Contacting decision makers is hard. They're either always at their desks or at a meeting and when the day ends, they convert into regular citizens, regular consumers, concerned now only with the small stuff. Trying to get them interested in something as large an advertising service cannot be done when they only time they'll ever be interested in that happens to be in the same time they can't be reached by regular advertising methods. It's no surprise that you've decided telemarketing. The phone is one of the few channels of communication that will get you in touch with the specific person in charge.
On the other hand, telemarketing is hard so you'll take another common route which is outsourcing it to a telemarketing company. When you're looking them up however, you'll eventually be told that industry expertise is a trait to watch out for and measure.
However, just how would you define such expertise? At first, you might think industry expertise basically means you should outsource a company who knows your industry. They're supposed to know what you do so that you won't have too much trouble filling them in on the details.
Well that's a start but you need to go further than that (and logically, it actually should). If a telemarketing group is as knowledgeable about your industry as it says it is, then it should also know what it would take to promote it and spark some interest among your targets. If they can't spark that interest, then they can't start the qualification process and as a result, you won't be getting a lot of B2B sales leads.
Getting that interest though would imply they'll need to learn more about your industry. They'll need to be familiar with the industries that you're targeting. Why? Different industries have different markets and you should know very well how different markets respond to varying advertising techniques.
Some products like snack food would be marketed towards younger generations and are thus advertised in commercials, small portions of the newspaper, decorated sections in a supermarket etc. Other products like novels are promoted either on the internet or through reviews, magazines, and best-seller lists.
Now it's established that it would be better to orient your target on the whole details of your business when you're finally attempting to close (like in a scheduled meeting). Still, that doesn't mean knowledge of your target's industry won't play a role. If you want a bunch of telemarketers calling for you, you'd want them to know how to tell if a particular company might be in need of what you have. That need obviously lies in their preferences and those preferences are strongly influenced by the industry they're in.
Simply put, industry expertise isn't just about know what your business can do. It's know about what is it about your targets that would make them want to do business with you. It's not enough to just give them a brief overview of your company and then just let them approach your targets with an overly generalized approach. That just results in a qualification process that produces half-baked marketing leads. You need them to be very specific with what they mean by industry expertise.
Kurt Wyatt is a B2B lead generation and appointment setting specialist that aids direct marketing and advertising companies in generating quality sales leads and appointments. Kurt invites you to visit http://www.dmacentral.com for more information.
