B2B lead generation via social media

Social media marketing, particularly the social networking sites have opened up new arenas for B2B lead generation. The BPOs make use of different strategies to make the most out of these social networking sites.

There are different tools that a call center service provider can make use of. What are they?

• Social Networking on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc
• Review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor
• Social News on Reddit and Digg
• Social Bookmarking on Google and Delicious
• Collaboration and Social Answer sites like Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers
The strategies that BPO agents use for the task:

• The first and foremost step in lead generation is to identify the target audience. Generating leads is almost impossible without identifying the target.
• The social networking sites prove to be of real help as far as creating a positive brand identity is concerned. A positive brand identity attracts new customers and retains the old ones.
• These social networking sites are the ideal place for building networks and in business no one can ignore the importance of networks.

With social media marketing adding to the number of tools at the disposal of call centers, lead generation activity is all set to experience a real boom.

Software for Tracking and Managing Leads

A business always look for ways to increase their sales, customer base and return on investment (ROI); for this to happen, it is crucial to integrate the efforts that go into lead generation. The businesses hire call centers for generating qualified leads in good numbers, and the lead generation contact centers in turn use advanced software to help them do this. The software helps to drive a huge number of visitors to the client’s website, land page submissions, as well as gain leads to through emails and other efforts.

The lead management software used by the outbound call centers track the sales leads all through the sales cycle from lead generation all the way to closing the sales. The software helps the businesses understand what efforts are working, and which kind of customers are usually buying with a click of the mouse.

The software can also be used by the call centers for automating the lead management procedure, and for this the task management and workflow automation activities work greatly. The right software for tracking and managing leads helps a company make a lot of sales to a huge number of people in a short time. The software enables to capture leads, track them and also follow them up, helping the sales and profits of the businesses boost up. The online lead tracking and lead management software has to be one that is user-friendly, so that the agents do not take a long time in learning how it has to be used.

Lead Generation Software for Gathering Hot Leads

Outbound contact centers offer lead generation as a service to businesses in order to help them gain more customers and increase sales in the process. Getting new customers attracted to the products and services is not a matter of joke and the right call center business companies know how to go about gaining fresh leads for the businesses. The right software for generating leads must have a user friendly platform so that it is not a headache for the call center business companies to get them trained in using the software; much time and expenses are not to be used for the training process.

Advanced lead generation software helps businesses to identify, capture as well as convert the online leads into good opportunities for sales through the provision of unique lead intelligence. Lead intelligence is the way the software gains insight into the buying intent as well as the purchasing process of the prospects. The software for generating leads used in contact centers also help to recognize anonymous visitors to the client’s website, analyze their purchasing intent and their interests for paving the path for targeted sales response.

The software analyzes the sophisticated behavior of the consumers online and then finds out where the prospects are in the purchasing process. The software helps contact center agents concentrate on the lead nurturing programs, shortening the sales cycle, closing deals faster, and improvement of the all round marketing as well as sales productivity.

Diversify through Call Center Services

Business firms have to continuously expand their domain in order to prevent stagnation. Expanding business areas would mean that they need to carry out additional areas of work. For example, a consumer-oriented firm will be able to broaden their consumer base through the help of the Internet. In other words, they need call center services to help them out. A business firm cannot add infrastructure and skill sets overnight to handle the extra work load. A call center can step in and take over the work.

The most common form of diversification is to graduate from telemarketing services to online lead generation. Business firms have found out that the use of telemarketing calls is not a good option because of the restrictions clamped by telecom watchdogs like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The switch to online sales lead generation will help them bypass the restrictions and promote their products/services to a wider base of consumers.

Diversification also helps brands conduct market surveys for better product placement and branding. For a business firm, these are aspects that need professional help. Hiring a call center is the best option for these business firms.

Role of Emails in B2B Lead Generation

Emails are effective ways of communicating for B2B lead generation. Emails become necessary in this context because the call center is contacting with busy professionals. Telemarketing calls may not do the trick as you may never get them on the phone. You will have to email your call center services offer and other details. This email is just the opener. You will have to make follow-up calls, preferably on the same day that you send the email. Delays will make way for the email to be buried under piles of emails that they receive on a daily basis.

The emails that you draft for lead generation in B2B projects have to be well-written. The design, the template and the copy have to be professional. It’s the brochure that can get the call center sector the project. Make sure you personalize the email for the contact. Keep special attention to the kind of message that you are drafting. It must be written in a way that can grab and keep the attention of the reader. To make the email more authentic, include links to credible sources. You must pack the email with information that is relevant to the needs of the project. Include easy-to-find contact numbers so that they can easily get back to your inbound call center agents.

