Telemarketing is still one of the most effective means of establishing, building and maintaining contacts with your business prospects and relations. But only if carried out by Senior (in age, experience and tone-of-voice) specialists, who genuinely enjoy this as a profession, who know how to interest scriptlessly without irritating, and who know how to properly assess the balance between short-term results and long-term interests.
Provite has been active in b2b telemarketing since 1977. This makes us the first Dutch b2b telemarketing agency. We were the first to start making appointments for account managers (we called them representatives back then) as an external agency. Over the past nearly 50 years, we have supported perhaps thousands of organizations, in their business development. As a result, you will find in us the most experienced growth engine in the Netherlands.
B2B (business to business) telemarketing is a broad field. All our activities support your sales, acquisition and business development and should ultimately lead to more relationships, more sales and more new customers. As a call center, we establish and maintain contact with your prospects, relations and former customers.
After all, sales/sales always start with a relationship. Our main tool for this is the telephone, through which we build personal contact with your customers. Because we are convinced that sales must be personal. Only that way can you build a lasting customer relationship.
With customer relationships becoming increasingly important, social selling as a sales technique is playing an increasing role. In the B2B segment, LinkedIn is the most important medium for establishing and maintaining relationships and sharing content. It is important that offline and online are seamlessly integrated in an omnichannel strategy. In addition, LinkedIn lends itself well to building a target audience.
As useful as social selling is as a sales tool, ultimately personal contact with your customer remains key to building a customer relationship in a distinctive way.
Leadnurturing
Keeping in touch with a prospect/potential customer over an extended period of time until he is ready for the next step in the buying process: the appointment! The benefits of this are:
- No loss of leads through efficient follow-up.
- Sales gets only qualified leads/appointments.
- Higher conversion rates on appointments.
- More sales for the same number of prospects (no burning)
Why outsource b2b telemarketing?
That b2b telemarketing plays an important role in the overall sales process, most business owners would agree. But if telephone acquisition is such an important sales tool, why outsource it? We identify 8 reasons to outsource telemarketing. Here are some of the most important ones:
External expertise
Telephone marketing and telephone acquisition are a special form of sales, totally different from personal selling. The most striking feature is the limited talking time you have on the phone. When the phone call is the first contact with the customer, you are talking about cold calling. This is entirely a profession in its own right. With more than 45 years of experience in b2b telemarketing, you won't find anywhere as much expertise in this area as with us. We know what is feasible, promising or difficult to realize. We help you turn telemarketing into a successful sales tool (and tell you what you can't do).
Flexible shell
Chances are your company's need for salespower varies over the years. Sometimes you want to bring in extra salespower, for example. In addition: telephone acquisition is not perceived as "fun" by many people. However, hiring good sales professionals on a temporary basis, who also enjoy successfully picking up the phone, is difficult; just try finding them in an overstrained job market.
Prioritization
Your own account managers are the great experts. They know everything about your products or services. At the table with customers, they deliver the most for you. But making six, maybe 10 calls to set up a visiting appointment with a prospect, is that a useful time commitment for them? You're better off outsourcing that. (And let's face it: they're not very good at it, and they don't like it, either).
THE FIRST STEP TO NEW BUSINESS
Is a conversation. Online or on location. You talk about what you want to achieve, your target audiences, your wonderful product and/or service. We put our more than 45 years of experience against it and discuss a strategy. After all, B2B Telemarketing as part of lead generation offers unprecedented opportunities. Let's discover it together!
Want to know more? Contact Margot +31 70 3134444.
Goals of b2b telemarketing
What can you use tele marketing for to achieve your commercial goals? We offer a few suggestions:
- Lead generation. We get you new leads to expand your customer base.
- Schedule appointments for your account managers. This way we make sure their calendar fills up nicely, including new business appointments.
- Relationship management and nurturing. We maintain contact with your dormant and potential customers. As soon as there is serious interest, we put them in touch with your account managers. This is how we ensure that your prospects move through the customer journey.
- Cross- and upselling. Maybe there are other products or services of interest to your customers, but they buy them elsewhere. We provide customer optimization.
- Win back promotions. Why don't former customers buy from you anymore? We approach them and activate them as customers again.
- Do you have an event or trade show? Personal approach works wonders, but creates a lot of extra work. We are happy to do it for you.
- Conquering a new market for you, even abroad? That requires a lot of extra effort and you just have to have the people for it. Outsourcing is the solution; then you don't burden your own sales organization.
What should you expect from a b2b telemarketing agency?
As a good telemarketing agency, we support your sales as if we were part of your business, or better! We are your enthusiastic and passionate partner in sales support and flexible shell. We deploy experienced and senior people who approach your leads in a civilized and mature manner. And we are not out for one-time short-term successes, but want to strengthen your corporate image for the long term.
Exceptional sales strategy
No good sales pitch without a good sales strategy. When you, like us, have supported thousands of companies over the course of 45 years, you know what works commercially. We've contributed to the sales success of companies from just about every industry and from large to small. Engaging us gives you a breadth of expertise you won't find anywhere else. With the end result: the most successful sales strategy achievable.
DATA IS KEY!
GOOD DATA AND CONTINUOUS ANALYTICS CAN GREATLY IMPROVE CONVERSIONS
Steven van Kampen | project & data specialist
Cold and warm acquisition
A lot has been said about cold acquisition by many; 'cold calling is dead' is a common cry. One thing is certain: with each of your customers, you once started with an initial 'cold' contact. And then a personal conversation is still a lot warmer than a software-generated approach.
