Telemarketing Software Featured Article

There is a lot written today in the realm of sales management about taking sales to where the customer is. Since “where the customers are” is increasingly not the telephone, finding customers often means taking to the Web, and more specifically, social media. Social media becomes an essential tool to “convert” customers and prospects to telephone interaction follow-ups in which the sales professional can make a more extensive and targeted pitch.

Time of day makes an enormous difference in when to reach out to customers and prospects, and determining the best time to go “customer hunting” is critical. A recent study from consulting company Software Advice that analyzed the behavior of more than six million unique Web site visitors over more than five years uncovered some interesting statistics on this front. The study, titled “The B2B Buyer Behavior – Web & Phone Channels IndustryView 2013” gathered intelligence regarding how buyers respond to their research solutions on the Web (and where), when the “conversion” to a desire for telephone contact happens, and how sales personnel can most easily reach them.

Some important findings included the following:

Speed matters. Calling a lead back within five seconds after receiving the lead results in lead qualification 29 percent more often than if the call was made within five minutes.

Mid-week is best. According to the Software Advice study, lower your expectations on Mondays and Fridays and focus most on the middle of the week. Leads that come in from Tuesday to Thursday qualify at twice the average qualification rate for other business days, reaching a peak on Wednesday.

Christmas is good. Many sales organizations assume that the week before Christmas is a lost cause. The study found that, surprisingly, this is not the case. Perhaps customers are feeling in a more magnanimous mood that week.

Early in the year is best. This is hardly a mystery: companies often restart their budgets at the first of the year. January through May represents the best selling opportunities, with the peak happening in February. Another small spike happens in October, and (predictably) the worst times are during the summer vacation months.

Lunchtime is good. What does the average worker today do at lunchtime? He or she sits in front of a computer with some food, checking through the news, sports scores, and social media, and engages in some Web searching. More importantly, this person has the time to take a call.

One of the biggest lessons from this study is that companies need to improve their speed of response when it comes to qualifying leads.

“If your business relies heavily on Web-generated leads, invest in technology and processes that allow you to call buyers as fast as possible,” according to Software Advice’s Derek Singleton. “Ideally, you should be able to place your first call to a buyer that requests a phone call within 60 seconds.”

Speed to call is one of the areas technology can help. Automated outbound dialing can help make connections quickly and allows sales personnel to call as many leads as possible. It can radically boost the number of calls made per hour, it can help make the right outbound calls to the right people at the right time, and it can ensure that lists are fresh and relevant, particularly when properly integrated with the CRM database and other solutions.

Telemarketing solutions such as those from VanillaSoft can help sales personnel follow up leads faster, boosting call productivity by 50 percent or more and handling the distribution of leads to sales people. Auto dialer functionality, including both preview and progressive dialing, can be implemented across any phone system, including voice over IP (VoIP) telephony, and offer features such as call recording, real-time call management dashboard, team-based telemarketing call scripts, customizable reporting and dynamic call routing, together with the critical do-not-call compliance necessary to every successful sales team.