The phone is the hub around which much of our daily activities revolve. Over the years its appearance, its technology and the ways in which we use it have changed, but the marketing activities that involve it are the same. Telemarketing and Telesales are still among the best sales channels and manage to turn a simple contact into a customer.
Telemarketing and teleselling are often considered interchangeable activities, but they have unique values that, once understood, can make the difference in the success of a campaign.
While Telesales aims to sell the product or service according to pre-established sales targets, Telemarketing is useful for generating interest, creating opportunities, providing information, optimising customer feedback, setting appointments and obtaining warm leads. Both are important for the success of sales strategies and have distinct characteristics.
Telesales for B2B: reaching the target
Telesales is the set of activities that convert a contact into a sale through a telephone conversation. Starting from a database, operators work to transform each contact into a customer. The telesales activity carried out by a professional operator, working on efficient software and properly profiled lists, can be a winning investment for the company that turns to this type of sales strategy.
Compared to Telemarketing the tactics that are implemented by Telesales are much more focused on direct selling, without a second approach or contact from the company.
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Telemarketing for B2B: reaching the consumer
Telemarketing, on the other hand, is the set of activities that generate Prospects awareness of the product or service we are selling, i.e. quality contacts. Telemarketing activities allow users to become aware of our offers, creating a link between the person who needs the product and the companies that sell it.
A good Telemarketing campaign can ensure excellent Telesales output, as well as the sales department: this explains in a few words why they are not the same thing. Giving the right time to Telemarketing to find consumers and generate interest in our Brand, product or service, is like sowing a good seed to have a better harvest.
The opportunities offered by Telemarketing are many:
- identify and cultivate potential customers.
- turn a cold contact into a warm lead for calls or appointments from the sales team.
- use inbound calls to profile and offer service that can be the starting point for new sales campaigns in the future.
- Investing time to seek out those consumers who are already ready to buy and just waiting to be “contacted” by telesales.
- making quality appointments for sales agents.
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The 4 steps to sales success
The success of Telesales and Telemarketing campaigns goes through 4 steps that are similar for both strategies and allow us to realise our actions.
1- Choose the right moment
Like almost all marketing activities they need to come at the right time to be successful. Telesales works with prospects who must be prepared to listen when they receive the call and being able to pay attention to what the sales team is proposing to them. For Telemarketing this moment is even more important, especially if it is a cold call on a contact who still needs to be presented with the product or service to be offered. In order to understand what the right moment is in this specific case, quality data comes to our aid. With BigProfiles AI Platform you can also predict the propensity to buy of each individual contact on your list, so that you can optimise the efforts of your telemarketing and teleselling teams.
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2- Investing in the database
Data has the most important task in this context. The data available to companies often are not used in the best possible way. The risk? Wasting time (and money) in order to invest in a connection of little value to the company, be it teleselling or telemarketing.
One should start with the quality of the contacts to avoid “shooting in the pan”. Without a good initial selection, it means investing a lot of resources and time in a “blind bet”. A quality contact, on the other hand, increases the probability of making successful calls, precisely because they are people with a need, expressed or unexpressed, that our product manages to satisfy.
3- Follow the script yes, but…
It is certainly important to have a text to start from in order to guarantee the closing of the sale in the case of Telesales, or a targeted strategy in the case of Telemarketing. But the text must be an outline, to avoid losing its incisiveness. Above all because, as in any marketing activity, the rule of adaptation also applies here. Even the best outline will not be able to stand up to the empathy on which this work is based, the only resource that can effectively respond to any objections and give answers to the unique needs of each person.
4- Communication in two voices
These types of sales are based first and foremost on dialogue, on the ability to listen rather than to talk. A good way to do this is to focus on a simple concept: phone calls are not made just to sell but are made to bring a benefit to the contacted person. Giving importance to this thought ensures a conversation based on exchange and not only on price.
So: what to choose?
Both tools are valuable, especially when combined in a comprehensive strategy. When the two resources work together, planning and coordinating their actions, results are assured. The big advantage is that the Telemarketing team brings a flow of valuable leads to the Telesales team, allowing them to be converted into sales and thus guaranteeing an excellent ROI. The best way to provide effective support to all Teleselling and Telemarketing strategies is to work a priori on the contact data you have, effectively leveraging the historical outcomes and business data of your campaigns. BigProfiles AI Platform, the first predictive platform for Telemarketing and Teleselling, can effectively help you with this.