Inbound AND Outbound
I love automated email marketing. It has changed the rules of the game for opportunity generation firms and allowed us to dramatically increase rep productivity. When you dial in the right automation tool for your marketing organization you see the immediate impact in the form of increases in web traffic and inbound opportunities for your teleprospecting team. However, the majority of companies seem to stop there. They automate the delivery of their high level marketing message, but don't push that same automation out to their sales teams.
Email is a critical and integral part of any effective teleprospecting plan. At AG Salesworks, teleprospecting reps follow a regimented and highly effective activity plan that is designed to get live conversations with decision makers as fast as possible. Over 65% of that activity plan calls for emailing. The type of email they get depends on where a prospect currently resides in the process (Interested, Unresponsive, Contact Identified, etc...). The majority of the emails sent are templates and thus prime candidates for automation.
If you have an activity plan in place for your teleprospectors then you owe it to yourself to extend your email automation out to them. Chances are that your activity plan involves quite a bit of emailing, and 50% of all of your activity is templated emailing. When a prospect goes to a designated disposition (interested, contact identified, etc...) your integrated solution knows which email they need to receive and sends it automatically. The teleprospector doesn't have to take any time to write, edit, or send a thing.
What does a rep do with all their time savings? They make more dials, they have more live conversations and they pass more fully qualified sales leads to your sales people. They make more money, the sales team makes more money, and if you are like me, you make sure that you get all the credit. I know this isn't rocket science, but if you are like most of the hundreds of clients we've worked with over the years you haven't extended automation out to your teleprospecting teams. I can't stress enough how important it is. Trust me, you'll thank me later.