Teleprospecting teams pursue inbound and/or outbound leads via a telephone, are owned 50% of the time by sales and 50% of the time by marketing in a B2B company with the trend heading toward marketing according to a Sales 2.0 recent conference. The nature of the role has changed dramatically over the last few years with more ability to ‘intelligently prospect’ rather than pure cold call. This function is often overlooked given its mundane, routine tactical calling strategy yet is pivotal in revenue acceleration. It’s where the rubber meets the road for revenue recognition!
Beyond lead generation quantity, there are metrics to consider measuring – by tracking and trending deals that actually close from teleprospecting efforts, to the time it takes to close those efforts, to the cost per effort as one can not afford to hire an infinite number of teleprospectors! It’s important to establish metrics early and often for this function.
There are many different models of teleprospecting from an organizational viewpoint – from centralized to decentralized, to one region vs many regions. I’ve found the most effective is regional centralization – meaning, keep the resources as close together as possible so they can learn scripts and effective best practices from one another. However, when looking at this globally, it’s best to have in region expertise that understands the culture and nuances of selling within that region. Trying to centralize all teleprospecting for a global company is ineffective.
A teleprospector has an infinite number of tools to choose from today that didn’t exist 5 or 10 years ago – from ZoomInfo, to LinkedIn, to InsideView, to Dun&Bradstreet’s 360, each of these tools or when used in combination, can really hone in on information about organization, contact information, and report structure. Note that these tools are very regional centric (in this case many are North American heavily used tools). DemandBase is an effective tool to extract IP address, though mapping an IP address of someone who surfs on your web to an actual contact name can be challenging if that user does not have some relationship with you, either registered, in the form of a cookie, or other trackable means. Getting a prospect ‘warmed up’ through lead nurturing marketing automation platforms which I’ve mentioned in previous posts is also helpful and increases the chance of a successful close.
Depending on the size of your company, your team might consider using a tool called LookAcross. LookAcross gives the teleprospecter the ability to scan social media profiles to optimize when the best time is to connect with that person telephonically and also provides much of the data of a prospects’ professional presence online. It graphically shows a teleprospector the times and days that they are most active online, and what time and day of the week the prospect is likely to be reached.
Revenue recognition is critical and this function is where the rubber meets the roads. How have you maximized the impact of your teleprospector function?