That doesn't mean we don't use LinkedIn or email, and we also believe in sharing good content. We are very positive about following up with online, trade show and event leads, and we also enjoy talking to your existing and former contacts. Whether our first contact with your lead is cold or warm, after our conversation it will be warmer!
The advantage of seniority
Let's start with our people, the backbone of our company. They are senior people, both in terms of age and experience. Most come from the business world and have held mature positions there. We have quite a few former entrepreneurs in our ranks, as well as a few people from government positions. They have worked in all kinds of industries, so we can always find suitable people for your sector.
These people can independently have a mature, businesslike dialogue with someone, including at the C-level, without having to read a script. They gauge the prospect's needs and bridge the gap to your solutions. In doing so, they distinguish the interesting prospects from the uninteresting ones. And they leave a positive impression no matter what comes out of the contact.
We make quality appointments
Our absolute specialty is setting quality appointments: commercially promising appointments for your account managers. We know that visiting a customer is an expensive sales tool, so we make sure you get good appointments, not just as many as possible.
What constitutes a good appointment is up to you. For example, if you want an appointment with every production director of a food manufacturer in the Netherlands, that is our guideline. By giving us feedback on each appointment after the client visit, we can continue to improve quality.
Perseverance: nurturing
When we make appointments only when they are commercially promising, leads naturally drop off. That does not mean that those contacts were wasted effort. By maintaining contact with those leads that are not interesting now, we follow the development at those companies. By regularly contacting the decision maker at that company, we strengthen the bond with your company.
Once that prospect is "ripe" for the next step, we (and you) are at the forefront. We call this long-term process nurturing. We have the techniques in place to make sure we connect at the right times. And in the long run, this makes us increasingly successful for you.
Conditions and investment
We very much like to work for clients where we have a good feeling and where we think we can also be successful. Do we think that an organization, a product/service or a target group does not suit us as well (or we cannot match a suitable marketeer), we will report this as well. There are bound to be parties or methods that can be found that are a better fit then.
We must be realistic: telephone outreach is a method with very, very many benefits, but is a relatively expensive method. But is the average customer value of a prospective customer € 10,000 or more on an annual basis, one of the most effective methods. Of course, this again depends on the Customer Lifetime Value, because if a customer remains a customer for an average of 7 years, the average customer value may again be lower. But we have developed a handy tool to calculate and assess this.
We always meet with a potential client and based on that meeting we work out a proposal.
Pilot period
For our B2B telemarketing activities, we are looking for clients who-if the results are good-are also in it for the longer term.
Of course, a cooperation has to be tested first, so we always start with a six-month pilot period. Of course, an acquisition trajectory needs some time to come to fruition. Within that pilot period we will do everything we can to optimize the results together with you. Within the six months, there is always an escape after three months if the results -even though we turn all the knobs- do not meet the set KPIs.
After those six months, we will discuss continuation. In principle, this will then be for an indefinite period with a notice period of one or two months. The latter depends on the number of hours per month.
Projects
In some cases, we also do fixed-term projects. To make the start-up costs profitable, there must be some volume.
Collaborative form
Each client always gets a fixed dedicated team consisting of at least 2 Sr. Business Developers. This ensures that knowledge is safeguarded internally, ensures healthy competitiveness and that they can spar together. One of them serves as Project Lead.
They are supported by the two floor coaches, the trainer, Quality Management, data and project support and the Operations Manager.
To generate enough room for spread and callbacks / nurturing, a trajectory is a minimum of 85 hours per month. These are hours that the business developers are actually working on the project. Taking a break in between is in principle not possible and certainly not recommended due to planning and callback follow-up.
Reports, Monitoring and Dashboard
All our positive calls (leads, appointments, offers, etc.) are listened to by QM and sent to you if approved. The coaches also listen to random calls. We are currently testing an AI tool for this purpose. We can listen to conversations with you, but we do not make them available for download etc.
Each relationship gets its own dashboard where the progress of the process and pipeline can be seen.
In addition, everyone gets access to various reports. Regular progress meetings are scheduled with the business developers.
APIs
We work with Steam's software, which is a call center package. For Social Selling, we work with a special LinkedIn outreach tool. For website visitor recognition, we work with SalesFeed.
All this tooling can be linked to each other or to your CRM through APIs. This also requires effort on the part of our client.
Investment
Start-up & Onboarding € 1.750 one-off
Brainstorm session, set up and develop workflow, proposition session and outreach document.
Project session, set up project, build and upload data, set up number recognition, set up fulfillment, set up/synchronize calendars. Basic address file. Set up dashboard and reports.
Business Development € 55 - € 65 per hour *.
*Depending on the number of hours per month
Project management € 550 per month
Quality management, coaching and directing business developers, assessing and optimizing results. Progress and listening sessions.
Conditions
We work on an effort basis, not a result basis.
All our fees are exclusive of 21% VAT. Invoicing is done as follows: Preparation in advance. Thereafter billing per month. Invoicing is based on actual hours worked. The payment term of our invoices is 14 days.
All our quotations, agreements deliveries and transactions are subject to our General Terms and Conditions.
NCNP / Shared risk / Commission base
We never work on a commission basis (pay per sale). So you really don't need to approach us for that. Not even if you think your product/service is an exception or if you think you are giving a huge reward.
We do occasionally make an exception to be (partially) rewarded per appointment/lead.
But that is only in markets where we feel comfortable, where our expertise lies. There are also a number of conditions regarding pilot, volume, etc.