11 Expert Tactics To Increase Your B2B Telephone Sales

Many B2B companies have tried cold calling in the past but gave up too quickly because they didn’t see any results. This is mainly because they weren’t using the right techniques. You can easily increase your B2B telephone sales with expert strategies and a solid team.

Want to know how you can do it yourself? Try some of the 11 calling tips below:

Have a solid opening statement

How long have you lasted each time you’ve answered the phone to a cold caller? Chances are, you’ve hung up after the first sentence. That’s why, when you’re making the call yourself, you need to have a solid opening statement that grabs the recipient’s attention.

Instead of asking them if they are available to talk, TELL them straight away who you are and what you can do for them. For example, ‘Hello, I am John Doe from XXX, and I have a product that will grow your company’.

Outline your target audience

B2B calling isn’t about HOW many businesses you contact but rather about WHO you get in touch with. You could call 100 businesses in a shift but come back with zero sales because you aren’t contacting the right clients.

Before you put together your dialling list, you want to outline your target audience. For example, if you are a wholesale manufacturer of baking tools, you won’t want to be cold-calling tech companies as they will have no interest in purchasing your products.

If you’re unsure where to start with lead generation and putting together your dialling list, the Novus B2B telemarketing team is here to help.

Expect and accept rejections

No matter what sector of sales you work in and whether you use cold calling as a strategy or not, you have to learn how to deal with rejection. Not every business will want to purchase your product or service, so you have to learn how to overcome the fear of someone saying no.

Each time you make a cold call, expect they will say no. However, don’t let this affect your sales strategy. And if you have given it your all, and they still say no? Don’t get defensive. Understand why the prospect said no, confirm there is no objection handling you can work on and lastly, just accept that sometimes they don’t want what you’re offering and move on.

Share previous customer successes

When a business purchases a product or service for their company, they want to ensure it will benefit them. Of course, you can tell them this, but how can they take your word for it? That’s when you start talking about previous customers and case studies.

Talk about other clients you have worked with, how your offering has helped them, and any relevant statistics or results the prospective client will want to know about. It makes the benefits much more real and increases the chance of a sale.

Ask the right questions

Most people don’t want to be spoken to all the time. It can get repetitive and boring, and they may lose interest. However, if you start asking questions and getting feedback from the prospective client, you build rapport and establish a relationship.

Some potential questions you may want to ask the business you’re cold calling includes:

We’ve noticed a few of our clients have struggled with X. What are you doing to handle it?
Is there anything within your company you want to improve?
What do you think is standing in the way of achieving your goals?

Practice makes perfect

Cold calling is an art, and it won’t be perfected on your first try. That’s why you want to get some practice before you start going into the real world and calling reputable businesses you wish to take on as clients.

There are several ways you can practise B2B calling:

Conduct mock cold calls with other members of your team.
Identify the biggest challenges you face in the mock calls.
Listen in on successful cold calls performed by other members of the team.
Try multiple different approaches for your mock calls.

Use a script but avoid sounding robotic

You don’t want to go into a cold call with lots of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ because you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to say. However, you don’t want to sound scripted either. So, what’s the best way to sound professional and informative?

Putting together a script is a good idea, but there are ways you can ensure the conversation flows, and you don’t end up sounding like a robot. Use the script as a guide, with multiple answers to different questions. You don’t have to read them word for word, but rather help you out when you’re stuck with an answer.

Utilise your CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an important part of any B2B company. It helps you achieve success in your cold-calling strategy and identify data patterns that can help you make the right changes for further growth.

If you already have a CRM that you are happy with, then keep using it to the best of your ability. However, if you’re looking for a great CRM, you don’t have to look far. Novus’s B2B telemarketing team will handle all your strategising and data entry through our own bespoke software.

Timing is everything

Not only is the time of day for B2B calling important, but how long the call lasts is also detrimental to your success. Of course, you want to ensure you’re calling during business hours and not disrupting anyone at home when they aren’t in the office.

You also want to ensure that your calls aren’t too long. No one wants to sit around for hours listening to a sales pitch, even if it will help their business. Ensure you get your point across as quickly as possible and with enough time to close the deal.

Conduct call reviews

What’s the best way to improve your cold-calling strategy? By going over your past cold calls! Each time you make a call, make sure you keep note of who you’re calling, a general sense of how the call went, and any challenges you may have faced.

After each call, review the information and see how you could have improved the call. It can either help you as an individual caller, provide management with some insight into how to train other people on your team, or even improve sales.

Follow up after your call

Not every cold call will end in a then-and-there close. Sometimes the person you’ve spoken to may need to go and talk to their team or do some deliberation before they make their decision. That’s when follow-ups come into play.

