When you hear the term telemarketing, you likely picture an annoying salesperson cold-calling you to try to sell you a set of kitchen pots you don’t even need. Over the years, we’ve gotten used to the old way of telemarketing: cold calling random numbers with generic pitches and hoping for the best.
But nowadays, telemarketing no longer means calling random people and trying to sell them something by reading a script. From robotic script reading to consultative selling, where agents act as consultants who try to genuinely understand the prospect’s pain points before selling them the solution, telemarketing has evolved dramatically.
And now, with technology integration (think CRMs, AI dialers and analytics tools), companies can track call patterns, prospect sentiment and conversion triggers in real time to better understand how to talk to prospects and convince them to buy.
Core Benefits Beyond Cost Reduction
When it comes to telemarketing, many companies opt to outsource it. Why? Because outsourced telemarketing is typically less expensive than doing it in-house since you don’t need to hire your own team of agents, lease an office or purchase equipment. Instead, you hire B2B telemarketing services and get access to all of this for a fixed fee. But besides cost reduction, outsourced telemarketing has many other benefits.
Scalability and Market Testing
One big benefit of outsourced telemarketing is its scalability. B2B telemarketing services will typically scale with you. When you need access to more agents to handle an increasing amount of calls, you can simply upgrade your package. Outsourcing telemarketing is also a great way to do market testing because you can hire them for a limited period, like one quarter or a few weeks.
Quality Control and Performance Metrics
B2B telemarketing services are often backed by strict quality control and real-time telemarketing metrics. These agents are trained to do just that: call and qualify leads. They’re highly trained and highly focused, which means you get quality leads and high performance metrics.
Impact on Sales Team Performance
Outsourced telemarketing can also have a positive impact on your sales team efficiency. In-house sales teams often juggle cold calls, lead qualification and administrative tasks that drain their time and lead to a diluted sense of focus. With outsourced telemarketing, you can alleviate your team’s workload so they can focus solely on closing sales.
Focus on High-Value Activities
Sales outsourcing means that your internal team can skip cold calls and focus on closing deals instead, while outsourced agents handle the lead qualification process. This sharpens your team’s performance, reduces burnout and keeps your pipeline full of qualified leads.
Improved Pipeline Quality
With that said B2B telemarketing also translates into improved pipeline quality. Experienced agents follow a proven lead qualifications process and check the quality of the leads against specific telemarketing metrics, ensuring that every prospect that falls into your pipeline has been properly pre-qualified.
Measuring Outsourced Telemarketing Success
Sure, outsourced telemarketing can result in a ton of benefits to your bottom line. But how do you actually measure the success of your B2B telemarketing efforts? There are a few key telemarketing metrics that you need to pay attention to.
Key Performance Indicators
The most important key performance indicator (KPI) when it comes to outsourced telemarketing is, of course, the conversion rate, aka how many calls actually turn into qualified leads. Aside from that, you’ll also want to track other relevant telemarketing metrics like appointment-setting rates, lead qualification scores and cost per lead.
ROI Calculation Methods
How do you calculate the ROI of your B2B telemarketing strategy? Just like with any ROI, you need to compare the revenue against the costs. The simple formula would be to divide the revenue from a specific campaign by the cost of said campaign. In a slightly optimistic scenario, if you made $15,000 from closed deals and spent $10,000 on outsourced telemarketing for this particular campaign, your ROI will be 50%.
Implementation and Integration Strategies
Now, the question might be, how do you find the right B2B telemarketing and sales outsourcing services for your company? First of all, you must understand that the right outsourced telemarketing provider needs to align with your existing internal sales processes. If they don’t, you’ll quickly get frustrated with their way of doing things.
Therefore, it’s important to look for partners with specific industry experience, consultative selling skills (rather than script reading) and tech integration for strategic sales resource optimisation. Aside from that, you want to make sure that the outsourced teams integrate well into your existing workflows, for example, by sharing CRM access and training the agents on your product, ICP, messaging and sales approach.
Outsource B2B Telemarketing With Us
Looking to scale your outreach? At J2 Group, we help Australian businesses boost lead generation through outsourced sales teams and B2B telemarketing services. If you’re looking for a team of professionals to help you book meetings, qualify leads and close deals, get in touch with us.
