The software industry is a highly competitive sector. Software publishers often face difficulties and challenges in marketing their products. Among these challenges are:
- Competition
- Insufficient project Generation)
- Human resources, particularly retaining good salespeople
As a result, establishing a mechanism for Leads Generation is essential to maintaining a steady flow of projects (attracting new clients).
Having a system in place for generating Generation allows companies to retain top salespeople.
Among these mechanisms for generating Leads, scheduling phone appointments is key.
The question we address in this article is whether telemarketing is as effective for software publishers as it is for other industries.
Why does telemarketing work?
Booking appointments and organizing them in a CRM according to their level of maturity is the secret weapon of many software vendors.
Appointment setting, whether by phone or in person, is the foundation for building and consolidating a sales pipeline regularly fed with new projects.
Having a regularly updated schedule with new appointments relieves salespeople from phone duties and allows them to close more deals.
Through appointments (whether by phone or in person), salespeople engage with prospects to understand their needs. These meetings also give prospects the opportunity to ask questions, challenge the salespeople, and gain a deeper understanding of their products.
Appointment setting for software vendors:
Appointment setting is essential for all types of industries to maintain a steady flow of projects and ensure consistent growth. We have found that this mechanism is just as effective for companies providing services, such as software vendors
Appointment setting thus allows you to:
- Regularly acquire new projects,
- Engage and interact with potential clients,
- Retain top salespeople (who dislike the phone, but enjoy meeting prospects and closing deals).
Implementation: The Cornerstone for Success in Your Prospecting Campaigns
For software publishers, setting up a system to generate sales appointments is a time-consuming and energy-draining process, but it is essential.
Many software publishers and other companies that embark on internal prospecting experience failures, or at best, modest successes.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of the main causes of these failures:
- They entrust prospecting to their salespeople! This is a major mistake because they dislike prospecting; what they want are qualified leads to negotiate and close deals…and earn their commissions.
- They lack the necessary human skills (trained telemarketers, marketers who master the art of prospecting, such as script writing, target definition, personas, etc.).
- They do not have the necessary technology to manage campaigns.
To avoid these pitfalls and quickly obtain qualified leads, several software vendors turn to telemarketing companies.
A competent telemarketing company must immerse itself in your commercial policy so that its actions align with your strategy.
Outsourcing to a telemarketing company
Outsourcing prospecting to a telemarketing company can save software vendors time and money.
Setting up an in-house telemarketing unit and recruiting telemarketers can be very costly and time-consuming.
An effective telemarketing company can act as a commercial extension for your sales team and ensures that your potential clients are "educated" with new insights that will significantly enhance their performance ("Teach for Differentiation").
It’s not easy to convince decision-makers to pay for new software or to persuade them to switch, or to keep them on the phone long enough to be convinced. Many decision-makers are reluctant to continue a phone conversation. Nevertheless, a skilled telemarketers is capable of convincing them and arranging meetings with the right contacts.
Telemarketing can play a crucial role in building trust with potential clients, generating Generation and increasing sales for software vendors.
Another very important point in scheduling appointments is knowing how to choose the telemarketing company you will work with, ensuring that it specializes in lead Generation for software vendors.
Don't forget that your company's image and reputation are at stake every time a telemarketer interacts with your potential clients.
Where to start?
1- Write call scripts
As Churchill pointed out, “a spontaneous speech has been rewritten three times.”
Communication professionals and great speakers know this very well. One should never improvise their sales pitch.
Within telemarketing companies, campaign setup is carried out by marketing professionals who always start by defining a clear strategy in which:
- They identify the added value of your software,
- What problem it solves?
- Why your potential clients need it?
They list all the arguments and answers to these questions, as well as a SWOT analysis to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your product and build a strong pitch.
They should not develop just one pitch but several, depending on the targets and personas. The speech resonates with your contacts, who respond more favorably to your outreach and feel more comfortable advancing in the buying process.
2 – But who are your targets?
These are groups of prospects on which you will focus your efforts...
3 – How to identify them?
- By segmenting your market: that is, dividing it into several homogeneous categories of potential clients.
- And selecting the groups of clients that deserve to be “targeted”; these are your targets (potential buyers).
4 – How to select the targets?
For a target to be interesting, it must:
- Have a significant number of accounts (number of companies to approach),
- Have budgets allocated to products like ours,
- Show expected growth in the markets of the selected targets.