Anybody looking to sell a product or service is very familiar with the acronyms B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer). In both cases, the goal is to grow your business by closing as many deals as possible, but there’s a big difference between selling to other businesses and selling to individual customers.
B2B transactions are often long, complex processes, involving multiple decision-makers, gradual relationship-building, and lengthy sales cycles. B2C deals, on the other hand, can often be sewn up with a one-time, one-on-one conversation.
While B2B decision-makers understand that most pain points can’t be resolved overnight (or even over a few months), individual consumers want their issues resolved and questions answered NOW.
For VSA, a majority of our lead generation, appointment-setting, and other call center services involve the B2B space. Our Business Development Representatives are highly skilled at navigating to and communicating with busy, hard-to-reach decision-makers and helping our clients establish long-term relationships with potential buyers.
But we also partner with clients who are looking to engage directly with the public. Our recently expanded inbound capabilities allow us to provide round-the-clock customer support for any client that needs it, and we’re equally adept at outbound B2C communication.
In the past few months, we’ve had several clients partner with us to reach out and schedule appointments with individual consumers who have shown interest in their services via web inquiries and other “hand-raiser” actions.
One of our B2C clients nearly tripled their number of closed deals from one quarter to the next, thanks to our ability to schedule significantly more phone call appointments for their sales reps than the company had the capacity to do on their own.
Here are five of the ways we’ve succeeded in helping certain clients grow their business through B2C lead generation:
1. Immediate response times
People, by nature, aren’t patient. If they request information from a company about a specific need and don’t hear back almost immediately, or if they call and don’t reach a live person, they’re likely to seek out a different company for assistance. Waiting more than five minutes to call back an incoming B2C lead significantly decreases the chance of making a connection.
VSA staffs its B2C programs to ensure that our reps are available throughout the day to receive incoming calls as they come in, and to make outbound calls in real time as soon as leads are received. We also staff evening and weekend hours as needed, and can cover multiple time zones.
2. The right conversational tone
Talking to somebody at home about a personal need isn’t the same as talking to somebody at the office about a business need. In both cases, it’s important to sound professional and connect on a human-to-human level, but the tone you take on the phone depends largely on the type of prospect you’re speaking with.
B2C conversations are often much more casual than B2B calls, and VSA’s reps are trained to match the tone of the people they’re speaking to. It’s all about ensuring that the person feels comfortable and respected during the call. For this reason, we also have bilingual reps to accommodate Spanish-speaking prospects.
3. Multichannel outreach
Prospects are obviously more likely to answer their phones when they recognize the name of the company that’s calling them, but even then, it’s no guarantee they’ll pick up. How often do people leave their cellphones in another room, or are too busy to talk, or forget to raise the volume on their ringer, or just can’t be bothered to answer the phone?
Adding email and especially text messaging components to a B2C campaign can significantly impact the success rate. With one B2C client, we increased the number of texts we sent during evening hours (a time when people are less likely to answer their phones), and production immediately improved.
4. Seamless software integration
While VSA prides itself on our sophisticated technology, we understand that some of our clients prefer that we work out of their own CRM to share data and manage relationships with customers and potential customers. This is often the case with B2C clients, due to the large number of daily interactions.
VSA has multiple programs where our Program Mangers and BDRs receive extensive training in our clients’ technology, and the hard work shows in the results.
“Working in our client’s CRM has been amazingly successful,” a VSA Program Manager says of one of our current B2C clients. “Collaborating closely with them to really learn their system has been very helpful for the program. The BDRs feel very comfortable working out of their CRM.”
5. Doing our homework
With any outsourced lead generation firm, it’s critical to learn as much as possible about a client’s offering to ensure the reps sound knowledgeable and confident on the phone. The goal should always be to make it impossible for prospects and customers to know they’re not talking to an actual employee of the company.
This requires plenty of homework for both B2B and B2C programs. But with B2C, there’s often an added level of preparation involved due to the unpredictability of the calls. It’s difficult to script for every possible scenario, so the reps need to be equipped to professionally handle multiple questions and requests.
******
Whether B2B or B2C, outbound or inbound, VSA’s goal is always the same: To develop customized, ROI-positive programs that help our clients grow their business.
If you’re looking to reach more prospects or better serve existing customers, give us a call. We’d love to learn how we can help.