B2B Cold Calling: The Keys to a Successful Deployment

Despite sometimes having a tarnished image, telephone prospecting is still an extremely important commercial development lever for French companies today, especially in BtoB.

However, many organizations face obstacles when setting up their telephone operations, whether it involves appointment setting or telemarketing. Indeed, prospecting businesses by phone presents many challenges, such as navigating gatekeepers, building a high-quality prospect list, or managing sales reps' time.

In this article, Sidely addresses the main questions surrounding BtoB telephone prospecting to help you boost your company's sales performance.

Summary: 

1. Introduction to BtoB prospecting; 

2. Designing and implementing teleprospecting;

3. Tools and techniques;

4. Prospect files and databases;

5. Outsourcing: pros and cons;

6. GDPR and business data.

1. Introduction to BtoB prospecting

‍Despite a somewhat tarnished image, telephone prospecting remains extremely common in France and constitutes a very important acquisition lever for businesses. It is particularly effective in BtoB for complex sales, allowing for immediate feedback and rapid qualification of prospects. Today, it is often integrated into a multi-channel strategy, combined with other methods such as emailing and social media. While many "experts" had predicted its replacement by various marketing innovations, boosted by automation or AI, telemarketing has instead perfectly integrated into these new unified models.

‍Thus, direct sales canvassing still remains a winning formula for companies that master its rules. And that's where the problem lies! While BtoB telephone prospecting is a valuable growth engine, finding winning techniques today is complex, and many organizations struggle when launching telephone operations, whether for setting appointments or telemarketing.

‍Starting with your sales reps, who prefer contacting prospects who have already shown interest (for example, by filling out a form on your website). And for good reason, it is truly difficult to keep your composure when facing a gatekeeper or an interlocutor who is visibly annoyed by an unsolicited call. Your sales reps must show determination, perseverance, and manage their emotions well. They must also have solid training in call management, active listening, and a good dose of confidence to capture the listener's attention and end the call with the targeted objective!

‍But the game is worth the candle: the reward for your company is a new contact who was not in active research, and generally, less competition to face and a privileged relationship. This is the art of the outbound call: searching for customers "beyond marketing".

‍Another major advantage: cold calling reduces dependence on market fluctuations, because if inbound requests decrease, you are still able to increase the volume of outbound business. Prospecting is therefore the best way to make your business more resilient!

Special aspects of business canvassing

Prospecting in BtoB (with professionals) has several characteristics that distinguish it from BtoC prospecting (with individuals): 

• Generally longer sales cycles;

• Purchasing decisions often involving multiple stakeholders on the prospect's side;

• Larger transactions, with higher purchase amounts.

The technical nature of the services sold and the variety of interlocutors you will have on the line will generally discourage you from using scripts (which are, however, systematic in BtoC).

‍Thus, BtoB prospecting requires a more personalized approach and management of longer, more complex sales cycles, while BtoC prospecting focuses on quickly attracting the consumer with clear value propositions and a simplified decision process.

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2. Designing and implementing teleprospecting

We will now review the essential steps to deploy BtoB commercial telephone operations.

A. Define and frame the mission

Successful BtoB telephone prospecting starts with a setup phase. This defines the main aspects of the operation and ensures it will be deployed under the best conditions.

1. Scoping: establish the main objective of the campaign or operation. There is nothing worse for a sales rep than chasing too many rabbits at once. One call = one objective!

2. Strategy: next, you need to "size" your operation:

   1. Is it a one-off mission or a long-term action, built into the employees' duties, and therefore their contract?

   2. Will the field sales reps carry out the prospecting themselves, or will you create a dedicated team? How many operators will be needed? Do you need to recruit? Train?

   3. Do you have the necessary skills to achieve the desired performance level? Do you need support from a consultant? Is it wiser to outsource (we will return to this point below)? Have you considered using a supplementary sales force?

3. Prospecting plan (or sales plan): next, you need to profile each target interlocutor (secretary, assistant, sales director, etc.), identify their respective challenges,  and design pitches and attitudes to master to reach the set objective.

4. Launch: setting up calling campaigns, whether done in-house or outsourced to a service provider, will generally disrupt the sales department's activities. A support phase is then necessary to explain the company's evolution and onboard the sales teams into this new organization. Prepare communication (and then kick-off) meetings by working on your announcements with arguments that highlight the potential gains for your employees!‍

B. Set objectives and KPIs to achieve them

The performance indicators to track in teleprospecting vary depending on the mission's objectives (qualification, appointment setting, telemarketing, etc.). But generally, KPIs are chosen to measure the return on investment in different ways.

