Having been asked to provide content for a forthcoming magazine article on a related topic I have summarised my feedback to create the list below.
1 – Decide what sort of leads you want
The key is to ensure that whoever is making the calls is briefed effectively and that you have identified what makes your practice different (really), what criteria the target client needs to satisfy and what services you want to promote. Preparation is key here and can save you loads of time that will otherwise be wasted attending meetings that are a waste of time.
2 – Be clear as to what you are offering
Businesses who receive cold calls always seem to be interested if they don’t rate their current accountant as pro active and good value. One key issue for many firms of accountants is that they use the same words to describe what makes them different/better from other firms of accountants thus proving that the aren’t different at all! I’ve addressed this in previous posts on this blog such as: Is the way you describe yourself helping you to generate enough business?
The focus should be on HELPING not on SELLING. This requires careful questioning to ensure that any follow up meeting is worthwhile and not simply an information gathering exercise for the prospect who then reverts to his existing trusted adviser with the new ideas you have freely given away.
3 – Be realistic as to what you can expect
The best you can hope for is to secure warm qualified leads for meetings. Without careful planning you will simply get a load of meetings with people who want a cheap accountant. The biggest complaint I hear from accountants about their telemarketing efforts is that the lead wasn’t properly qualified. The prospective client simply wanted a new accountant who was cheaper than their current one. Unless the new one is promoting themselves as being cheap this rarely leads to a worthwhile meeting.
Telemarketing is simply the start of the process. YOU will still need to be able to satisfy the prospect that you’re the right person to help, to solve their problems and to provide the solutions and service they require. YOU need to be able to ‘CLOSE’ – which is part and parcel of being a good Finder (even if the leads have been generated by the telemarketer).
4 – Relevant experience counts
Yes, you could ask your staff to source leads and to make calls but this is unlikely to be as effective as using experienced telemarketers. ‘Experienced’ that is in generating qualified leads for professional service providers. It is MUCH easier to educate such specialists as regards the specifics of your firm than it is to train up in-house people to be effective at qualified lead generation through telemarketing.
5 – Incentivise the outcomes you want
The key is to ensure that any incentive acts to motivate desired results. (We’re not talking about bankers here after all!) Telemarketers who are paid for each lead they generate will secure loads of inappropriate leads. There’s no point in the accountant then going to loads of meetings that are not with desirable and real prospect clients.
My preference is to incentivise teamwork rather than to pay a fee per meeting fixed up or per new client signed up. You don’t want to attend meetings that have no serious prospect of allowing you to generate the fees you want for the work you enjoy doing. And paying a third party by reference to your success at ‘closing’ isn’t going tio work well either.
One way of encouraging teamwork is to pay per day’s work undertaken by the telemarketing service with no long term contract. This can help ensure that everyone has the same objective – to maximise the benefit of the exercise for both parties. This includes monitoring and adapting how the exercise is working in the light of experience.
6 – Ensure the prospect gets multiple pre-meeting ‘touches’
Meetings will be far more worthwhile if the prospective client feels positive about their interactions with the accountant (through the telemarketer) beforehand. And such feelings can be enhanced by making contact (touching) the contact more than once. So after a meeting has been fixed up over the phone, the firm should, at a minimum:
- send out a written confirmation perhaps with a short relevant piece of promo literature (NOT a full brochure – unless the prospect requested this);
- If there’s time, look up the prospect on the web (not simply their website) and try to find an excuse to send something relevant and useful to them before the meeting;
- The day before the meeting someone should call the prospect to confirm the meeting, location, time, how best to find the building/park etc;
7 – Focus on what prospects most want
In the current climate businesses are even more interested in pro-active business advice than ever before. And of course proactive tax advice is always in demand. One way in which accountants can distinguish themselves when using telemarketing for new clients is to ascertain the nature of the tax issues and problems facing the prospective client. Detailed tax issues and problems can then be explored at an initial meeting even if the accountant may require support in developing and implementing solutions.
If you have further tips to share on this subject please add them as comments below.
