by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

We’ve observed two different approaches to outbound prospecting: a “call center” mindset and a strategic inside sales mindset. Both have a place--but are not interchangeable. What’s your default paradigm? Is it right for your business?

When you look to expand your sales efforts by hiring employees or contracting help, first explore your position on telemarketing. Acknowledge and understand your own expectations about how cold-calling should be managed and how success will be measured. Then interview with this in mind. If you and your new hire (or vendor) don’t share beliefs on methodology, the relationship may fail even though you both are doing what you think is right.

What do I mean by call center approach? Typically, it involves high-volume dialing and presumes that you have a very large number of prospects to call. The work may be done by resources who need to be closely supervised. The callers utilize fixed scripts and may use an automated dialing system that supports a call-outcome focus.

What’s wrong with a call center paradigm? Nothing, when that approach is warranted. However, Initial Call’s experience is that, for the complex B2B sale, a strategic inside sales mindset is best. This means taking a tactical, high-level, account-based approach.

Sales is not a simple numbers game. Super-busy prospects, self-educating buyers, and the “conversation” marketplace have changed the game altogether. Spoiler alert: the tortoise wins.

A few key assumptions typically define call center telemarketing. Below I’ve listed these hallmarks along with the difficulty they pose for a strategic insides sales approach.

1. Working individuals rather than accounts. When you go after new business in B2B sales, you want to sell to new companies. Individuals play a part, but any one person may come or go, especially if you have a long sales cycle. The complex sale requires building a consensus. So, it’s ideal to step back and identify all relevant contacts at the account and work all of them simultaneously.
2. Referring to contacts as “leads.” Using this term can create unrealistic expectations. If you are cold-calling individuals who have never heard of you, they aren’t leads. We define “leads” as marketing respondents, those who have clicked through to your site because of a campaign or attended your booth at a show, for example. Names in your CRM system from a purchased list are unverified and cold, and your results will likely reflect that.
3. Operating in the Leads object. I have a whitepaper which expounds the trouble of using this approach, so I won’t go into detail here. In CRM default settings, “Leads” are individuals. Working in the Leads object means that you have limited visibility into the whole account picture. Forcing a certain workflow in the database appears to ensure productivity but may actually be counter-productive.
4. Ranking leads. A myopic focus on each call outcome can occur if you are using an integrated dialer or measuring your callers’ performance on each activity. Saving a call summary based only on a limited list of call disposition codes rather than free-form notes can skew the pipeline picture. Unless you know that your callers reach a decision maker on every call, forced post-call logs (labeling an individual “hot,” warm,” etc.) fail to capture the essence of what’s truly occurring with the account.
5. Quantifying success by speed and volume of activity. Having a high number of calls shows that many dials are being made, but does it indicate true progress? We represent many different types of clients and have observed that our average number of activities per hour decreases as the offering complexity increases. Our deliberate sales approach includes researching a prospect account before calling, intentionally contacting multiple contacts, getting referrals within an organization, and uncovering key intelligence along the way. Contrast our slow progress with a comparative caller who is blazing fast but burning bridges as he works with thoughtless, unplanned bustle.

Over the years we’ve seen polar examples of mismatched expectations: one manager may be angry with a vendor who is “blowing through” the prospect list while another employer is frustrated with a low level of activity from his caller. The unhappiness stems from lack of agreement on approach.

Be aware that your foundational beliefs about telemarketing will drive everything from your CRM set-up to your idea about what appointments should cost to your methods of defining success. A call center paradigm has its place, but it is not reflective of our best practices for the complex sale.