Becoming Dolly Parton to Thwart Insane Telemarketers

Fun fact#1 -  I can mimic a variety of accents and phone personalities.  Now you may wonder, why the heck does that matter?

Well recently, I've had a couple of persistent telemarketers routinely call my office every other day in the hope to get connected to me or to one of my colleagues (both in Boston and Paris).

Fun fact #2 - I routinely use those accents and personalities against telemarketers - just for fun (I would say that I am trying to teach them a lesson - but they obviously don't learn).

Telemarketing is defined as "the act of selling, soliciting or promoting a product or service over the telephone." Now, let me be crystal clear - when done correctly, to the right audience, with the right tactic and message - telemarketing can be highly effective.

So what makes these gnat-like telemarketers so bad that I pull out my Dolly Parton accent?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again

 and expecting different results.  - Albert Einstein 

Without naming names, I'll explain a bit about why these folks are destined to fail (and remain insane):

• They never explain up-front what they are offering.
• They never clearly explain who they are.
• They lie and say that the person that they want to speak with has spoken with them (trust me, they haven't!).
• They refuse to give proper contact details for actual call-backs.
• They ignore requests to be taken off of their call list.

At least in ambulance chasing lead generation, which I recently blogged about, they at least try to form a suitable reason as to why they are calling,

What these insane folks don't understand is that people like me know all the tricks - I check caller ID, I run a google search on you when you have me on the phone, I look you up on LinkedIn to see if you are SOMEHOW connected to me, and when you violate my request to be taken off their call list, I will submit a complaint to the FTC.

By the way, here are the links that you may want to identify do-not-call violators:

• The National Do Not Call Registry  https://www.donotcall.gov/

• Federal Trade Commission, Q&A regarding National Do Not Call Registry.....http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer…

So what could they do differently?

Learn my business needs - if you read my company's website, it is pretty clear that we are not a classic business - and probably don't have a classic B2B business need.  How does your business service actually apply to my business model?  Show me that you understand me (and my company).

Stress your value up-front to whomever answers the phone.  You may think that you have reached an assistant - but you could be speaking to a director, vp, or to an assistant.  And if you don't understand that each has power in their own right within a company, then you need to grow a brain.  Most assistants run their offices, most junior people have friends that are mid-level people, and word travels fast amongst departments when the encounter idiots.  Plus, when you make rude comments to said "assistant" when you can't get past the initial gatekeeper, those comments WILL be relayed to the the person you are targeting.  NOTE: I don't like being called a liar by a sleazy British biz dev guy who doesn't realize that he is actually speaking to his mark.

Identify yourself clearly.  This one snarky telemarketer chooses to identify him by the initials of his company versus the full name of his company.  In the era of Google, that will not stop me from knowing who you are.  

Analyze why you haven't succeeded thus far with your telemarketing.  If I am just a "task" in your Salesforce.com calendar - and between appointments, they have not thought of why they still haven't connected with their prospect (me), shame on them.  Especially when you have tried at least 20 times to reach me.  Just a clue: there may be a problem to your approach.  Just sayin'.

If the telemarketing community decides to not follow these "hints", get ready for some more Dolly Parton.

Ambulance Chasing Lead Generation

Recently at Nuxeo, we had the pleasure to announce that our investors funded an additional $3.3M in our company to continue the expansion of our North American business.

What I had forgotten about is that the "Ambulance Chasers" in lead generation would start calling once the press release hit the wire.

Typically, the term "Ambulance Chaser" is reserved for lawyers that solicit business from the victims - at the scene of the crime.

However, in lead generation/sales, there are a group of bottom-feeders that troll for business based on such business announcements. Keep in mind, 99% of these folks have never done nor asked for our business before - nor do they understand our business pains. They are simply trying to get a slice of that money.

It is one of my biggest pet peeves.

They have no understanding of my business issues, they don't care why we got this funding (or how we plan to use it) - and worse, they set themselves up for me (as the consumer) to never want to use their services. It's not just that they annoy me temporarily - it actually makes me turn to other vendors if I do want that type of service.

You may ask "why" it annoys me so much - especially in light of the fact that I'm a staunch supporter of creative ways to find the next hot lead.

It is my pet peeve due to the fact that it is the equivalent to "spray and pray" lead generation - aka SPAM, mass mailings, cold calling centers that have NO background about your specific business.

In the era of Google, one can find out a wealth of information. Both about the company itself - and its principles - but also the management (including their Facebook pages, Twitter streams etc).

