Many people think that outbound marketing methods such as cold calling don’t work anymore. This is because, over the past few years, inbound marketing methods such as social media, email, and content marketing have become very popular.
But telemarketing has actually become more effective. It’s because as other businesses have shifted to platforms like social media, they are ignoring outbound methods like cold calling. So, there’s less competition for your business.
If you are using cold calling, but are disappointed with your conversion rates, it’s probably because you are making some mistakes. To help you rectify these mistakes and boost conversion rates, I have shared my top tips below…
Track Everything
One of the keys to getting stellar results from any marketing method is to track results. If you track results, you will know what your conversion rate was like before and after. If you make a change you will know if it brought about a good or bad outcome. So, make sure you invest in good calling systems to help measure your results. You need to do this before you do anything else. So, reserve a couple of weeks to trial a few of the best ones out there.
Set Benchmarks
Once the tracking is in place, you should set benchmarks. This should be based on your past results and industry data. If you do a quick search online, you will find the latest research on telemarketing conversion for both your industry and telemarketing in general. If your conversion rate is lower than the average benchmark, your aim should be to reach the average initially. After you hit the average spot, you can work towards getting to the top conversion rates.
Do a lot of Audience Research
Just because you are calling people out of the blue, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do any research on them. The better you know your audience, the better you can personalize the call towards their requirements and achieve higher conversion rates. Therefore, before you begin the call, do a Google search with the name of the person you are calling. Their social media profiles can offer a wealth of valuable information. You especially want to pay attention to LinkedIn.
If you want to go a step further you should run a survey and interview the target audience. For best results, I recommend you to run an IVR survey as your target audience likes to speak on the phone. They can take part in this survey by recording their voice.
Follow a Sales Script
Personalization can help a lot, but there are a lot of psychological triggers that get people to take action. These will never change as people have developed these instincts through thousands of years of evolution. Therefore, work with a sales expert to come up with a basic script, but give your team the leeway to personalize the script for each call they make.
Improve Website Loading Speed
The call is only one part of the equation. To complete the sale, you will need to send the person to a landing page where they can learn more about the product and access the shopping cart.
To get maximum conversions out of this, you should use a quick-loading website. As sites that load quickly convert better. Alternatively, you can send an invoice with a tool like Quickbooks that links directly to a checkout page. The checkout page can be hosted on a third-party platform. This way, you don’t have to worry about developing a fast-loading website.
But if you do send people to a checkout page on a third-party website, you should personalize it with your branding. The branding will help you take advantage of all the effort you put in building trust.
Follow up
A lot of people will say they will take action, but they won’t immediately. This is why you should have a follow-up strategy where you call them every few days to check if they have gone through with the sale. You can also use follow-ups to upsell new products and increase your revenue.
Combine with Other Techniques
You shouldn’t use telemarketing solely. It works best when combined with other marketing techniques. One such technique is retargeting. If you can get the email of the prospect, you can retarget them with ads on networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google. So, try to get their email as early as possible.
You can also use the email address to send them emails as reminders. It’s probably the most powerful marketing method.
Conclusion
If you are disappointed with your telemarketing conversion rate, you should begin implementing these techniques ASAP. They will help you achieve far better results.
