Pre-Op for your Telesales Campaign

The preparation for any marketing campaign is one of the most critical issues that will determine its ultimate success.

Accurate data allows you to deliver your marketing message to the right decision makers within the right companies (at the right time). Be aware however that not all data is "fit for the purpose" of marketing. Research has shown that marketing databases have a typical error rate of 60%, primarily due to:

• Irrelevant Prospects
  
• Inaccurate contact details (specifically telephone number or address details)
• Retirement or migration of Key Decision Makers
  
• Lapses in the provision of contact information
  
• Key decision making contact information missing (email addresses, occupations, etc.)

Following some of the key points detailed below you should be able to pre-op your telemarketing campaign to capitalize on your marketing efforts.

First off, it's highly important that as a company you visualise who you want new business from and then proactively acquire a data set that will accurately represent the prospect companies that you wish to market your business to.

For example if you want to sell Agricultural machinery to farms, then needless to say acquiring records on Capital Investment companies isn't really going to do you much business when you come to your sales calls.

Once you have chosen your sector, consider whom within these companies you want your sales team to be calling/meeting (in order to increase the chances of completing a sale). When you are contemplating this then think about:

• Defining specifications of the vertical / type(s) of organisation you wish to target
• Understand whom would be impractical to take on board as customers
• List your direct competitors prospect market and try to emulate their target market where-ever feasible.
  
• Understand what prospects are likely to be most profitable for your business.
  
• Understand the job title and, or responsibility, of people within a company that would make the buying decision for your product/service.
• Internally, analyse what kind of contacts your staff are comfortable at conversing with
  
• Recognize each Higher Level Decision Makers potential remit so you target the key contacts beneficial to your business whilst avoiding irrelevant ones.
  

How do you clean your data?

Once you have gathered your data - whether that be from a third-party, list broker or internally - examine it. Discard all the companies that fail to fulfill the specifications you established. Next contact every business by phone up to 3 times to ensure the dataset is accurate and each relevant decision maker identified. Keep an eye out for- Data Duplication.

Duplication of business data may mean that your prospects are called a disproportional amount of times by your sales staff and can be construed as hassleful- a negative for your brand.

You will often find duplications concerning

• Limited / ltd. / LTD./ Ltd./ ltd/ or Public Limited/ PLC/ plc / PLC.
• Acronyms may or may not be listed with spaces i. e. CDE plc or C D E plc
  
• Acronyms and full titles may be listed BBC/ British Broadcasting Corporation.
• Change of Company Name
  
• Mergers or Acquisitions
• Inaccurate telephone numbers, addresses or email addresses
  
• Typos concerning any aspect of the business
• Dissolved or Dormant Companies
  
• Retired Contacts
  

While cleansing always trying to build on your existing dataset by requesting additional information if you see blanks in your records. Direct Dial numbers are particularly useful to acquire as they avoid the necessity to speak to receptionists (who are normally trained to screen calls) further down the line. Receptionist are generally encourage to block b2b sales calls.

Once this is done, It's time to work on your sales campaign.

Don't forget that all the work that you complete in the pre-op only realistically accounts for approximately 80% of the total information you can gather. Further data can be gathered at any point on subsequent calls. Confirming contacts are still active, establishing new contacts, adding direct dials and email addresses is still essential factors to consider in the ongoing maintenance of your data sets.

Business Data Solutions are b2b data experts who supply to a number of UK businesses. We recommend that you follow these points and further articles on our blog to ensure you maximum your business development efforts.

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