Setting up a New B2B Telesales Channel for an Energy Provider
For many people telesales is just a synonym for deceit or scams. Nevertheless, it is still a very common and popular way for 2B2 marketeers to approach prospects.
Even in this digital age telesales turns out to be still a crucial element in the marketing strategy of many successful professionals.
Context
After a successful set-up of a telesales channel for the B2C market, our client decided to start a telesales channel for the B2B market as well.
From scratch, strategic partners had to be chosen, data-providers, target groups defined, processes written, training developed, agents screened and trained, …
Stepwise approach
- First of all a thorough business case was created to estimate ROV and acquisition cost, hence feasibility of the project.
- For the pilot-period of this project, 2 external telesales partners were attracted, out of 5 call centers that handed in a tender.
- A Data partner was chosen, and specific target groups were defined.
- Processes were established, and external agents were briefed and trained.
- Reports were created
- During and after kick-off, partners were followed-up and supported
Key challenge during the project
The set-up and roll-out of the new sales channel went smoothly. However, as it turned out, finding qualitative data seemed to be the biggest challenge for success. Accurate and up to data databases for B2B are much, much harder to find than in the B2C-market.
What to do about it? Choose your data partner carefully, crosscheck with existing databases, credit-checks performed before using database.
Results
Within 2 months, 2 external telesales team were up & running selling gas & electricity contracts to B2B customers.
Success rates are lower in volume than in B2C due to data quality issues, but return on investment is higher since margins are higher (and acquisition cost lower)
As the sales channel grows and better databases become available, and awareness on the market grows, conversion will increase as well.
