Executive Summary
- As email outreach volume increases during Covid-19, open rates fall dramatically
- Time to move to Cold Calling
- C-suite level decision makers prefer the phone
- Appointment setting companies like SalesHive, the Best Lead Generation Company, provide cold calling services
- Winning B2B companies in 2020 are outsourcing Lead Generation to telemarketing services
As the world evolves, business development strategies inside of any company's outreach operations can shift. Technology can sometimes be the catalyst for this change. Other times market seasons progress, bringing these needed adaptations. And still in other times, like during Covid-19, they regress dramatically.
Business operations must adjust as changes occur, and this includes their strategy for Lead Generation B2B companies and lead oriented outreach.
Email comes in as the most favored communication channel for all B2B services, the convenience of its accessibility, reliability, and ease of use making it the most popular method of outreach. An email has always been the favored way to target outreach, and while Covid-19 has thrown several wrenches in the business world, one of the most significant is email outreach.
Email just isn’t as effective as it used to be.
By examining HubSpot’s Covid-19 data, it’s clear that email outreach has increased 67% since COVID began. This makes sense, as email is the quickest and easiest outreach channel to increase in volume in a contactless world. However, response rates show it’s clearly not succeeding in the same way it used to.
As volume has increased -ever filling inboxes and overwhelming buyers- reply rates have plummeted 33%.
Email channels are slowly losing their effectiveness, and, coupled with a lack of creating and closing deals, B2B companies need to look in a new direction.
Luckily, there is one.
Cold Calling and outbound telemarketing services.
Time for B2B Lead Generation Cold Calling
Cold Callers do one thing, and they’re damn good at it. They make hundreds of calls per day, setting up meetings, making connections with prospects, and boosting pipelines.
The idea of cold calling potential clients might send chills up the spines of most SDRs, but like it or not, the truth is that jumping on the phone and calling potential B2B clients can be an extremely effective way to identify and connect with actual prospects.
There is great fear around Cold Calling -a sort of stage fright perhaps- but in reality, speaking on the phone is the 2nd highest rated channel by buyers. As many as 49% prefer it, second only to email.
There are those in the business world insisting that cold calling is dead, and looking at the data we can see why this notion is promulgated by the uninformed. The average success rate for a cold caller is an abysmal 1.48%.
That looks pretty bad, but with a different understanding of cold calling numbers, we find it’s quite skewed. The best Cold Callers have 10x-20x times that success.
The misunderstanding surrounding Cold Calling comes because the impressive numbers of talented callers don’t show up due to the high volume of unsuccessful cold callers they get lumped in with. The curse of averages.
Cold calling isn’t dead, a lot of people are just really bad at it.
Cold Calling Service Focus
Callers may work in-house, or for a cold calling service provider, but despite who's paying the bills, they should always identify how much influence the prospect they are speaking with has, and how much decision making power they possess. This is called identifying the buyer role.
A lot of the decision making power for business sits atop the uppermost portions of its structure; the C-suite. Oddly, contrary to prospects at large, buyers in the C-suite prefer using the phone to make deals.
Callers who fear to get on the phone with their high-level prospects miss this connection opportunity entirely. While it takes more invested time to jump on the phone with a prospect than it does to hit send on a generic email blast, during the COVID era, emails aren’t nearly as effective as a good caller can be.
Another component of buyer focus is knowing the type of prospect who is on the phone with a caller.
The recruitment agency Michael Page Group identified 4 types of prospects that a cold caller might jump on the phone with. The Aggressive style, the Expressive style, The Passive/Harmonious style, and the Analytical style.
- The aggressive style is results-oriented. Getting to the brass tax.
- The expressive, emotional style is people-oriented. Focused on their clients and relationships between companies.
- The passive, harmonious style is service-oriented. How will the deal manifest and benefit both parties?
- The analytical, cautious style is quality-oriented. How good is the service that they are buying and what are the risks?
Building a structure for the call around the personality and tendencies of each of these buyer types is something Becc Holland, the Sales Director at Chorus.ai, says is paramount.
As a Cold Caller educator, she often gives her callers examples of how to run through dialogue with prospects, each portion of their scripts purposefully driven. Her scripts help callers quickly identify what type of lead they are speaking with and how to move from opening greetings to setting meetings.
Each moment of a call carries import, but the first thirty seconds of a call is the most important.
Scripts are an easy way to help a caller navigate the needs of their prospects, and every caller must have a plan for a longer conversation.
Keep the prospect on the phone and build rapport -meetings get set.
Telemarketing Outsourcing Companies
Winning companies in 2020 are outsourcing Cold Calling Services to Lead Generation Specialists more and more because it's low-risk, more flexible, and much cheaper than how companies have historically approached developed calling leads.
SalesHive has designed a result-driven sales development and management system to scale outreach, campaign performance and managing pipeline to track clients. Outsourcing Cold Calling Service companies like SalesHive also brings the additional benefit that costs normally associated with in-house Cold calling systems are burdened with them, in-house.
During the ongoing period of Covid-19 budgets are getting tighter, and expendable cash in thinning out. The nice thing about SalesHive is they handle their cold calling payment in-house so that outsourcing clients don’t need to carry the burden of commissions or taxes.
The US-based outbound telemarketing cold calling team is helping many companies succeed as the world pushes further into 2020 by supplementing a weakened email channel with cold calling services.
There are times of progression in the business world, and there are times of regression, but one thing is certain.
Successful outreach to potential leads in 2020 will come easier when bolstered by Lead Generation Cold Calling.
