Inbound vs Outbound marketing
Inbound marketing methods were developed as a response to an overwhelming presence of pushy outbound strategies like direct mail and ubiquitous aggressive advertising. The development of the Internet also helped buyers shield themselves from unwanted marketing messages, allowing them to conduct their own research whenever they needed a service or product. As opposed to outbound marketing, inbound strategies seemed very useful, welcoming, and search-friendly.
Indeed, at some point in history outbound marketing was coming on too strong, but a lot has changed since that time. However, if implemented right, outbound cold calling can become one of the best methods to communicate a sales message to a target audience. It is a straightforward source of information about the desires and needs of potential customers and an extremely productive and cost-effective means to reach out to prospects as well.
Luckily, many industries reconsidered the way they feel about outbound marketing. These days, outbound cold-calling reinvents itself as a productive approach for structuring campaigns. It generates revenues to a number of businesses, including B2B companies from Fortune 500 list. Nobody denies the value of inbound campaigns, yet the latter bring much better results if combined with outbound strategies.
Outbound marketing tools and agents’ productivity
There is a number of instruments that help outbound call center agents do their job more effectively. It is much easier now to carry out B2C and B2B sales, and fortunately, the image of outbound marketing slowly but surely loses its negative implications. The right marketing tools are essential since they help the companies save the two most valuable business assets – money and time.
The routine activities that used to be inevitable for outbound call center agents include:
- Prioritizing between the lead and deciding whom to call first
- Dialing phone numbers manually
- Leaving a voice message if there is no answer
- Leaving notes about each call
- Performing the lead qualification
Despite these tasks being essential, they are incredibly time-consuming. Agents are forced to spend most of their shift on technical operations, which hampers the productivity of the entire call center. Luckily, modern outbound call centers can get rid of these issues.
One word: AUTOMATION
Below, we’ll give you some tips as to the changes to be implemented in your call center to improve agents’ productivity.
Use automated dialing system
The first and foremost thing that you need to do to increase the efficiency of your outbound call center is to stop making your agents dial all numbers manually. Dialing by hand is a dull and wearisome task, especially if the agents have thousands of prospects on their list or if they work with international markets. An autodialer is a key to an effective performance. Just imagine how much time and efforts will be saved if agents simply load the phone numbers of leads in the system that will automatically dial them one by one.
Leave pre-recorded voice messages
This is another fantastic cold-calling hack that saves a lot of agent’s time. When a sales representative calls a prospect but reaches a voicemail, one has to repeat the same message time and again. Similarly to manual dialing, this operation is the opposite of productivity. At present, agents don’t have to repeat the same message a thousand times a day. Sales reps only need to press a corresponding button to leave a message to the prospect. It is possible to implement IVR (Interactive Voice Response) for outbound calls. This technology also allows you to process a large customer base without the involvement of operators (it automatically calls each number in the database and leaves pre-recorded messages to everyone).
Implement a good sales system
A convenient and functional CRMand acloud inside sales software are essential for providing a great customer service. Namely, CRM allows you to view the entire history of communication with the client. Agents can see the issues that their customers would face in the past, how they reacted to previous suggestions and so on. A comprehensive CRM system ensures an easy access to all that information, which benefits both the agents (who already have everything they need for each conversation) and the customers (who don’t have to recall their experience time and again).
On the final note
Looking for the right tools to improve the productivity of your employees? Need to automate routine processes in your outbound call center? Or maybe searching for comprehensive software to handle inbound calls and provide first-class customer support? Do your own research, evaluate options, and choose the one that your sales team will love.
