“Time is money” — nothing could be more accurate for those working in Sales or Business Development (BD). During the lead generation stage, how can you accelerate the sales process and achieve maximum efficiency through cold calling?
▸ Enspyre Insights
Customer experience is extremely important, especially in the B2B sales cycle. In addition to demonstrating sufficient professionalism and problem-solving capabilities, clients hope to see additional value, such as: How much can costs be reduced? How much can revenue be increased?
Just as more and more high school students take college credits before graduation to create an advantage for future studies, companies that conduct pre-sales research can build a solid foundation for cold outreach. This allows them to identify potential customers’ pain points and devise entry strategies one step ahead of the competition.
If you would also like to understand your target market’s product usage, budget, and purchasing intent, please refer to our B2B Lead Generation services.
Sales Skill #2: “The Critic is the Buyer”—Keep Communicating with Those Who Don’t Buy
We all know that a product cannot be sold to everyone; however, how much effort should you invest in those who don’t buy? First, you need to understand the reasons for their refusal and the frequency of contact. Oftentimes, the reason for not buying can actually be a latent business opportunity. Once you miss the timing, it is very common to have to wait another 3 to 5 years.
“In the projects we execute, about 30% involve updating existing client lists. Often, because a company had low purchasing intent or no budget at the time, they weren’t followed up with regularly. This makes it even more difficult for sales representatives to re-engage later on.”
▸ Enspyre Insights
According to the law of diminishing marginal utility in economics, contacting potential customers too frequently may lead to counterproductive results. Using the IT industry as an example, we recommend having “meaningful communication”—including phone calls, meetings, or on-site visits—on average every 2-3 months. Through Enspyre’s lead generation services, such as regular customer data updates, seminar invitations, and sales appointment setting, companies can ensure the real-time accuracy of their CRM lists, allowing sales teams to filter and focus on Hot Leads for follow-up.
Sales Skill #3: Encourage Customers to Ask Questions
Asking the right questions is the foundation of successful business development; you explore the underlying reasons and opportunities through the customer’s responses. The best interaction is a back-and-forth dialogue. However, how do you break through when you encounter a contact person with a flat tone who isn’t keen on talking?
Telemarketing is a common method of cold outreach. Enspyre’s telemarketers average over 80-100 calls per day. Our job is to generate a certain level of interest in the product or company from potential customers, then collect information through various questions to help clients understand market conditions in advance and strategize their timing.
“We have a client in the IT industry with over 20 sales representatives and assistants. They generated a steady list of leads every month but couldn’t increase sales. The problem was an inability to ask the right questions or guide customers to ask them. After outsourcing to Enspyre, we used half the time to find a list of leads with much higher accuracy.”
▸ Enspyre Insights
How can you identify business opportunities during a conversation? This can be achieved through practice and accumulated experience. However, phone communication is just one of the many skills a salesperson needs. Most large corporations divide sales roles into Pre-Sales and Post-Sales. Smaller companies can also follow this model by outsourcing the early stages of lead generation. This accelerates the business development process and allows the sales team to focus their energy on closing deals.
Learn More: Truly Effective! Three Keys to Successful B2B Cold Outreach
Sales Skill #4: Seize the Golden Opportunity to Close
In B2B development, a 6-8 month cycle from initial contact to closing is normal; however, customers always want their problems solved as quickly as possible. Just like with online shopping, too many steps can make a customer impatient or even cause you to miss out on business that has already come knocking. An overly lengthy service onboarding process can easily cause a client to lose patience and compromise the overall customer experience.
“A digital marketing agency commissioned Enspyre to develop leads among companies in the Greater Taipei area with a capital of over 10 million TWD. We successfully generated 20 meeting opportunities within one month. Unfortunately, the sales team followed up too slowly and took too long to provide quotes. As a result, the final number of closed deals was far lower than expected, and the hard-earned lead list failed to reach its maximum potential.”
▸ Enspyre Insights
Whether it is B2B or B2C sales, we recommend completing the process from cold outreach to sales appointments and quoting within 3 months. Keeping a tight rhythm in business development can significantly shorten the time to close a deal.
To Boost Lead Generation Efficiency, Find High-Quality Prospects Fast!
Finding potential customers is the starting point of business development. A high-quality and precise lead list is the ultimate secret to closing deals. Since the B2B development process involves so many moving parts, it’s crucial to establish clear targets from the very beginning.
Whether you are in the IT industry, E-commerce, Martech, or Mechanical Engineering, Enspyre has nearly 20 years of experience in business development, perfectly combining marketing and sales expertise. Our team can help you quickly reach potential markets, understand customer needs and pain points, conduct sales research, or arrange sales appointments. If you want to accelerate your development speed and efficiency, please contact us—let us help you!
