.: cold calling, telemarketing, email or mail campaigns)

Commonly, sales people will look at each of these avenues of lead generation as equal, or very similar. Therefore, a sales person will subconsciously assign the same level of expectation and approach to all leads, no matter its origin.  With this mindset, some leads will fall short of expectation, no matter how good they are. Additionally, leads run the risk of dying if opportunities are not properly planned and nurtured.

The Difference Between Qualified Leads

How are leads different?  In the broadest perspective, there are two forms of lead generation:

  1. Buyer-generated: Created by the potential buyer, reaching out in an effort to find a solution
  2. Seller-generated: Created by the seller, reaching out to identify potential buyers

Buyer-Generated Leads

Selling opportunities created by the buyer are usually the most qualified and advance through the sales cycle faster than seller-generated leads. This can be attributed to the fact that the buyer has a need and is looking for a solution; the need is creating enough pain that the buyer starts actively looking for a company who can solve the problem.  Not much legwork, such as cold calling and other telemarketing efforts, is required of the sales person up to this point.  From a typical sales person’s expectation, these are the best kind of leads to receive.

However, downsides exist. Commonly, there are not enough buyer-generated leads to satisfy sales quotas and sales people have little control on generating a volume of them (referral or word-of-mouth). Also, they can become expensive to produce (online and social media advertising).  Ultimately, in most business-to-business situations, there are not enough of these leads to fully distribute to and satisfy a whole sales team – certainly not enough to achieve overall company sales success.

Seller-Generated Leads

Selling opportunities created through seller-generation usually occur when a sales person initiates activity that stimulates conversation (i.e.: cold calling, telemarketing, email or mail campaigns) with a prospective company. Conversation usually starts with probing-type questions.  If you are lucky and the timing is right, good questions become the start of a new lead opportunity. In this situation, similarly to buyer-generated leads, your Q&A session will coincide with an existing pain the prospect might be dealing with; however, this is the exception, not the rule.

Read more about how to write a telemarketing script.

More frequently, you will stimulate a level of interest. But, timing is dependent upon many less controllable factors such as being inside an existing agreement term, the need for the prospect to research new solutions, or the prospect having to decide if making a change to your solution is worth the effort.

The Journey

It is important to recognize the point in a prospect’s journey where you, as the seller, get involved. With seller-generated leads, the journey begins when the prospect expresses a level of pain associated with their current solution.  With buyer-generated leads, the journey is well underway by the time the sales person gets involved.  Understanding your point of entry will help guide you into setting proper time lines, expectations, and upcoming sales strategy.

A seller-generated lead can feel colder early on because the buyer is at an earlier stage in the journey; however, when properly nurtured, the selling opportunity becomes more valuable.  During this development, you start building a relationship with the prospect, which ultimately becomes an advantage for you.  Frequently, seller-generated leads have fewer competitors involved.

In Summary

Expressing a level of pain by the prospect and the action you take to resolve this pain can take time and sales skill to advance.  Because of this, it is important to apply a fair expectation on each, as the value of each opportunity is different and the amount of time and work involved with each opportunity varies.  The close rate of buyer-generated leads is higher than seller-generated leads; however, there is a finite number of buyer-generated leads available and that number is not enough to satisfy company sales goals in most business-to-business environments.  This is the point where it becomes important to realize the value of seller-generated lead generation.  In most organizations, sales professionals should also maintain an adequate number of these leads inside the sales funnel.

In almost any instance, a proper balance of buyer-generated and seller-generated leads are required for a company to be successful and exceed sales goals. With both types of leads inside the sales funnel, always remember the difference between qualified leads.

For more information on this topic, please contact Mike Dunlap at miked@dunlapmarketing.com.