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I do agree with the majority of the points above. However in my 10 years’ of experience solely marketing for accountants, I find that prospects we speak to from cold calling are very rarely unhappy with their accountant. It is a good telemarketer’s job to show a prospect the benefit of getting another opinion and to be open minded, even if they have used the same accountant for many years. i also wish some accountants were more realilstic about their own ability to sign up new clients. There are clearly many accountants that need help and guidance when attending meetings with a potential new clients and as a result would achieve a much higher ratio of sign-ups. It is also my experience that telemarketing comapnies who are call centres are far more likely to make an appointment for the sake of it and I certainly find that my own practices prefer a more personal service from a small but highly trained team.
Interesting blog Mark.. equally interesting look at how accountants can separate themselves from the crowd. http://www.4networking.biz/forum/5/30280.htm
Really enjoyed this and agree particularly with number 6 which can be very powerful in terms of making an impression, showing that the need has been listened to and fully understood, and reassurance that a solution is at hand.
Taking the time to send personalised emails with relevant and interesting pre-meeting information will not only lower the rate of last minute appointment cancellations, but also qualify the lead further ready for decisions to be made after the meeting.
Some Accountants send standard emails which whilst they might be very well crafted sales messages, are not actually demonstrating that the needs of that individual client have been listened to and understood and so an opportunity can be lost at this stage.
Having a telemarketing resource that can listen out for these opportunities and communicate these to the Accountant can be valuable especially if targetting a geographical area where there is only one chance to make a first impression and it is not “a numbers game”.
I can also relate to Colin’s comments in March in that appointments can sometimes be made for the sake of it even when not particularly well matched to an Accountant so this depends on the financial incentive and the telemarketer’s brief. I also agree that getting a prospect who is unhappy with their current Accountant is just pot luck whereas generating interest by talking about areas of improvement is a different conversation entirely.
I’ve just come across this blog and found it most fascinating. I think point number to is most important, you have to very clear about what you are offering from he outset.
Thanks for the info
I have been in telemarketing at all levels over the past 10 years and it has always seemed to me that you win or loose a client in the first 30 seconds of any call. If you don’t have a tight script for that first part of the call go back to the drawing board.
I work within a different industry but the tips you have provided are very much universal. As you have said, providing pre-meeting touches are very beneficial and having a clear understanding of the client’s requirements, their business and their industry will help you considerably. If your services were focused towards a given industry then you would have a considerable edge over your competitors and this would be more helpful to your clients and your own business in the long term.
Three years on and I would add, to number 6 above, to see if the prospect has a profile on Linkedin and to consider sendin a PERSONALISED connection request to them there.
Perhaps they are also active on other forms of social media. But there’s a lmit as to how many you can check cost-effectively.
Maybe this checking is an add-on service that tele-marketers could provide after fixing up meetings.
Wow, cannot believe it was 3 years ago that I first commented on this article. Doesn’t time fly?
Interested in your last comment though about telemarketing agencies that provide services for accountants providing an add-on service for telemarketers to check social networks after fixing up meetings.
The key thing here I feel is timing.
Sometimes it is good to connect prior to a telemarketing call, other times it is better to connect after a call or a meeting. This will vary by the type of campaign or offer, which social network, and how you feel that person will respond.
We’ve been connecting online for accountants as a telemarketing agency since around 2009 so it’s not new now but the way it is being done is evolving all the time. I remember one of the first campaigns we did was to ask whether anyone in the organisation was on Twitter as an add on to asking for email opt in permission. That was a bit of a turning point for us as suddenly we started to get a much better response to that question than questions that were obviously aimed at building up email lists!
Since then it has become more about finding conversations relevant to service offerings, possibly researching people’s conversations before calling, and fine tuning lead generation via social platforms to geographical areas where that is relevant.
Sometimes connecting with someone via linkedin immediately after a call or a meeting will be perceived as too stalker-ish, slimey or spammy and can scare people off so I would encourage people to look at the linkedin profile first if they can to see whether they are a broad connector or a narrower type and to time it as appropriately as possible for that person.
Very informative! Thank you for sharing this to us. Cold calls really plays a very important role to get leads. As someone in the same industry, I would still suggest cold calling as it works and remains the most effective way of beginning a conversation with a prospect.