Why in the world would anyone elect to give business to someone a) who doesn't have a freakin' clue about their goals, b) who can't articulate how specifically their service can help with those business goals, and c) puts a classic "sales cycle theater" pressure on them to make a decision ASAP (thanks to Cheryl McKinnon for teaching us about sales cycle theater) before the end of their fiscal quarter?

If any of them think that they are going to be successful with me, you're not. Good luck finishing out your fiscal quarter bottom-feeders.

The shelf-life of contact data

Have you ever had bad milk in your fridge? Or rotten veggies? They stink - and you have no way of using them (despite how much you may want to).

Same goes for lead data - I've advocated in previous posts, a routine cleaning of leads - but what is the real shelf-life of a lead? When does a lead start to smell like rotten milk?

In the era of downsizing, restructuring, and acquisition amalgamation, how realistic is it that someone will be at the same email address in six months? By leveraging drip marketing campaigns, you can relieve the burden off of your insides sales team to maintain this data point - instead, you can let your automated system do the work for you in contact communications and the ultimate smelling of bad milk (hypothetically).

Think about it - let's say you have 10000 new leads per month - if you enact a drip campaign based on interest, you have 10000 follow-ups that don't have to be handled by hand.

As for marketing automation, I had a recent discussion with a peer about the fact that he routinely receives emails from "bots" (as in email robots). His commentary was that he hated bot communications - and that he could spot them a mile away.

I partially agreed - how many times have you received a routine email that contains some sort of variable data field that is inaccurate - and therefore, when received, you roll your eyes?? But isn't the reason that you roll your eyes is because of bad data - not the fact they came from an email robot?

In light of how vast the universe is - and the fact that everyone is trying to do more with less (i.e. be more efficient), why not have an email robot handle the smelling of the milk?

By looking at the data that I've had access to, the true shelf-life (on average) of a lead is six months - within six months, something has changed....the lead has changed companies, the company has been acquired, the sales rep has left your company. This is why you must automate this type of follow-up - so that you are not dependent on people. After awhile, people/leads start to smell like bad milk.

An automated system never minds smelling bad milk! :)

Defining Need: Distinguising between "Need", "Want", and "Like to Have" - Part II

How do you elevate subtle need (aka "Want" or "Like to Have") to true need?

Some would say the answer is to "gate" your valuable pieces of content/marketing (i.e. behind a web form) - but that is close to the age of the dinosaurs.

Instead, you can gather data about your prospects in a much more innocuous way - let's start with the premise that you already know who you are talking to (as in they have a login profile - which I highly recommend for custom communications that are totally customer-centric).

How do you get that very specific data from your prospects - without them really feeling that they are giving up all the details?

You need to structure your campaigns to include communications that require dialogue - and dialogue that has no other purpose than asking for that dialogue. Simply said, stop selling.

Well, not entirely.

For every time that you ask their opinions, their perspectives, their questions, you have an opportunity to move subtle need to more definitive need.

• In the middle of a webinar, have you ever run a poll?
• Have you ever sent a pre-course email to prospects asking for the questions that they want to ask the speaker?
• Post-webinar, have you ever asked for them to comment on the webinar (NOT about product)?
• Have you surveyed the clients pre and post event?
• At a live event, have you stopped pushing the product and listened to the prospects comments?
• Have you actually called each and every prospect to see what they thought of the program?
• Have you instructed your teams to call before and after support renewal dates just to provide another level of customer support - again, no sales call allowed?

Without doing a variety of these tasks, your teams lose an opportunity to move the subtle need to true need.

Another KISS question for today's posts: "When was the last time that you spoke to your client, non-sales related, before a new deal/support renewal came up?"

What makes a great lead?

So it would be so simple if the phones just rang off the hook, filled with customers and net new prospects with a PO in hand, ready to buy, and your demand generation teams just had to pick up the phone and keep track of those PO numbers.

If you are that lucky, I would highly suggest that you play the Lotto.

For most everyone else, high volume/high quality lead generation is just not that easy.

However, before you set your plans up to generate all this volume of terrific leads, have you asked yourself, or more importantly, your sales teams, what makes a great lead?

A classic way is to identify BANT - budget, authority, need, timeframe. Sure, folks may call these items different things - but ultimately it comes down to these four items. The order of "BANT", in my opinion, is a bit misleading....but the acronym is not as easy on the tongue. I prefer the order of NABT.

Since this blog is "The KISS Principle of Lead Generation", your first KISS question is "What makes a great lead - for your team?"