Websites for Lead Generation

Websites can be really useful as lead generation beds. But are the BPO units getting the most out of them? Seems that the answer is no! Let’s take a quick look at the ways in which call center units can work towards better sales lead generation through websites. To begin with, get the content right. Content drives not just traffic into the website, but also makes it possible for you to get repeat viewers. When the users like what they see on the website, both in terms of writing and designing, they will come back to know more. Keep adding fresh content every other day to keep the interest soaring.

Other ways to get lead generation going on the websites is to check up on what other features you can support. You can get online chat facilities that pop up on the website’s more popular pages. Your BPO agents need to be vigilant at all times to answer the chat enquiries that come in. Pack your website with action words like ‘Download Now’ and ‘Free Trial’. These help sales lead generation in that they call the user to action. You can also upload white papers and case studies of work that you have done in the telemarketing services chapter. These case studies are often the main reasons why a company would hire your call center services.

Tracking Metrics for BPO

The BPO industry has to develop flexible metrics for tracking their progress. For the traditional call center services like lead generation and telemarketing, they can continue to use the tried and tested formula. But for the new additions to the kitty, like online sales lead generation and customer service satisfaction, they have to work out different metrics. For example, you cannot measure customer satisfaction by checking out how many calls were received at the inbound call center desk. To estimate that, you will need to check for the number of first-call resolutions and hold time, etc. In other words, you will have to look at fresh perspectives to old processes.

As the case is, online lead generation is another area where the BPO units are not using their usual stringent tracking. It could be because the call centers are not comfortable with using the tracking tools like Google Analytics. However, the fact remains that much of the traffic coming into the websites is not being tapped to their potential. Similarly, the sales lead generation team is also losing out on more leads because they are not responding to the trends that work. It could be that there is a pattern that can get them more users, but the pattern lies in the wilderness because no one is keeping track of it.

Call Center Services on Different Channels

There are different channels on which call center services function these days. It’s not about the voice calls anymore. Telemarketing is now just a division of the call center. It’s not everything about the business process outsourcing. Non-voice methods like online lead generation and marketing through websites and emails are also prevalent. These new methods are taking BPO service towards fresh new territories. Clients want this multi-prong approach because that brings down the rate of failure. If they cannot tap the customer on one medium, they always have a second and third chance.

The ideal way to conduct call center services across the different media is to bring them all on a single platform. Make the different media complementary to each other. If you are making telemarketing calls for lead generation, back it up with the use of websites and emails. Similarly, when you are using websites and search engine optimization (SEO), you can direct the calls of the customers towards the inbound call center. When all of these different divisions are working in tandem, you have a better chance of generating rich revenues for the firm.

Customer Services through Twitter

Twitter is one website that offers multiple opportunities on multiple fronts. Just when call centers were thinking that this micro-blogging site could be the ideal launch pad for online lead generation, experts have found out a way to use it for customer service. When you are creating a Twitter page for your client or the brand, you will have customers on the list of followers. When they have certain issues with their purchase, they can leave tweets on your page. The proactive BPO team can source out these tweets and act on them instantly. A simple phone call would make a lot of difference to the disgruntled customer. Once you have made the connection, try to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Such methods of customer service do a world of good to the brand loyalty of your customers. They know that you are around to help them whenever they need you. Call centers have to work hard to establish this bond of trust. That comes from action rather than just promotional material written by your BPO writers. To make the right kind of brand loyalty, you will have to be there for the customers. Twitter is just another way to do it. If you have the intent of doing so, you can source more ways.

Email Lead Generation Debacle

Lead generation can be quite a disaster if you are depending on purchased email lists. When call centers are buying email databases from sources, they are making a mistake. It’s true that the BPO agents will get some email ids to write to, but writing to them won’t be of much value. These email ids have been subjected to several marketing campaigns conducted by call center units over time. They are now saturated with these newsletters and offers. They are done with the whole system! They will sooner than later reach out for the ‘Mark Spam’ button. If you are looking to do some quality sales lead generation through emails, you will have to try a different track.

Call centers can track the users visiting the client’s website and pick up email ids from there. It makes more sense to lead generation if you are writing to people who actually care about your products/services and your brand than rank strangers who know nothing about you. BPO agents can track these users and try to convert their curiosity into sales. You can direct your newsletters and other promotional material to these email ids. Come to think of it, the outbound call center agents can use these emails as reference as well. It makes the telemarketing calls more justified when they are preceded by emails.

Lead Generation Both Ways

As the ways of doing business changes, the onus of generating sales sometimes lie with the consumers! Yes, the consumers are the ones who often initiate the lead generation process. This is true for the call center units that rely on online methods to generate leads. The BPO units have the task of putting up content on the websites or on other promotional websites and directories. They don’t have the active role of contacting the users. The initiative lies with the user to call the phone answering service and ask for additional information or ask about purchasing the product/service. When they make the call, the lead is generated. So, in a way, the BPO service only plays a passive role in this cycle.

