White paper on the necessary changes needed for conducting successfull telemarketing campaigns post pandemic in 2022

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06/01/2022
Telemarketing
Strategy
2022

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Climate Change
The dust has hopefully settled.
The foundations of Sales and Marketing have shifted dramatically due to the Covid 19 pandemic
and with this tectonic shift, mountainous challenges have arisen within the ecosystem that were
not as prevalent as they are at present. In response to these climate changes within the industry, it
is clear that both commercial giants and new start-up organizations are making every effort to
come to terms with the new status quo, with most still in the throes of transformation and digital
shake up.
Continued limitations upon traditional prospection channels like physical sales meetings, product
demos, in-person events/trade shows etc. have meant an increase in the use of the remaining
communication options available within prospection. Within the US B2B marketing industry, in
person marketing events/trade shows were seen as key for driving sales conversion for in 2020
(Source: Demand Gen Report (DGR), “Demand Generation Benchmark Study: Quality Over Quantity Takes Center Stage For Demand Marketers,” Jan 30, 2020)
With this no longer being an option, it has often led to rushed sales callout strategies in both 2020
and in 2021 and this has resulted in many now experiencing over saturation of a target market
and/or shrinkage of potential contact and target databases due to requested removals and/or opt-
outs.
The question needing answered in this shifting competitive and now often political impacted
landscape is, as the industry strives to capture revenues and hit margins, how does it successfully
implement the need of prospection and marketing through telemarketing to capitalize upon the
new topology of the post pandemic landscape?
The answer is not surprisingly, through planning, maintenance and upkeep.

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Plan your climb carefully.
Knowing the lay of the land within the industry you are in is absolutely the key to having the right
strategy and approach to the market through telemarketing for any product, service, or marketing
effort. Without this forethought and planning any campaign set up will not only run an extremely
high risk of burning valuable time and resources, but it may also have the potential to cause
irreparable harm to a company’s image by winning “share of mind” for all the wrong reasons.
A report from Ascend2 and its Research Partners examined what strategic elements contribute to
a successful lead nurturing program.
(About the Data: Findings are based on an April 2021 survey of 325 B2B and B2C marketers, 42% of whom work at companies with more than 50 employees.)
While targeted content is considered one of the most essential elements of being successful, 43%
of respondents within the report say that the creation of this content is extremely challenging.
Having both marketing and sales efforts aligned (36%) also stands out as a challenge to lead
nurturing with 32% saying that allocating adequate resources is another serious challenge with
which they contend.
It is clear then that in the current climate, Sales and Marketing Managers must be very intentional
as to where they spend their resources and time. This includes being extremely selective about
prospection or marketing drives regarding to whom they would like to approach, the targeted
content they will offer and how often they will contact. Focus should be on promoting optimal
efficiency in both calling and approach. This requires selection of the correct prospects for
inclusion in the target database and simplification of the right targeted content. The message of
which must be sculpted to pique curiosity within the chosen prospect. Why curiosity and not the
traditional interest or need discovery?
Two main reasons:
1. Simply put it’s because the latter two are no longer enough on their own. There has been a
shift in the motivational factors for accepting a meeting to discuss any product and service.
Most industries are challenged to meet the increasingly high expectations of empowered
and less loyal clients and have been diligently investing in client retention. This in turn has
led to a lessoning of “need” and “interest” of said clients to look towards other offerings.

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2. Curiosity is human nature and a time and tested method for being a motivating factor. By
garnering intrigue and cultivating investment in the conversation, the prospect has a reason
for listening and possibly providing the desired outcome of the callout action. In their study
of "The Business case for Curiosity", Harvard Business Review also found that curiosity is
interconnected with less defensiveness and less stress. Meaning the potential level of
acceptance of the call is at a level that could potentially allow time for any message to be
given.
Check and maintain your equipment.
While climbing, you can be using the best safety gear in the world but if you continue to use the
same old rope, it’s not going to end well. Very similar to this, the data used within any campaign
must be of the highest quality your company can achieve. This will be a challenge to create but
even more so to maintain, as was shown in The Gartner State of Sales Analytics where the report
revealed that sales reps are considered to have one of the worst abilities to read, write and
communicate data or to describe the use-case application and resulting value (43%) with
marketing doing slightly better (49%) in comparison with the rest of their organization.
The fault, however, does not only fall at the feet of sales or with their admin and communication of
data alone. Siloed processes and divisions within organizations are often key obstacles to creating
and implementing an effective target database to maximize the efficiency of a targeted
telemarketing project.
Couple this with the yearly churn of key positions within the organizations of our maintained
databases and the challenge of having the correct data makes itself abundantly clear.
However, it is also clear that in 2022, it is going to be imperative for our organizations to do so. All
effort possible should be given to data hygiene, as this is the building blocks for all campaigns that
will be performed during lead nurturing. It will also help in defining the targeted content and
determines the measurements that can be put in place to measure success. It is also the
fundamental reason as to why Sales and Marketing find these three steps so difficult.

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Topology of 2022
Despite the challenges in the market, there are also opportunities for growth. However, making
this growth opportunity a reality requires simultaneous progress along two trajectories
It’s time for Sales and Marketing to recognize the imperative by becoming more data and target
content driven. If we want to avoid over saturation of target markets or shrinkage of potential
contact databases in 2022, change will be necessary. This can be achieved through accelerated
transformation of how telemarketing is viewed and implemented within the lead nurturing process.
If 2020, and then 2021 have taught us anything, it is that quality wins over quantity, and this lesson
should be taken and implemented into our telemarketing campaigns for 2022. Not just towards
results and to measure deliverables, but also upon the outset and creation of any telemarketing
campaign.
This should be applied from when we start to craft a targeted content message, to the creation of a
well-researched and properly segmented database. It should include how we manage the
campaign, from how we onboard the calling agent, to how we ensure the data is being gathered in
each sprint to allow for data privacy compliance and business intelligence reporting, based against
informed and correct key performance indicators.
By doing this, we will not only be well prepared for any mountainous challenges our industry or
political landscape may give us in the future, but this will also put us in good stead for the current
climate we find ourselves going into in 2022.
In this way it may be possible to not only improve the lead nurturing process of our company with
regards to its operations and results, but perhaps more importantly, the target customers
experience of this process as well, so they want to hear more.

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“Over every mountain, there is
a path, although it may not be
seen from the valley.”
- Theodore Roethke
Author: Kevin Watt