It’s reasonable to assume that when kicking off a teleprospecting campaign, the primary focus is going to be on the desired result: L-E-A-D-S. But what we often lose sight of is all the valuable data that can be collected as a by-product of your calling efforts.
As important as leads are for a healthy forecast/pipeline, the process your team goes through can help to produce some very valuable data for everyone in marketing and sales to consider. Fortunately or unfortunately, this is the kind of information that is easily accessible for those of us who choose to look for it.
Here are 7 common pieces of intelligence that you should be able to pull from your outbound calling campaigns.
1) Responsiveness to your messaging– A common mistake we see with messaging is that they tend to be too long. You end up talking for 3 minutes before the prospect has an opportunity to respond. Since teleprospecting teams are calling all day, there should be no better resource to give you a perspective on what message resonates best with your prospects.
2) ROI on marketing events– Just because you feel the leads you’re getting from tradeshows and webinars are gold, your sales reps aren’t going to put the required amount of time in to determine their true value. A teleprospecting team will put the necessary activity into those leads in order to let you know if they’re legit or not and nurture those that aren’t ready to speak to sales.
3) New and Existing Target Markets– Most organizations have a general idea of where there product fits within their target marketplace. Teleprospecting campaigns provide real time feedback on what the markets are saying and how they are reacting to your solution. When looking to penetrate new markets, teleprospecting campaigns are the best way to get immediate intelligence on whether your solution is a fit. We recommend targeting three different verticals with a campaign to determine what produces the best results.
4) Target Titles– In our experience over the years we’ve noticed that decision making titles can vary from organization to organization. That’s why we recommend reaching out to 3 titles at a time with your initial dials. Don’t pigeon hole yourself into calling on just 1 title. You may think your ideal target title is obvious, but through your teleprospecting campaign you will uncover multiple new titles to target within organizations.
5) Does your collateral resonate with prospects– Similar to your messaging, collateral could be too light or heavy on content, or may not fit with your target titles. Teleprospectors can let marketers know what gets prospects interested and moving down the funnel.
6) Most common reasons for “no interest”- Ideally, teleprospecting campaigns produce qualified sales opportunities. But, there is a lot of information when researching the negative and understanding why organizations don’t want to speak with you. This can help to give you some visibility into an up and coming competitor, lack of budget (and when they WILL have the $$), or not a fit because your technology doesn’t make sense for their company/industry. Don’t just analyze the positive numbers; you must look at the negative for valuable insight that can help your solution moving forward.
7) Activity required to uncover a legitimate opportunity– No matter how good you think a marketing qualified lead is, rarely can you get the prospect live with 1 dial. Marketing should be tracking your teleprospecting team’s activity to gain a sense of the average amount of dials required to convert a lead over to your sales team. This will help in determining a timeframe of when it’s time to fish or cut bait with a prospect…along with a campaign all together.
Even though teleprospectors are truly on the front-line of the sales and marketing process, we often find that the data they are collecting can be undervalued. If this kind of information is sitting out there for you….DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! It’s time to develop a way to capture this information and make it actionable.
