B2B Telemarketing exists on a wide spectrum of effort-to-performance. You can hire someone who speaks English in the Phillipines for 2001 US federal minimum wage, but if you’re trying to break your foot into the door of a CEO or some C-level executive, this generally won’t be very effective on any level.
At the end of the day, most B2B telemarketing companies and B2B cold calling campaigns aren’t all that successful. This is because the ability to boil the water — or generate immediate and confident interest from a high value prospect — isn’t something that can simply be acquired through brute force and the cheapest labor. The real math is clear, you would be better off paying me $100 per hour to dial on your behalf (not that I’m looking for a job) than paying the cheapest phone dog you can find overseas. The reality is, I’m an educated, lettered, personable and professional American who can reach through the phone and get other 1%-er Americans to listen to me and see value in a matter of seconds.
Actual examples of true caviar-grade B2B outreach:
(personal info has been clipped from these calls and the voices of recipients altered to be unrecognizable)
This next call is very clunky, I came across as someone not exactly polished….and I got the appointment and they’re now a manufacturing client who is paying. This is one of the clunkiest examples I can share and it still worked. Someone who is exceptional at this knows how to be Gordon Gecko when it’s time, and how to be the non-assuming fella who needs to make a phone call about information regarding the widgets a given company sells and bringing in the immediate attention and intention to create the elite CEO lead needed.
None of this is by accident or me slipping up. The people I’ve taught this skill to and myself know that sometimes the best approach is the clunky one.
Seriously…listen to those calls twice. Beyond not knowing who I was calling on behalf of, what the product was, or even whom I was calling, you can clearly tell that interest and intention was established immediately and just after that a conference call was set with this manufacturer. They are now happy clients and paying over $5,000 per month for services that consistently prove their value.
If you have 1000 hand-picked leads of manufacturers, distributors, retailers, etc who you genuinely know you can provide value for, and know that your company would benefit from getting a conference call with. Why would you waste your finite resources to have a script-reading organic robot attempt this? Sorry to say, but there’s a reason there are droves of people on Earth who are ready to log in to your dialer and make these calls….they just aren’t that effective at it, and if they were they would already be selling clients themselves.
B2B lead generation telemarketing only really performs if you have exceptional talent. This isn’t like throwing items in a box in a warehouse. There is a canyon of separation between the person trying to sound relatable and a caviar-grade phone dog in the United States. I personally can and have taught others how to create a CEO lead with less than 2 hours of genuine effort. I’ve also wasted time and resources trying to get a proficient English speaker in the Philippines to do the same in a week. No seriously, one week of pounding a phone, getting hundreds of high-end prospects on the line, and not a single lead that was anything more than wood.
You can’t boil water at 190°. Stop trying…I know the algebra you’re trying to do. “…but if we can hire someone in [third World nation] for [less than $6/hour] then this HAS TO WORK.” No it doesn’t, and stop embarrassing yourself trying. Don’t even get me started on the extreme lowest bidder operations that charge $4 per hour and find people to work for them to work at $2 per hour and have third-tier VOIP systems that sound like you’re being called by someone who speaks English as a fourth language and is speaking from the bottom of a well on a delay.
If you’re going to play this game, you need the right players. You need people who can reach through the phone, tell the CEO and/or ‘Director of Whatever’ that you have their solution and want to talk to them about a mutually beneficial business arrangement, and get them to give affirmative interest and intention. Sorry, but the guy who hasn’t even seen North America, and learned English from watching ‘Friends’ can’t do this, and multiplying their efforts times 10 won’t get you the results you want anymore than boiling water using only sunlight.
B2B telemarketing services is one of the most questionable services to shop for. It’s like so many “consultants”. They get paid convincing you they can do something that very often isn’t in their capacity and they make money even upon failure. One can sell B2B telemarketing services that are virtually useless and still make plenty of money since the margins are so large on selling garbage via an onerous contract.
I know telemarketing B2B. I can call 30 CEOs right now and have several of them sincerely thank me for taking the time to call them. I can statistically turn 1-2 of them into exceptional leads that in many cases convert to 5-6 figures per year in business. This isn’t rocket science…most rocket scientists are awkward and couldn’t do this…this is more so what an aspiring comedian or actor excels at. Your best chances at succeeding in telemarketing B2B are developing your own in-house proprietary telemarketing B2B solution or hiring a proven telemarketing B2B contractor. The middle-ground between these two options is where failure is near absolute.
This isn’t rocket science…most rocket scientists are awkward and couldn’t do this…this is more so what an aspiring comedian or actor excels at.
Eric Smith
B2B lead generation telemarketing is done at more loss than success. Just because people who are clearly overseas call you regularly doesn’t mean the entities paying for this lead generation telemarketing are succeeding…they’re simply being sold the fantasy of nearly free leads.
Ultimately, when you’re selling 50-150k per year in services to a single client, the extra $100 it costs to get an exceptional connection and lead from a caviar-grade B2B telemarketing operation will seem like nothing, and in-fact is less than $1 more cost when you figure out that those leads actually convert versus conversations that start with ‘you had someone overseas call me’. I’ve sold clients who were brought in via cut-rate B2B lead generation and I’ve sold clients who were brought in with an eloquent phone approach and zealous American who can reach through the phone and get attention and intention immediately. There is no comparison. The cost-to-performance isn’t close.
Talk to me — Eric Smith — about getting a B2B telemarketing campaign that actually works.