Try and set up a date for another call or meeting, or even schedule a demo if your product or service has one. The day before you are supposed to talk again, send your prospective client a message saying you can’t wait to meet again to remind them.

How To Use Telemarketing To Generate Leads Quickly

When it comes to building brand awareness and a reliable customer base, b2b lead generation is an essential component. One of the most effective ways of generating successful leads is through b2b telemarketing. With this in mind, there are several factors to consider when performing your lead generation campaign using telemarketing. As a telemarketer, if you follow these simple steps, you’ll be on your way to lead generation success.

Concentrate on Your Audience

Before you even pick up the phone, you have to be aware of who your audience is, what their requirements are, and how your product can help them meet those requirements. When you have these three things in mind, it helps you to guide the conversation when you’re speaking to them on the phone.

Knowing how to guide the conversation is also important because this is very different from forcefully trying to sell your product or service to someone who simply does not need it. You have to be able to fully understand their requirements to provide solutions for them. If you keep your audience in mind, it makes it easier to establish good leads more efficiently.

Ensure that the audience you communicate with are relevant, targeted and up to date (and those that you actually want as clients).

Start with an Engaging Opening Line

Often telemarketers open with an insincere “hello x how are you today?”. This automatically disengages the person on the other end of the phone. Following on from the previous tip, try to create an opening line that engages your audience and shows that you’ve done your market research. First impressions are everything, and you have to convince your audience that you can genuinely help them by providing your company’s service or product.

Sincerity is another component of commanding engagement in your opening line. You have to be genuine in your expressions and your tone of voice. Treating a telemarketing phone call like something you have to tick off a to-do list will filter through in your voice and make the prospective customer doubt what their business means to you. If the prospect is engaged off the bat, the chances are higher that they will become a good lead.

Ask the Right Questions

It’s important to ask the right questions when you are trying to build a solid lead base through telemarketing. Establishing another business’ position early on in the conversation will allow you to determine whether or not you can help them quickly, meaning you will identify genuine prospects more efficiently.

Asking the right questions will not only gain you useful information and insights into your target market but will also show the person on the other end of the phone that you’ve done your homework. A genuine prospect will take their time to answer the questions you have.

For these reasons, telemarketers will often work off a prewritten script. A script should not be used as a tool for “parroting” the conversation, but rather as a reminder about how you want the conversation to go. Remember, you still want to come across as genuine throughout the b2b telemarketing phone call.

Estimate Your Call Volume

Before you start calling for a b2b telemarketing campaign, set a goal for yourself of the number of phone calls you can make in a day and do everything in your power to hit those numbers. A skilled telemarketer will know how long a solid lead’s phone call will take, and therefore factor this into their estimate. Those at the top of their game will also keep the goal in mind without allowing them to have an impact on the quality of their pitch.

By harnessing the above-mentioned skills while making a high number of results-driven calls, you’ll end up generating good leads at a rapid pace. Telemarketing is by no means all about the number of calls you can make in a day, but having a number in mind will drive you to do the best job possible. It will also give you an indication of your performance over a given period, which you can use to adapt your telemarketing methodologies to improve good lead generation yield.

Remember Its a Conversation, Not a Presentation

When working with a script, some b2b telemarketers fall into the trap of sounding like their phone call is rehearsed and therefore can sound bored or disingenuous to the other party. A good telemarketer will understand that your goal is firstly to build trust and establish a solid business relationship, and secondly to close to an appointment or a deal.

If you treat a phone call like a presentation, you run the risk of missing important information a prospect provides you with. When you miss information because you’re not listening, you quickly make the prospect disinterested in your offerings.

Treating a phone call like a normal conversation will demonstrate that you possess empathy and show that you really care about the prospect’s needs as well as the product or service you’re trying to market. It will also make the prospect feel like their business matters to you, opening up more opportunities for progressive business relations and collaborative projects.

Work Out your End Goal

In telemarketing, you have to conclude the phone call at some stage, and you want that conclusion to be in your favour. Before you start on your b2b telemarketing campaign, clearly establish what you want the outcome of the phone conversation to be.

Is the point of the phone call to spread brand awareness? Is the point of the phone call to impart knowledge and book an appointment? Am I making this phone call to try and build a solid customer base? Asking yourself these or similar questions will help you align your thoughts when entering the call.

When you have the end goal in mind, it ensures that you steer the conversation in the right direction, but also that you cover all your bases and don’t let a prospect go prematurely. The product or service you are marketing may not be a one-size-fits-all kind of solution, therefore navigating the individual prospect’s requirements may take more time than others. However, if you have the end goal in mind, it allows you to stay relevant and on track.