Telephone prospecting is a powerful communication channel. Despite the bad press that some people try to give it, phoning remains particularly effective if it is well done. This direct marketing allows you to carry out sales actions and make commercial appointments. This channel in BtoB can sometimes generate ten times more results than emailing. It is an effective technique in all sectors, which allows direct and qualitative feedback on your offer.
But how to succeed in phoning? What are the essential steps to improve the ROI of your company? Here is all you need to know.
Telephone prospecting is a powerful communication channel. Despite the bad press that some people try to give it, phoning remains particularly effective if it is well done. This direct marketing allows you to carry out sales actions and make commercial appointments. This channel in BtoB can sometimes generate ten times more results than emailing. It is an effective technique in all sectors, which allows direct and qualitative feedback on your offer.
But how to succeed in phoning? What are the essential steps to improve the ROI of your company? Here is all you need to know.
Phoning is a neologism that designates telephone prospecting. Also called "cold calling", this commercial technique consists of a company talking to potential customers by phone and getting them to move forward in the sales process.
This telephone approach is one of the most effective direct marketing methods on the market. It allows you to target, generate, qualify and convert prospects through calls.
Telephone prospecting requires an appropriate sales pitch and special know-how. Cold leads" (i.e. potential customers who have not yet shown a particular interest in the company's services) are transformed into "hot leads", qualified leads that must then be converted to make a sale.
In general, this prospecting plan requires making several calls (including sales reminders) to the same prospect, in order to progressively invite him to be interested in the product and to have a sale at the end.
The goal of a telephone prospecting campaign depends on the commercial objectives of the company. These objectives can be diverse and varied:
This is why, before launching a phoning campaign, a salesperson and his team must imperatively define an objective, or even several.
This telemarketing strategy may seem laborious and time consuming. However, it offers many advantages to companies, including the following:
The phone call is certainly the fastest communication channel. Within the first 30 seconds, a telemarketer can arouse the interest of a lead. It is an ideal technique to present the product offer to a BtoB interlocutor and to be able to answer instantly to the questions (or objections) he may have.
For example, the potential customer does not have to wait several hours or days to get more information. Unlike messaging or social networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook.
The advantages of a live conversation do not end there. During a phone call, the salesperson has the opportunity to activate certain psychological levers such as trust, benevolence and security.
Telephone prospecting stands out from other marketing communication channels by the proximity it offers between companies and leads. It is the only method that offers personalized exchanges.
A phone call allows the salesperson to enhance the prospect in many ways: call him by name, get to know him, discuss the issues related to the problem the company is addressing, etc.
The goal here is to show potential customers that the telemarketer has taken the time to talk to them. This way, they can appreciate the quality of the BtoB exchange.
Phone calls allow to easily identify the interests and disinterest of a prospect. The company can understand in a few moments the hesitations of the lead and can answer with relevant arguments.
This allows, in the medium term, to target the customer's needs and to refine one's sales strategy by adapting one's sales pitch to the customer.
For a successful phoning campaign, it is necessary to follow a specific process, broken down into four main steps:
The company must first ask itself: "Who do I want to target with my telephone prospecting? Making phone calls to someone who does not fit the typical prospect profile is a waste of time and money.
In order to define a target group of potential customers, we must take into account several points: the location, the sector, the size of the company... For this, the sales history, the archives and the marketing materials are precious sources of information. Let's start by looking at who our current customers are, and look for similar profiles.
The second step of a successful phoning is certainly the most important. Because, when a company has defined its persona (profile of the ideal customer), it must find the contact information of the prospects in question.
To do this, it is necessary to build a prospecting file whose role is to contain the contact information of potential customers. Some companies already have the necessary data (via the sales history, call center information ...) but these can also be purchased on specialized sites. Among the latter, we find for example Societeinfo.com or Pappers.fr.
Another very effective method today is to use "scraping" tools, which consists in retrieving information posted on a website, on Google or on LinkedIn for example. Some tools are excellent for this, including Instant data scraper on browser, Captaindata or Findcustomer.
This is a totally legal technique since the data is public. It is about automating the copy/paste by hand so that it does not take us 3 hours to do.
Then, enrichment tools will allow you to find in 1 click the professional and personal contact information of these people.
Findcustomer allows you to use several tools at the same time to optimize your chances of finding a maximum of contact information. Other solutions are also effective, such as Dropcontact, Datagma or Kaspr.
Once the database has been built, a good sales pitch must be developed to present the product to be sold in the best possible way. This point will have a huge impact on the conversion rate. And for good reason, it should not be forgotten that a caller has a few seconds to present the company's offer in a quick and striking way.
The prospect does not have a lot of time to spend on marketing calls, especially the first ones. A good script allows a company's sales representatives to know what to say, what questions to ask the prospect and, above all, how to conduct the conversation in a relevant manner.
The CAP / SONCAS method is one of the best exercises to start with. It consists of building a sales pitch with the CAP (Characteristics-Benefits-Evidence) and identifying the six reasons that drive the customer to acquire the product, namely the SONCAS (Safety-Helpfulness-Newness-Comfort-Friendly).
Then it is necessary to put everything in order in a script of call to Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wall Street) to see absolutely on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZHQFacAzRU
A good sales pitch must also go hand in hand with a good phone caller. For the latter to be effective, it is essential that he has certain qualities:
The previous steps are preparatory and without much surprise, the last action is to pick up the phone. A telephone prospecting campaign is generally carried out over a period of one to three months. The objective is to convert a maximum of hot leads during this period.
To make the calls, the salesperson must be equipped with certain management tools. A prospecting tool such as Salesforce or Tilkee takes care of the entire management of the communication campaign. It allows the smooth running of the telephone canvassing and facilitates several aspects, such as collecting data, knowing which prospect has been contacted and what actions should be taken next.
Generally, the conversion rate of a phoning campaign is between 6 and 15%. This figure is based solely on the contacts that were made, i.e. the calls that went through in their entirety.
A good phone operator makes between 100 to 150 calls per day using a Power Dialer such as Aircall or Ringover, which allows them to automatically sequence calls without having to dial each number by hand.
On average, a salesperson manages to reach 30 to 45% of prospects. However, there is now "smart calling", i.e. calling prospects in an intelligent way. This consists in choosing the right day, the right time slot and the right speech.
For example, a study conducted by an MIT professor shows that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days for business development. The same study shows that the best time slot is from 4 to 5 pm.
But every target is different. At first, go for it! Even between 12pm and 2pm and in the evening after 6pm-7pm. You can then optimize your calling days and times based on your results after a few weeks.
Telephone prospecting has not finished surprising us! In 1996, the American entrepreneur Jordan Belfort and his team succeeded in making more than 13 billion dollars thanks to telephone canvassing.
Here is a summary of the 5 steps to remember:
With new technologies, it has never been easier or more efficient to set up a phoning campaign. Nowadays, tools such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software are available to help companies considerably improve their customer relationship management.
There are also commercial solutions that allow you to outsource telephone prospecting. External teleprospecting teams take care of the phoning from A to Z: development of the strategy, creation of the prospecting file, setting up a script, making the calls and analyzing, among other things, the conversion rate.
You will be able to concentrate on your closing with complete peace of mind.
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