The same can be said about certain call center services, like finance or insurance. There are lots of customers out there who want to think over the offer made by the call center agent. They may wish to speak to some friends or experts that they know. In such cases, the BPO agents have to give them the due time. This is a sort of passive sales lead generation, too. If the customer is not interested in the offer that you have made, then they are not going to call back or encourage follow-up calls. On the other hand, should they call back, the sales cycle is complete.

Converting Leads in Lead Generation

Leads can be helpful in building up a business. But if those leads are not converting into sales and adding to the revenue, the lead generation process isn’t working for you. Call centers are hired on the basis of number of leads that they can provide. In their haste to hit those numbers, the outbound call center agents often pack in half-baked leads into the kitty. These are not qualified leads and there are no verifications done on them. So, the in-house sales team of the clients may be in for a nasty shock when they call these leads to ink the deal! BPO units have to take care that they provide only qualified leads to the clients. Otherwise it reflects poorly on the call center services that are being done.

The percentage of conversion of leads is important to calculate the returns on investment in the lead generation procedure. Clients are not willing to spend anything unless they find some validation of their investment. Call center services don’t come cheap and they wouldn’t like to find out at the end of the sales lead generation campaign that the leads they got amount to nothing. A dismally poor conversion rate would mean the failure of the campaign. The call centers have to verify and follow-up on leads to ensure they stay warm. You can use a variety of media like emails, text messages and phone calls to check up on your leads.

Call Center Coaching

When the experts say that the location of the call center has got nothing to do with their call center services, they are probably more correct than they intended to be. The quality of work done by a BPO unit is measured not by the latitudes and longitudes, but rather by the amount of training that the agents receive. Training in the art of telemarketing and lead generation makes more of a difference to the productivity of the unit than any other investment. You may argue that technology is more important for BPO service but the fact remains that without training in that technology, the agents cannot really exploit its benefits.

But the sad reality is that many call centers shy away from conducting proper training sessions. They curtail the training days to the bare minimum so that they can get the BPO agents to start work. This does not cut down costs by any means. Rather this sort of an approach puts more on the call center agent’s plate that you intend to. Lack of training leads to mistakes and also stress for the telemarketing executive. The BPO service managers find themselves hand-holding agents because they are not being to cope with what is expected from them. Finally you find that your project is racing against an impossible deadline!

Voice Broadcasting for Lead Generation

The voice broadcasting scenario for lead generation companies holds a lot of hope and promise. Many call center units are not aware of using this procedure while some others are prejudiced against using this. They are wary that they will end up rubbing the telecom authorities the wrong way if they use voice broadcasts from the outbound call center desk. But that fear is not valid. Telecom authorities are not going after you if you leave the Do Not Call list aside. Make sure that the BPO agents are not sending out the broadcast to the registered numbers. That’s the only precaution that you have to take. If you can get that sorted out, this method can be a clincher for your sales lead generation method.

Voice broadcasting is the method by which you can send out a pre-recorded telemarketing message to thousands of prospective consumers at one go! It’s like a direct marketing ad spot for radio or TV, only that this is meant for telephones. The convenience of this lead generation tool is that you can reach out to a number of people at one shot. That’s something that saves time and also goes easy on the resources. When the interested consumers call your inbound call center desk, you can take the sales lead generation forward.

Optimizing Websites for Lead Generation

It’s true that business firms need a website to give a shape to their online lead generation efforts. But the website has to be designed in a way that is conducive for sales lead generation. A hastily put up website will not serve any purpose for the call center team. No matter how much the outbound call center tries to promote the website, if the users don’t find much of value in the content or if the design is not attractive to the eye, the conversion of the traffic into sales will not happen. BPO web designers have to keep in mind certain aspects of the online marketing process when they are designing websites.

Let me give you an example. Call center units often design websites with flash introductions. That is a regressive step, especially in the context of lead generation. Users don’t like the long time that flash introductions take to upload on their screens. They don’t like the bandwidth that it consumes. When they find flash designs, they quickly close the tab down. So the BPO unit cannot utilize the traffic that they got through tough sales lead generation. Similarly, when the BPO service web designers use heavy images on the website, it slows down the website. That is another turn off for the users. Call centers have to keep these aspects in mind when they are designing websites to market and promote products/services.