‍For example, for an outbound appointment-setting operation, companies seek to track the following indicators for each sales rep or appointment setter: 

• Number of outbound calls made;

• Useful contact rate (target contacts or decision-makers);

• Conversion rate (e.g., appointments set / useful contacts or calls made);

• Completed appointment rate (not canceled by the prospect);

• Closing rate (relative to appointments kept, leads, etc.);

• Average revenue / appointments set.

Measuring acquisition costs (here, the cost per appointment set, for example) thus allows you to compare the return on investment (ROI) of teleprospecting with that of your other channels, such as SEO or advertising.

‍Reporting is therefore fundamental. For this, agents must enter information into the CRM, your main information system for everything related to sales operations.

We will see that now!

3. Tools and techniques

To effectively run a BtoB teleprospecting campaign, you will build a stack, i.e., a suite of tools and software contributing to the execution and tracking of your operations.

CRM (Customer Relationship Manager)

To start with, a CRM (or GRC in French) allows you to centralize all prospect and customer interactions. By centralizing this sales database, you enable every employee involved in the sales cycle to instantly view all the information needed to perform their job.

‍CRMs are particularly useful for reporting call data, building segments to target in your calling campaigns, automating repetitive tasks (e.g., sending brochures by email), or personalizing your pitch based on the history of interactions with the prospect.

‍Finally, the CRM is the source of reference for analyzing performance. Thus, it is common to automate the generation of dashboards and sales reports from the CRM so that time is spent on analysis rather than report production.‍

Examples: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho.

Call Recording and Tracking Tools

This software is designed to record calls for training, quality evaluation, and sales technique improvement. Here again, we are talking about solutions intended for quality control, and therefore more suited to call centers, where supervisors or managers intervene with teleoperators live or once the call is finished.

‍If you decide to implement this type of solution for your field sales reps or telesales agents, take the time to explain the approach to them, and orient your pitch in favor of progress and performance (what sales rep doesn't want to increase their commissions?!).

Examples: RingEX, Freshdesk, Zendesk, Aircall.

Other useful tools

Depending on the nature of your operations, other types of applications may prove useful: 

• Script and objection management (e.g., VanillaSoft, Ringover); 

• Number validation (e.g., SMS Connexion, Capency); 

• Collaborative suites and software (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams); 

• Videoconferencing (e.g., Zoom, Teams, Google Meet);

• Analysis and reporting (e.g., Tableau, Google Data Studio, Power BI);

• Etc.

💡 You can also check out our list of essential mobile apps for sales reps!

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4. Prospect files and databases

The raw material of any BtoB prospecting campaign is, of course, the prospect file! Prospecting databases can be purchased, rented, or built in-house. In most cases, they result from a mix of these different techniques. Your CRM can also be enriched with data scraped from third-party applications via API integrations.

‍The goal is to build segments of prospects that match your campaign's objectives. BtoB targeting is often enhanced by using specialized prospecting tools, the most famous being LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

‍Finally, some CRMs are offered with qualified databases integrated by default. This is the case with Sidely, which offers companies targeting supermarkets a complete database of all the points of sale they can prospect.

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5. Outsourcing: pros and cons

To improve profitability or benefit from the experience of an expert firm, many companies choose outsourcing. Firms specializing in outsourcing telephone prospecting have very advanced performance tracking and close management procedures, often leading to a higher level of results.

However, the risks to security as well as degraded quality are real, and should lead you to carefully weigh the pros and cons. The table below summarizes the main points to consider when deciding if outsourcing fits your needs.

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6) CNIL and GDPR: regulation of business canvassing

In France, the regulation surrounding telephone prospecting is extremely strict regarding canvassing individuals, but much more flexible for BtoB.

The Bloctel list, for example, only concerns individuals. Businesses are not required to consult Bloctel before making B2B prospecting calls. Furthermore, BtoB prospecting hours are not regulated by law, unlike BtoC.

On the other hand, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also applies to B2B contact data. Companies must manage professional contact data respecting the principles of transparency, security, and the right to erasure. Indeed, any information concerning a natural person, such as an email address containing their first and last name, falls within the scope of personal data, and as such must lead the holding company to comply with the GDPR.

‍This includes the obligation to inform individuals about the collection, use, and storage of their data, as well as guaranteeing their right to access, rectify, and erase information. Data must be collected for specific and legitimate purposes, and companies must implement appropriate security measures to protect this data against unauthorized use.

In the end, while best practices may remain identical (introduce oneself clearly, respect "normal" business hours), the framework applicable to BtoB prospecting essentially concerns compliance with the GDPR.