When to add outbound telemarketing to your b2b marketing mix

At It’s Your Call not only do we use b2b telemarketing in our own marketing strategy we also do content marketing, adwords, exhibit at trade shows, go to networking events, and use email and direct mail to facilitate our lead generation and qualification process. This article covers reasons why relying on one tactic is limiting and can be harmful and reasons why incorporating a b2b telemarketing service is warranted.

We run into this situation a lot.  An organization that has a reasonably strong digital presence and a mix of inside or outside sales people to qualify hand raisers may feel that they’re covering all the tactical bases.  But leadership notices a challenge: they struggle to achieve consistent and growing performance levels.

Please, as you read this, bear in mind that I am a very strong advocate for utilizing many of these digital and human tactical approaches.  However, the point being made is that in marketing, when we become too reliant on any one tactic for too long, diminishing returns set in, and performance can degrade. This is particularly true if you’re not using a strong mix of communication mediums along the way. A common thread in all of this?  We require our inside sales people to cover too much ground, and digital tactics on their own don’t fill in the gaps to maintain a growth position for complex B2B technology related solutions.

Let’s take a look at a few common examples and how everyday constraints factor in to the growth challenge:

Behavioral Lead Scoring – When you’ve got a lot more activity than your team can handle, lead scoring is a fantastic approach to prioritize calls and activity. However, it can also be extremely limiting, in that your inside reps may miss an opportunity to develop a relationship with a prospect because they didn’t yet match your behavioral equation. Miss that early connection, and you become column fodder later in a sales cycle.

Too much reliance on automated Nurture tactics – Again, a similar problem, automated nurture can be a great tactic for early follow up, but is has severe limitations. There’s nothing about automated nurture tactics that escape the reality of how hectic prospect inboxes are, and these communications frequently get skipped over or missed entirely by prospects.

Inside sales reps have too much ground to cover – Those same inside sales reps are also conducting in-funnel sales calls, meetings,  & demos … and as is the norm for anyone in sales, we gravitate towards closing deals first, leaving inconsistent follow up time for our top of funnel activities. Month to month performance winds up varying wildly, and a good quarter for closed revenue gets followed by a lean quarter trying to rework the top of the funnel.

Tradeshows – The right tradeshows are a fantastic opportunity to engage with prospects and customers about upcoming projects. However, this is yet another distraction from regular top-of-funnel marketing activity that can impact your performance results over time. How much prep does your team go through in getting ready for the show? How many follow up activities do you have?  How many days are lost to travel and the tradeshow itself?

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