The 10 most significant advantages of B2B telemarketing services explained by More Than Words Marketing

One of the most significant (and under-reported) advantages of B2B telemarketing services is its very high return on investment.

If you’ve recently been considering introducing B2B telemarketing to your business’s marketing mix, read on to find out the advantages it brings.

What is telemarketing?

Telemarketing is a marketing channel by which representatives of your business contact one of the three following types of people:

• prospects – companies which have expressed a desire to find out more about your products or services after they have left their details with you,
• suspects – companies which you contact when there has been no prior interest expressed in your products or services but which you believe may have a need for what you sell, and
• customers – companies which have bought from you previously. They may or may not be a current customer continuing to place orders.

For B2B telemarketing campaigns in the UK, you must check prior to making an outbound call that the recipient is not on the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS). If you purchase B2B telemarketing data lists from a reputable B2B data provider, telephone numbers will be checked against the preference service prior to purchase.

What are the types of B2B telemarketing services?

Many companies outsource to B2B telemarketing companies to set appointments and to generate leads for their sales team. This route to market also offers many more opportunities for your business.

The six main uses for telemarketing are:

• appointment setting,
• lead generation,
• market research,
• brand awareness,
• event promotion, and
• data validation and cleansing.

10 advantages of B2B telemarketing services

When planning your own outbound telemarketing or to work with an outsourced telemarketing company, you should be clear about what you want them to achieve.

There are 10 main advantages to a B2B telemarketing campaign.

Advantage 1 - B2B telemarketing companies initiate personal contact with buyers

A lead generation strategy can be far more complicated when selling business to business.

It is a far more rational process than B2C, often because the decision maker is not spending their own money.

A lead generation company can open up the conversation with a company and then a sales rep will take over.

Advantage 2 - generate appointments for field sales reps

Travelling salespeople are expensive. In addition to the wage cost, there are travel costs, mobile phone costs, hotel and lodging costs, and more.

Let’s consider an example.

Considering wages at £40,000 per year, the real cost is £46,720 after National Insurance Employers’ Contributions and workplace pensions.

Assuming 4 weeks’ holiday a year, let’s assume that their canvassing effort produces 8 appointments a week for them to go on.

This is an effective cost is £121.67 per appointment.

Let’s then say that the average profit per appointment was £500.

1. Your rep could generate £4,000 of profit for 48 weeks of the year at a cost of £898.46 for 52 weeks of the year.
2. If you worked with a B2B telemarketing agency who could book 20 appointments a week, the number of closing opportunities would rise significantly.
3. Combined wage costs are now £73,000.
4. The telemarketers generate 20 appointments a week bringing the average cost per lead down to £76.05 per lead.
5. Your rep retains their average return of £500 per appointment so 20 appointments a week now returns £10,000 worth of profit.

Advantage 3 - B2B lead generation telemarketing generates interest for sales team follow-ups

According to industry surveys, the number of travelling sales reps (sometimes called outside or external sales reps) is decreasing.

This is because more businesses rely on the internet for prospecting.

In firms which have traditionally relied heavily on telesales, there are now two distinct teams. These are the lead finders and the deal makers.

Lead finders are responsible for discovering which businesses are interested in a product and service, those with an immediate interest are provided to the deal makers.

This helps to shorten the decision making cycle and provides the deal makers with all the information they need to close a sale.

Outsourced B2B telemarketing companies can be used as your team of lead finders, which your sales team can follow up.

Advantage 4 - Use B2B telemarketing to cultivate and harvest your existing customer database

Generating a B2B sale from existing customers costs 20% as much as finding a customer new to your business.

You should make use of B2B outbound telemarketing calls to stay in touch with your clients. If you don't have the resource internally to do this consider using a B2B telemarketing specialist.

Combine conversational B2B marketing with marketing automation to monitor their experience of using your product or service.

This shows any existing or potential client your continued investment in what you sell directly benefits them.

Advantage 5 - use a B2B telemarketing agency to fact-find about potential customers

Despite the introduction of GDPR in 2018, the return on investment of B2B marketing continues to increase.

In addition to purchasing and using a marketing database, you can use the reports generated by your broadcast platform to contact the companies which open your email or click through to your website.

Your in-house B2B marketers or outsourced telemarketing services can then call these selected targets to find out:

• the information that you need on when they’re next going to buy your product or service,
• which company they’re using already (and any contract terms they have), and
• who the people involved in the decision-making process are and more.

Advantage 6 - outbound telemarketing is more controllable than online and inbound marketing

The idea behind digital marketing and inbound marketing is to:

• leave a trail of breadcrumbs around the internet, and
• across social media for any potential customer to find.

The only way to secure an advantage over competitors with this type of buyer behaviour is for your page to be found easily. Then you need visitors to leave their details, or follow you on social media.

This process is however very much under the control of B2B buyers.

By using outbound telemarketing services , you’re being proactive to find potential clients. You can decide how many companies you contact and how you follow up on initial expressions of interest.

Advantage 7 - B2B telemarketers have greater influence over purchasing decision timing

Telemarketing gives your company back a much greater degree of control over the B2B sales process.

You’re now able to speed up the depth of contact a prospect has had with your business.

Because phone conversations are an active, two-way process, you can answer a lot of the questions they might have early on. You can also find out when companies are going to come into the right part of the buying cycle.

Advantage 8 - business gets done when people talk to each other

Most B2B telemarketing companies (More Than Words included) will not close the deal over the phone for you.

However they can identify and qualify sales leads which can then be closed by your sales team. To make a sale you need to have a two way conversation with a buyer, by using a B2B telemarketing agency to generate sales leads from your target market the sales team can focus their time on closing sales.

Advantage 9 - most of your competitors will not use B2B telemarketing services

Often, small business owners and managers are put off by their own personal dislike of cold calling.

However, this should not dissuade you from investigating the possibilities of using it for your own company.

Some people don’t like receiving email marketing.

Other people will never be open to social media marketing.

Gatekeepers may stop the vast majority of postal marketing from getting through to them.

Many of your competitors will not invest in B2B telemarketing services, instead they will rely on digital forms of marketing which are less personal.

It is important to bear in mind that B2B telemarketing companies produce qualified B2B leads for B2B companies. The returns on investment are significantly higher than the amount of marketing budget allocated to it.

Advantage 10 - get valuable feedback on your products, services, aftersales, and future demand

Use telemarketing services to gather feedback on your products, services, and the quality of your after-sales support. Some B2B telemarketing companies in the UK can also carry out telephone surveys. This gives you a valuable insight into how your actual customers view you and how likely they are to stay with you.