Auto Dialers Save Lead Generation Resources

Despite the amount of flak that the robotic lead generation calls have received in the recent times, there is a steady demand for call centers that take to auto dialers with enthusiasm. Auto dialers help the outbound call center teams in a big way. With the help of this software, a high number of numbers can be dialed automatically. The call center agents need not sit at their desk and spend time dialing the numbers. The software dials the numbers of their behalf and also keeps a close tab on the agents who are busy on calls and those that are free. The calls are passed to the free agents as soon as the receiver receives the call. The receivers cannot make out that they have been auto-dialed. So they don’t complain about this sales lead generation process.

Auto dialing methods save time at the lead generation campaign. Because the whole process of dialing numbers is done by the software, a lot of time is saved in the process. The outbound call center agents have a tighter schedule as well. There is no problem of checking the numbers and then dialing them. Moreover, the auto dials are able to check the availability of the receivers. If the receiving doesn’t take the call, the call center agent need not attend on it. There are no false alarms as such and agents are only put on calls that have found a voice at the other end.

Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation

B2B lead generation is different from the other processes in this genre. Here the call centers have to deal with the business heads of firms that your client wants to do business with. A new way to approach them is through professional networks like LinkedIn. Creating a profile and interacting with the entrepreneurs through such networks builds up a professional attitude. BPO firms that have quality B2B projects are sizing up their option more than ever. Let’s find out how call center agents can do a good job on LinkedIn. Step 1 would be to create a profile. Experts suggest that you spend considerable time on this. Key in authentic information and try to cover all the fields. Your profile is going to be a sort of a CV for your business. Do it with the due diligence.

Call centers need to take care in providing easily accessible means of contacting the inbound call center desk. Provide phone numbers, IMs, blog and website links. If the call center agents are using emails to communicate, make sure they have the right signature line with the same information. No entrepreneur has the time to hunt out a contact address or email id from the website. The BPO agents have to ensure that they have access to contact data at their finger-tips. Finally, try to talk to the entrepreneurs through emails and LinkedIn mails. Unless you network actively, you are not going to achieve much.

Advantages of Cross Selling in Lead Generation

The lead generation processes of many call centers revolve around cross selling. This is the procedure of offering the existing consumers some related products/services. This sales lead generation process has numerous advantages, both for the call center as well as for the consumer. To begin with, the telemarketing agents can sell products/services to existing customers. This is like tapping the same consumer base and coming up with a fresh set of revenue earnings. Cross selling works particularly well in the retail sector. Telemarketing services receive a considerable boost when the BPO unit tries out the process of cross selling.

From the perspective of the consumer, cross selling works well because the lead generation agents tap into their latent demands. They may not be aware of certain products/services that can make life easier. It’s the job of the telemarketing agent to poke at that demand and offer them something that they need but didn’t realize that. Sales lead generation, in this case, acts in favor of the consumer as well. Clients, who have a chain of products, often ask BPO units to help them out with cross selling. It’s a nice way to have revenues coming in from your existing group of customers. There is a little risk as well. If the new product doesn’t live up to what the consumer expects, it reflects badly on the brand identity of the client.

Converting Online Traffic to Lead Generation

Many call centers are now relying on websites for lead generation. Web 2.0 tools are great to get some quality leads into the kitty. However, you have to be careful about converting the traffic that comes to the client websites into leads that make money. Search engine optimization (SEO) methods can get you the traffic. But to convert them into sales lead generation, you need more than a website. The BPO web designers have to build up a website that has easy navigation and also makes the flow of traffic easier from the home page to the internal pages. The easier it is for the users to use the website, the better chances you have of making a sale.



Another way to boost lead generation through websites is to keep the information form easy and simple. Users don’t like it when you hold out a form that requires inane data and is unusually long. Sales lead generation cannot work out if the users get turned off by the forms that you have on the website. A good idea would be to keep other options for the users to sign up. Users may want to contact you through email or leave a comment. The inbound call center agents can process those emails and see if they can use them for telemarketing. There must always be this synergy between the telemarketing services team and the web marketing department. That’s how the BPO firm can have the best of both worlds.

Rural Call Center Proves Lucrative

The rural BPO units are proving themselves to be ideal locations for a call center hub. The cost factor is a huge advantage that the investors of call centers can count on. This is especially true for cities in countries like India and the Philippines. The smaller cities of India, like Mysore and Jaipur have very supportive governments to help them bag telemarketing units. The administrators help the investors with tax cuts and other rebates. The less-expensive market of the smaller cities also acts as a bonus. The telemarketing services firms can establish an office space without having to shell out a fortune.

In business process outsourcing, you need to have a minimum amount of seats to make a telemarketing project economically viable. At times, the lack of the required number of call center agents jeopardizes a project. The call volume may be too high for the answering service agents to handle. Without space enough, you are barred from recruiting more on the inbound call center team. This issue is solved in smaller cities. The costs you save in infrastructure, tax cuts and establishment can be used to make expansions and innovations in the business.