This is a question that is often asked by our potential clients: how many appointments will you guarantee per 60-hour campaign?
At Direct B2B Telemarketing, we do not guarantee a specific number of appointments, or even an estimate. We prefer to guarantee excellent, well-documented and transparent work by putting you in touch with potential customers who are genuinely interested in talking to you to find out more about your offer. In this way we create a concrete sales potential for your company.
An hourly rate guarantees the motivation to generate quality appointments.
There is a significant advantage to hourly pricing: a great improvement in the quality of appointments in the short, medium and long term compared to appointment-based pricing. Quality is defined as the chance that an interview with a prospect will result in a sale or a business relationship. A quality appointment is one where you arrive prepared with all the information you have obtained during the telephone canvassing about your prospect’s needs. Moreover, this prospect is already well informed, has understood the broad outlines of your offer and has documented his or her interest in learning more. All this allows you to get straight to the point from the start of the meeting – so we put you well ahead in the sales funnel.
Conversely, a poor quality appointment will get you in front of a prospect with little interest, no budget or decision-making power. And you want to avoid that at all costs. Why pay for a telemarketing service that only generates you wasted time and money?
Hard-to-acquire leads.
Let’s take a concrete example of a client who offers the services of a telemarketing company X that guarantees 20 prospecting appointments, payable per appointment or, worse, in blocks of 20 appointments.The first appointments are probably of a still acceptable quality by falling with a little luck on decision makers open to an appointment, small businesses with little potential but easier to interest. Potential customers with more potential but with decision-makers who are harder to reach or interest will be left out: the strategy is to look for the low-hanging fruit first. On the other hand, the more the campaign progresses, the more difficult it becomes to get an appointment quickly. The telemarketer, also paid per appointment obtained, will realize that it will become more and more difficult to get an appointment, and paying more attention to his own performance than to the potential created for the customer, he will start to persuade the prospect to get appointments, coming out with more and more irrelevant arguments, almost forcing him to accept the appointment – you will have the price to pay twice, once for paying the telemarketing provider for the appointment and another time for having gone to meet a person who did not really want to see you.
So when a telemarketing company X charges per appointment, they will naturally go after the ones that are easiest to get from their B2B prospect list. It’s faster and more profitable for them. The client will have 20 scheduled meetings, but how many of them will be profitable or will bring him interesting prospects?
In conclusion, the potential created will be less, on everything in the medium to long term, because the motivations of the client and the telemarketing provider (and the telemarketer) are not aligned in the same direction.
Inversely, let’s take the example of hourly pricing.
The resources at Direct B2B Telemarketing are also focused on getting as many meetings as possible, but only quality meetings. They will also take the easiest appointments, making sure the quality is up to par, but they will from the beginning also attack the ones that are harder to acquire, that require multiple calls and follow-ups, but that create much more potential. We build up banks of follow-ups, regular follow-ups with the most interesting and interested prospects, so that we are informed when a new project is born and considered as a potential supplier.
Our clients are always informed not only of the appointments, but also of the follow-ups obtained and of any action we have taken. This transparency allows the client to follow closely the development of each prospect, allowing him to intervene to take care of a follow up himself because he considers his knowledge as an expert will already be necessary at that moment. This closeness and good communication, supported by a pricing per hour, guarantees the best results. Thus we manage to always create new potential throughout the business relationship with our customers and for this reason we have an excellent retention of customers who are happy to refer to us.
A telemarketing campaign includes the following elements
Implementation of operational strategy
- Preparation of the sales pitch
- Researching a list of prospects according to target definition
Testing of the sales pitch:
- 50-100 calls made to discuss with a dozen decision-makers
Telephone prospecting :
- calls made to targeted prospects in the database
- Telephone follow-ups
In conclusion, with the same available budget, the potential created by a campaign billed per hour will be much higher than by a campaign billed per appointment, over the medium and long term, because the motivations of the client and the telemarketing provider (and the telemarketer) are aligned in the same direction.
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