If you want to be profitable in canvassing it’s absolutely necessary to have consistency in your follow up with your prospects. Even in show and event marketing which I spoke about last month, the phone follow up is vital to your show and event lead success. Telemarketing for canvassing and event marketing is a marketing function to maximize those leads into sales appointments.
If you’re not handling the calls properly you’re going to miss out on a lot of sales appointments. For most sales people a primary function for them is prospecting for new leads. That’s ok, but I’m finding aside from the differences between sales people and marketers, one major challenge sales people experience is keeping up with their leads. Division of responsibilities can increase the efficacy on those leads.
It really comes down to organizing the multiple tasks the sales people have to take on. I spend a lot of time focusing on how they should organize and follow up on their leads. Though I help private clients get more leads through canvassing, shows and events, the biggest leaps I see clients making is in following up on the leads. It’s a numbers game. The more leads you have and the more you follow up on the higher you’re going to convert leads to appointments and ultimately to sales.
2.5 appointments are set before an appointment actually results in a sales presentation. To get those 2.5 appointments scheduled for a single visit it takes on average 15-20 phone calls. That’s a lot of work and no one likes doing all that work, myself included, but it’s what it takes to make sales. Look, I wish the world of direct sales and marketing were such that we could meet a prospect and tell them of our product or service, have them fall in love with the idea of owning it, set an appointment, make the presentation and have them buy…. THAT’S NOT REALITY. Persistence is the single quality that separates a successful marketer and a failure. The 5% of outbound marketers that are successful understand this is what it takes to be successful.
This is why I recommend you have people who are dedicated to following up on leads by telephone; telemarketing. I’m not suggesting a dedicated phone room who’s handling other aspects of telemarketing, such as handling inbound leads from advertising. Rather telemarketers who are trained on the specifics of doing outbound telephone calls. This isn’t about handling a telephone call, it requires a specialized skill. It’s not about filling a schedule, but rather marketing and regenerating interest in the lead.
The key isn’t in the technology, but the system behind the follow up calls.
Every lead has to have a direction to it. With every lead you must know what needs to be done next with it and when. Prospects and their needs and situations are unique and the follow up on a particular lead is as unique. Not every lead needs followed up on the next day or next week. Follow up is based on the conversation the marketer has with that lead.
What kind of phone work is required?
First, the skill set of your telemarketers must be outbound trained and capable. Let me clarify the terminology with regard to the follow up on leads. There are 2 terms you’ll hear bantered around; validation and confirmation. It’s common for marketers to use the 2 terms interchangeably and you shouldn’t
Validation: The day you generate a lead. Someone from the home telemarketing hub contacts the prospect and does a brief validation the prospect talked with the marketer and that they requested info on the product or service as well as verify there’s a need for it. For example, a marketer captures a lead for window replacement, but when the telemarketer follows up to validate the lead they find out the prospect only wants repair work to existing windows. It heads off miscommunications and validates their interest/need. It’s also the opportunity to validate the date, time and other requirements for the appointment sit.
This validation can be done at the point the lead is captured, but it’s not required. This system requires the trained and prepared person on the office side of the call to be available to handle the call. This is a management decision.
What I suggest is the marketers submit their leads during a break point and the telemarketer can follow up on a block of leads rather than waiting on the receiving end.
Confirmation: The leads are called 24 hours prior to the scheduled appointment time. For example, the telemarketer calls all the appointment leads for Thursday on Wednesday. Whereas the validation is intended to move the lead along to the appointment, the confirmation takes the approach the appointment is set and you’re confirming the key criteria are satisfied for the appointment.
The Reset Appointment (or Call to Set): This follow up is required when the prospect can’t commit to a specific appointment time with the marketer. The Reset or Call to Set is a commitment by the prospect to set an appointment at a later time. For example, the lady of the home can’t set an appointment because she doesn’t know her husband’s schedule and she can’t speak for him. In this situation the marketer sets a day and time when the telemarketer will call to set the appointment. The RSA or CTA is a commitment to commit to an appointment. It’s an important part of the follow up system. Without this component a lot of leads and appointments will be lost because the prospect has the ability to avoid an appointment all together.
Rehash: A call made to the prospect that has already had a visit and presentation by a sales person, but they didn’t buy. Most miss this in their follow up. I look at it like this, sales people are hunters. They’re always looking for the next client, those who say yes at the close of their presentation. If they don’t close the sale at the presentation they abandon the prospect and move on to the next lead. Following up after the presentation has brought hundreds of thousands of dollars in business that most people abandoned because the prospect didn’t move forward at the point they were asked to. Often times it requires a little time for them to ‘think about it’, or requires reworking the offer or payment options. If you don’t go back to the undone projects you’re leaving a ton of money on the table.
Your real money, and profit, is in the backend of nurturing the lead. Think about how many leads you capture every year that don’t commit to buying your product or service. How many of those leads, when they’re ready, track down a vendor to sell them, when all you had to do was keep in touch and follow up with them. It makes good business sense to do so. You’ve already paid for, invested in that lead and it costs a lot of money to capture those leads only to let them slip away or worse yet, go to a competitor. Why should you pay to educate prospects only to have the buy from someone else?
This reopens the door for you to get back into a prospect that’s already gotten a presentation and been prequalified and warmed to your company and your product or service.
If you have any questions about this article and the information contained in it you can go to www.AskTheCanvassKing.com and submit your questions or send them directly to me at cthompson@canvassking.com