Vantage Point: Ideas and advice to improve your marketing

5-Step Roadmap to Improved Telemarketing

by Kirsten Chapman, principal

Research* shows that lead generation is the number-one marketing priority for software companies. This same study also indicates that telemarketing is, by far, viewed as the top lead generation tactic. However, software marketing executives rank telemarketing second-lowest in satisfaction among marketing programs.

Why is this? It may very well be because many software companies confuse the role of telemarketing with telesales. I say this for two reasons: first, this same report indicates that telemarketing is measured by how many leads are converted into sales. This is interesting, since sales is responsible for the selling process (converting leads into customers) and telemarketers are responsible for turning leads into pre-qualified leads. Second, my experience in managing dozens of lead generation campaigns has led me to carefully manage expectations because clients often confuse pre-qualified leads with prospects.

There are four main differences between telemarketing and telesales:

Telemarketing		Telesales
•	campaign orientation	•	cold calling
•	lead qualification	•	prospect qualification
•	lead pipeline management	•	sales pipeline management
•	lead converts to pre-qualified lead	•	pre-qualified lead converts to prospect, converts to sale

Here are five key questions to ask yourself when evaluating if you have a telemarketing or telesales organization:

Are my callers expected to handle product objections?
Are my callers gathering budget and decision-process information?
Are my callers reporting into sales?
Are my callers measured by prospect conversion rates?
Are my caller compensated by closed deals?

If you answered ‘yes’ to all of these questions, then you have, without question, a telesales group, not a telemarketing organization. If your answers are a mix of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, then you’re likely not satisfied with the results of your telemarketing group—your objectives are mixed and, therefore, temper your view of the success of your programs.

Telemarketing should not be viewed as a training ground for sales. Good telemarketers are professionals who feel rewarded by bird-dogging and setting up appointments with qualified leads for your sales organization. The main attributes of a successful telemarketing organization are:

Callers are scripted to stay on one marketing message—point of pain
Callers are responsible for generating interest for sales follow up
Callers report into marketing
Callers are measured by ratio of pre-qualified leads and lead contact intelligence
Callers provide real-time feedback of lead generation formula (target+message+form=qualified leads) success

If you’re one of those companies that’s not satisfied with your telemarketing efforts, I suggest the following:

Shore up your expectations of telemarketing; include it as part of all lead generation activities to pre-qualify leads for sales
Train callers on campaign messages and how to manage a lead pipeline
Make sure you have closed-loop reporting between marketing and sales
Educate the sales force on what to expect from the telemarketing organization
And finally, keep your telemarketing group focused on one thing: getting the appointment!

*SoftwareMinds B2B Software Marketing: Best Practices & Budgets, 2004. Kirsten Chapman is the principal of SoftwareMinds, an independent software and IT services operations research and publishing firm. In addition to B2B Software Marketing: Best Practices & Budgets, the company has also published Software Product Management: Best Practices.

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