Posted by Mark Fichera on Tue, Apr 27, 2010 @ 08:37 AM
So many customers, so little time… That was the challenge Alpha Software, a global leader in database application software, faced earlier this year when it released Version 10 of its Alpha Five flagship product. In the world of database apps, Alpha is nothing short of legendary. Since its inception more than 25 years ago, the company has developed a highly loyal user community that today numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
When Alpha launches a new product version, one of its biggest challenges is contacting its enormous installed base.
So Alpha assigned OnBrand24 the critical assignment of telesales market outreach to existing Alpha Five customers. The project has been hugely successful, exceeding Alpha’s expectations and leading to additional telesales assignments for the call center service provider.
"OnBrand24 has been absolutely great," said Brett Johnston, Sales Manager at Alpha Software. "We’ve been very impressed with their ability to establish a highly capable team that quickly developed a strong technical grasp of our technology and the ability to communicate new product features in a compelling way. We quickly came to regard OnBrand24 as a satellite office for us, a direct extension of our sales and marketing team."
With four call center agents assigned to the Alpha team, OnBrand24 has averaged 1,500 calls per week, selling large numbers of Version 10 along with significant sales of training DVDs, educational classes and professional services. Alpha reports an impressive 5-1 return on their telemarketing investment – for every dollar spent on the project, the company is realizing $5 in revenues.
"This was a big challenge for us, but we have talented call center agents with the technical background and the smarts to quickly master Alpha’s needs," said Mark Fichera, CEO of OnBrand24. "We are proud to contribute to a highly successful product launch for Alpha Five."
In addition to boosting Alpha revenue, OnBrand24’s outreach program also supports Alpha’s customer relations strategy. As existing users of Alpha Five upgrade from versions 8 and 9 to Version 10, their loyalty to Alpha software is perpetuated.
Alpha has received positive feedback on OnBrand24 customer service. After completing a purchase of Version 10, a customer emailed Alpha that the OnBrand24 call center agent he spoke with "was professional, knowledgeable, polite, engaging and very good at eliciting insights about the product that only come from many years of using it seriously. I can’t remember the last time I had such fun on the phone purchasing software. You would be well advised to count yourself lucky to have her representing the ‘public’ face of Alpha."
Based on the project’s initial success, Alpha has added to OnBrand24’s assignment, including sales of training products, mentoring and professional services, along with a five-day user group and training class in Las Vegas.
"Many of our customers have been with us for a long time – the Alpha user community is very tight," said Johnston. "I was amazed at how quickly OnBrand24 became an integral part of our culture. With OnBrand24, we’re selling more copies of Version 10 and refreshing more customer relationships than we possibly could on our own."
Posted by Mark Fichera on Tue, Feb 23, 2010 @ 10:44 AM
When the history of the Great Recession (2008 - ?) is written, the sad accounts of lost jobs, shuttered businesses and general economic hardship will also include a few pockets of prosperity. One of them will be service providers that help companies cut the cost of doing business, such as outsourced call centers.
To be sure, I'm generalizing based on my own experience. I can't speak for the call center business overall, just OnBrand24's - and our business is booming.
Why this is happening is no mystery. In recessions, businesses have the strong tendency to:
- Cut business costs
- Look for ways to grow bottom-line revenue
- Resist hiring new staff
- Look for ways to increase sales resources
Contradictory? Sure. But just as individuals in panic situations become irrational and incoherent, businesses also tend to want things that are at cross-purposes with each other.
Here's the beauty of OnBrand24: We satisfy each of those contradictory goals simultaneously. Let's take a look:
Cut costs and grow revenue: OnBrand24 does this in many ways. For example, at very low cost we can augment and extend our clients' customer service, providing additional hours for customers to call for assistance or to order products. On the outbound call center side, OnBrand24 can make thousands of lead generation and appointment setting calls to existing or new customers in a matter of weeks, spurring significant new sales revenue - at very low cost.
Increase sales resources without adding new staff: Companies that hire OnBrand24 add significant resources to their inside and outside sales staffs. On the inbound call center side, we can teach a team of agents to be an extension of your brand, processing customer orders and quickly creating relationships that reduce shopping cart abandonment, improve customer loyalty and generate revenue. On the outbound telemarketing side, we can blitz your markets, generating leads, setting quality appointments, surveying your existing and potential customers or engaging in direct sales - without adding to your headcount.
