B2B Telemarketing: How to Do it the Right Way and Convert Prospects into Customers

While telemarketing (or cold calling) is known for its challenging nature and low conversion rates, it remains one of the quickest and most effective marketing strategies to generate high-quality leads for B2B businesses. Why? Because when you call your potential customers, you can build rapport faster, create trust, and establish relationships with your prospects more effectively. And that personal connection can often make a difference and help you win over potential clients.

In this blog, we’ll dig deeper into B2B telemarketing, its benefits, and how it differs from B2C telemarketing. On top of that, we’ll talk about the best strategies and tactics you can implement in your sales process to boost the efficiency of your B2B telemarketing efforts and generate high-value leads for your business.

What is B2B Telemarketing?

B2B telemarketing (stands for ‘business to business telemarketing’) is a marketing strategy where a business cold calls another business, usually by using telemarketing software. The goal is to reach out to businesses that might be interested in purchasing your products or services and initiate meaningful conversations with decision-makers. Though 63% of salespeople consider cold calling the worst part of their job – mainly due to frequent rejection and low conversion rates – it’s an incredibly effective lead generation tactic for B2B businesses when done strategically.

How Does B2B Telemarketing Differ from B2C Telemarketing?

The key difference between B2B and B2C telemarketing is the target market you aim for. While B2B telemarketing focuses on reaching decision-makers within businesses and organizations, B2B telemarketing targets individual consumers. And because business-to-business transactions are more challenging and complicated, B2B telemarketing has a longer sales cycle, with a focus on building long-term relationships with a client rather than just making an immediate sale. We’ve highlighted major differences between B2B and B2C telemarketing in the table below:

The Benefits of B2B Telemarketing

It’s an efficient lead generation tactic for B2B businesses.

Despite the increased adoption of digital communication channels, a significant portion of B2B sales is still happening over the phone. According to the stats published by Crunchbase, organizations that don’t cold call experienced 42% less growth than those who used the tactic. Here are some more impressive B2B cold calling stats proving the efficiency of using this marketing tactic in the B2B environment:

• 57% of B2B C-level executives prefer to be contacted by phone. (Rain Group)
• 49% of buyers prefer initial contact via a cold call. (Rain Group)
• 82% of buyers accept meetings with sellers who proactively reach out. (Rain Group)
• 55% of high-growth companies identified cold calling as one of their key strategies. (Chorus)

It’s easier to sell complex products over the phone.

If you have a complicated SaaS product with tons of features and a steep learning curve, it might be hard to pack a vast amount of information about your offering into a single email or even a series of emails. Moreover, according to the stats from Gartner, only 23.9% of sales emails are opened, which means the majority of your emails might never get read by your prospects. B2B telemarketing enables you to reach your target audience directly over the phone, answer their questions in real time, clarify information that is unclear, and adjust your explanations based on the prospect’s level of understanding and specific needs.

It allows you to move leads faster through the sales cycle.

B2B telemarketing allows you to develop a connection with prospects and bring that human touch to your interactions that wouldn’t be possible through email marketing. It helps you build rapport, trust, and credibility, enabling you to move your prospects faster through the sales cycle. This is because prospects are much more likely to trust a person they talk to rather than just information in a cold email. And what’s more, by demonstrating your deep expertise, industry knowledge, and understanding of your prospects’ challenges, you can build even better credibility with potential clients and speed up their decision making.

Best Strategies for Successful B2B Telemarketing Lead Generation

Let’s now explore some of the best strategies for successful B2B telemarketing, along with B2B cold calling tips you can implement to improve the efficiency of your B2B telemarketing efforts.

Research your prospects

This one might seem too obvious to mention, but it’s still worth reminding that personalization goes a long way in building relationships with your prospects. If you don’t want your potential customers to feel like they are just another name on your calling list – make sure to dedicate some time to learning more about them and the companies they are with. Additionally, you might want to do some market research to get a deeper understanding of the industry itself and what potential challenges and pain points your customers might be facing.

Firstly, it will show that you’ve done your homework, which raises your credibility in your prospects’ eyes. They’ll definitely be more likely to trust someone who has taken the time to understand their specific business needs. And secondly, by researching your prospects beforehand, you can better qualify them, ensuring that you spend time on qualified leads who are more likely to convert.

Make cold calls at strategic times

Whether it’s for generating leads, appointment setting, or qualifying prospects, you can dramatically improve the efficiency of your B2B telemarketing campaigns by simply calling your prospects at strategic times. In fact, calling prospects during the recommended times is known to increase conversion by 49%.

Here’s what different research studies suggest:

• According to a study by Revenue.io, decision-makers are more likely to engage in the late afternoon, with the best time to cold call during 4:00-5:00 pm. This peak engagement window is followed closely by the 3:00-4:00 pm and 5:00-6:00 pm hours. 
• Based on research by InsightSquared, Tuesdays between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm is the optimal time for cold calling, giving your sales reps a 30% higher chance of connecting with leads than other common calling windows.
• A study by CallHippo revealed that the best time of the day to cold call your leads is between 4:00-5:00 pm, while the second best time to call potential clients is around lunchtime, between 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. 
• According to research by Yesware, late afternoons are best for making cold calls, while the majority of calls lasting over five minutes occur between 3:00-5:00 pm on Tuesdays or Thursdays.

Check out the article “The Best Times to Cold Call Prospects in 2024” for an in-depth analysis.

