My 16-year old son recently obtained his driver’s license. I’m proud of him for saving up enough money to buy his own car. However, if there is one thing I could wish for, it would be a governor for his car - a device that limits the speed of the vehicle to, say, 55 miles per hour. While most parents may desire this limiting factor for their teenager’s vehicle, it is definitely NOT something you’d want on your Telemarketing Program.

This article will explore some of the governors we have seen on Inbound and Outbound Telemarketing programs. More importantly, this will shed light on approaches you can take to not only remove governors (limiting factors), but turn your Telemarketing program into a finely tuned lead generation machine.

This topic will be addressed in the following categories:

• Product / Market
• People / Structure
• Process
• Technology

Product / Market

Limiting factor: Applying B2C (business-to-consumer) principles in a B2B (business-to-business) market, or visa versa.

The first step is to ensure your program is aligned to the market you are going after. Are you in the B2C or B2B space? The differences between the two are immense. At a top-level, in a B2C market you will typically apply the “dialing for dollars” approach. On the other hand, with B2B you will want to take more of a relationship building / nurturing approach. This article will focus on the B2B space.

Limiting factor: Lack of product and market knowledge

Personnel in your Telemarketing center aren’t necessarily expected to be product/service experts. However, they clearly need to understand the nature and types of business problems your products/services address. And, just as important, they must understand the profile of the people (prospects) they will be engaging with. This can include the need to perform in a highly consultative role.

People / Structure

Limiting factor: Generating and passing leads to “deaf ears”

To ensure that the leads you generate and pass to your Sales team (inside sales, field sales or channel partners) capture their attention, you need to clearly understand their lead qualification criteria and expectations in terms of information you need to provide. Said another way, what do they want and when do they want it? There is nothing worse than generating “leads” for which the prospect’s buying timeframe is in 6 months when the Sales team is focused primarily on opportunities that are going to close this month or this quarter. You may need to hang on to those leads and continue to nurture until the buying timeframe fits into the window that will get the attention of Sales.

Limiting factor: Autocratic leadership

Let’s face it, in the B2B space, your team will be engaging in business conversations that will often occur with high-level executives (VPs to CXOs). If you are tracking the time your Telemarketing reps spend on bathroom breaks, you are not going to observe the kinds of behaviors you’d want exhibited in people that must engage in executive level conversations. Treat and manage your reps professionally and they will act like professionals.

Limiting factor: Compensation plans that encourage saving for next month

We all know that Sales people are “coin operated.” This statement is just as true for your Telemarketing reps. Make no mistake, they will study the comp plan to determine how to achieve the biggest bang for the buck. Too often, Telemarketing comp plans actually encourage reps to shut down before the end of the period to maximize their bonus. This occurs when the comp plan doesn’t have attractive features such as:

• Accelerators – that is, once quota is achieved, paying out at increasingly higher levels for the “over-achievers”
• Beginning to pay out at 80%
• Being in alignment with key metrics (discussed below) that generate the behaviors you want exhibited

Process

Limiting factor: Measuring what you don’t want

We’ve all heard the phrase: “You get what you measure.” The bottom-line metrics for a Telemarketing Program include:

• Number of qualified leads generated
• Sales Accept / reject ratio
• Revenue contribution
• Profiling and nurturing effectiveness

Measuring things such as number of dials per day and talk time are NOT conducive to generating the kinds of behaviors you’d want to experience in a B2B Telemarketing Program.

Limiting factor: Leads passed into the dark abyss

One of the most frustrating and demoralizing scenarios for a Telemarketing rep is to invest a great deal of time and energy in developing a relationship with a prospect, handing the lead off to Sales and not knowing what happened. Did I route the lead to the appropriate contact? Did the opportunity close? Did I provide the information necessary to facilitate closing the deal? How much revenue was generated? In a nutshell, how did I contribute to the company’s success? And, in what ways could I improve on a go-forward basis?

To address this, you need to have in place a closed loop lead management process which is bolstered by technology (a subject we will address later in this article). Key aspects of a lead management process include:

• Clear, objective definition of what a hot, warm or cold lead is.
• Routing rules – who (what organization) to send the lead to and under what circumstances.
• Feedback loop where the receiving party confirms receipt, provides closure (lost opportunity, converted to pipeline and/or customer, revenue generated, etc.) and indicates what worked and opportunities for improvement.

Technology

Limiting factor: Technology that causes reps to perform unnatural acts

Technology is covered last in this article for good reason. Until ALL of the above items are addressed, you should not think about technology. That is, technology is an enabler to facilitate streamlining of your business practices. Too often we see technology thrown into the business before the above items are worked out. This results in Telemarketing reps:

• Writing down notes on paper (forms or a blank sheet) during the call. Then, when the call is over updating “their” system.
• Using multiple systems to manage their leads.

To be clear, we are not suggesting that you need to spend millions of dollars on a new CRM system. In fact, you’ve probably already invested in one that isn’t providing the bang for the buck you desire. What we are suggesting is that you clearly nail down your business practices and THEN AND ONLY THEN will you have the basis to define clear requirements for automation.

Limiting factor: Lack of central repository integrated with rest of the organization

Building on the above, not only do you want reps to leverage technology that facilitates the defined process, but you also want them connected with the rest of the organization. Has this ever happened to one of your Telemarketing reps…They call on a prospect in their database and after a few minutes of dialog they learn that your company has already provided a proposal that is on its third round of revision (pencil sharpening) and the prospect is visiting your HQ office tomorrow? It takes an expert Telemarketing rep to recover from that one without blowing the entire deal. This scenario should NEVER happen, and can easily be prevented.

In Closing

Is your firm happy with the revenue it is achieving? Does your Sales team consistently exceed quota? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you should ensure that a governor remains on your Telemarketing program. For most companies this is simply not the case.

If you suspect there are governing factors on your Telemarketing Program, give us a call. We’d be happy to discuss our Assessment methodology which provides our customers a pragmatic road-map to create a finely tuned lead generation machine. In fact, our assessments typically result in providing this extremely valuable input within 10-15 days of “go.” So, what are you waiting for?

Craig Bailey is the founder and president of Customer Centricity and an expert in creating customer-focused organizations. He has an extensive background with high technology firms in operations management, customer service, marketing strategy, business process engineering and IT. Craig has lectured on corporate strategy, operational effectiveness, and entrepreneurship as a guest speaker at Babson College, Bentley College, Boston College, Harvard University, MIT's Sloan School of Management, and Rivier College in New Hampshire, in addition to participating on numerous panels for other organizations and events. Craig has also recently served as an adjunct professor at Bentley College, teaching a course on Global Business. Company: Customer Centricity, Inc.