Craft a compelling script

Your telemarketing team might not need a script if they are experienced and have been working with your company for some time. But new hires who are just starting out and are not yet confident enough can certainly benefit from having a script at hand when making phone calls. Of course, reading from a script isn’t the best idea, as it might make you sound robotic. Instead, use a script as a guideline that can help you navigate sales calls with better confidence, ensuring that no important details are overlooked. That being said, your B2B telemarketing script should include:

• A professional greeting that clearly states your name and company.
• A brief explanation of the reason for your cold call.
• Your value proposition and how your product/ service can help.
• Open-ended questions to better understand the prospect’s needs.
• Answers to the most common sales objections.
• The next steps you’d like your prospect to take and a clear call to action.
• A closing statement that ends a call on a positive note, regardless of the outcome.

Check out some script examples and templates in our related article “Outbound Call Center Script Examples for Winning Deals“.

Be prepared to handle common objections

Objections are a natural part of the selling process – but handling objections effectively might be challenging for sales reps, at least unless they are well-prepared. When you anticipate objections and know how to respond properly, you can actually turn every objection into an opportunity to engage the potential client while also demonstrating your competence and confidence, increasing your chances of moving the prospect down the sales funnel and ultimately converting them into a customer. Typically, sales teams have to deal with these common types of objections:

• Lack of trust – ‘I’ve never heard of your company.’
• Lack of need – ‘We don’t see a need for your product right now.’
• Lack of urgency – ‘Fixing (problem) isn’t our top priority at this time.’
• Lack of budget – ‘It’s too expensive for us.’

You might also encounter many other objections beyond these common ones, such as ‘We’re already working with another vendor’, ‘Your product is too complicated’, ‘I’m not responsible for making these decisions’, or even something like ‘I’ve heard complaints about your product’. The way you are prepared to handle them can often make or break the deal.

Use the right calling software

The success of your B2B telemarketing campaigns largely depends on the calling software your sales team is using. With the right call center technology, you can automate and optimize the entire process of making outbound phone calls, saving your sales reps a great deal of time and effort. For example, VoiceSpin call center software comes with AI auto dialing capabilities. Instead of dialing prospects manually and wasting time listening to busy tones and waiting for someone to pick up, the dialer automatically skips busy signals, disconnected numbers, and answering machines, connecting agents only to calls answered by your prospects. That enables your sales team to make more calls in less time.

When choosing call center software for your telemarketing company, pay attention to whether the following features are offered as they can benefit your sales team:

• Auto dialing
• Intelligent lead scoring
• Local caller ID
• Automated voicemail drop
• DNC list filtering
• Call recording
• Real-time call monitoring
• Reporting and analytics
• Integrations with third-party tools

Learn from past interactions

Past interactions, whether successful or not, can be a great source of learning for your telemarketing team. One of the ways to learn from past interactions is simply to listen to call recordings and analyze what went well and where improvements are needed. But reviewing calls manually isn’t that effective as you can only analyze a small sample of your calls while the entire process is rather time-consuming and resource-intensive. With advanced AI-driven speech analytics tools, you can automate this process and get much deeper insights.

For example, VoiceSpin AI Speech Analyzer enables you to evaluate 100% of your calls and generates AI summaries of every conversation based on your specific requirements. It allows you to assess your sales team’s performance more effectively, spot agent knowledge or skill gaps, identify common trends, and evaluate the efficiency of your scripts and call center lead generation strategies so you can make better-informed decisions.

Follow up consistently

According to the stats published by Invesp, 80% of sales typically require an average of 5 follow-up calls after the initial meeting because 60% of customers say “no” four times before finally accepting a sales offer. Surprisingly, though, only 44% of sales reps follow up after receiving a single “no” from a prospect, and this number lowers further with each subsequent rejection. That means the success of your B2B telemarketing campaigns heavily depends on your follow-up strategy. Making sure your team makes at least several follow-up calls before giving up on a prospect can increase your chances of converting more prospects successfully.

Leverage VoiceSpin Call Center Software to Optimize Your B2B Telemarketing Efforts

When done right, B2B telemarketing can help you create a healthy stream of sales opportunities and generate incredible revenue for your business. With VoiceSpin call center software solutions, your sales team can do it effectively by leveraging a range of features and tools, including:

• AI predictive dialer: Automate and optimize your entire outbound calling process with an AI Dialer and ensure leads are connected to the best-suited sales reps based on the probability of making a successful sale to help you maximize conversions.
• Local caller ID: Get access to DID numbers from 160+ countries, call your potential customers from local numbers, and appear as a local business to dramatically increase your call answer rates and the efficiency of your B2B telemarketing campaigns.
• Voicemail drop: Automatically leave pre-recorded voicemail messages when your prospects don’t pick up, eliminating the need to do it manually and saving time and effort. Get your messages delivered to your prospects and increase your response rates.
• Custom reporting: Track outbound call volume, calls per agent, call connection rates, conversion rates, cost per call, and other metrics and KPIs through real-time and historical reporting. Generate custom reports to track what’s important to your business.
• AI speech analytics: Get deeper insights into every interaction with AI speech analytics. Assess how well your sales reps present their sales pitch, follow scripts, and comply with regulations by reviewing AI-generated call summaries and tracking custom metrics.
• CRM integration: With 50+ out-of-the-box CRM integrations and custom integration options, integrate your call center software with your CRM system and give your sales agents more context for planning efficient, personalized follow-up interactions.

Book a demo call now, and one of our sales reps will tell you more about the VoiceSpin call center software solutions and how you can effectively use them in your B2B telemarketing campaigns to generate leads and convert them into long-term customers, driving revenue for your business.