Come to think of it, it's not just our call center that's thriving through the recession. OnBrand24 is helping other companies - our clients - come through the recession as well.
That's what I call a win-win.
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Mon, Jan 25, 2010 @ 07:28 AM
Advertising, broadly speaking, comes in two flavors - "intrusive" and "of-interest." Outbound call centers can be categorized in roughly the same way.
Let me explain:
Like a person who interrupts two people engaged in a conversation, intrusive ads grab attention from people who are otherwise occupied. They're broadcasted and blasted out at the general public. The shrill radio ad jingle sung by a leather-lunged choir that you've heard a hundred times and never want to hear again - that's intrusive advertising.
Of-interest advertising is different. It's less aggressive because of-interest ads are targeted at people who have already demonstrated interest in a product or service - such as an existing customer ready for a product upgrade or a prospect who registered for additional information on your web site.
The situation is similar with call centers. Intrusive call centers engage in cold calling to potential customers who have never indicated they want to know about - or buy - a given product. Most people hang up on these calls ASAP.
Of-interest call center services providers, on the other hand, till already plowed ground. They target people who are most likely to welcome a phone call about a product or service.
At OnBrand24, we don't want to annoy, interrupt or intrude on people with cold calls they don't want. And we don't want to waste our clients' money on cold calls that don't work.
That's why we've incorporated of-interest advertising thinking and Web 2.0 target marketing techniques into our outbound call center services. We work hard to minimize the intrusiveness factor and maximize the likelihood of success - that is, the likelihood that a sales lead is generated or a sales appointment is scheduled.
Our of-interest outsourced telemarketing services work. We're a highly accomplished B2B outbound call center service provider with proven lead generation and appointment setting methodologies that fill sales channels - while driving down our client's per-lead costs.
Our highly trained B2B telemarketers "swarm" markets using highly targeted lists, cold calling thousands of accounts, generating leads and setting appointments that would have been lost. And we do it at an amazingly low per-opportunity rate.
The result: our clients consistently report strong ROI, with realized revenue many times more than their program fees.
OnBrand24's roster of outbound telemarketing services include appointment setting, lead generation, list/database "scrubbing", customer and market surveys, win-back programs and telemarketing sales.
Our experienced outbound call center services managers configure of-interest telemarketing campaigns tailored to target markets. And our articulate, educated and seasoned telemarketers are driven to set quality appointments and generate quality sales leads. OnBradn24 call center services agents go beyond reading a script. They understand our clients' products and markets, and they engage with contacts to understand their needs, uncover sales opportunities and identify decision makers.
Google has raised the effectiveness of of-interest advertising to the point that today, Google takes in 60 percent of all online ad spending. OnBrand24 is taking a page from the Google playbook. Call us the "Of-Interest Call Center."
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Fri, Jan 22, 2010 @ 11:15 AM
Finding and keeping customers - is there a more important principle to business success? But in these tough economic times, the "finding" part has gotten harder than ever.
Call centers are designed and fine-tuned to find customers - at low cost. At OnBrand24, our lead generation engine has been under continual development for 20 years. Our outbound call center is a "learning organization." Every lead generation program we develop, adjust, refine and operate is an experience from which we learn and gain valuable experience -- to the benefit of our clients.
Leading call center services companies, such as OnBrand24, continually challenge themselves to look for new ways to improve their appointment setting record, to generate a higher percentage of sales leads versus total calls and deliver higher ROI.
And because delivering call center services is our core competency, we can conduct lead generation and appointment setting programs at optimal efficiency that drives down the cost of doing business for our clients. This is why outsourced call center services providers like OnBrand24 are succeeding in the face of the recessionary economy.
Three recent lead generation and appointment setting programs outsourced to OnBrand24 illustrate why telemarketing services can be so cost effective.
A healthcare equipment company - selling a high-end, high-priced product line - hired OnBrand24 early in 2009 for lead generation and sales appointment setting in support of its nationwide sales force. We assigned a team of outbound telemarketing call center agents to the program, trained them on the client's product benefits and on the target market - and then we set them loose.
Week in, week out, our team produced an average of 60 new sales leads/sales appointments.
"Your lead generation program is like a gold mine for us," said the client. "Our sales staff is ecstatic with the new sales leads you're producing. You've rejuvenated our sales effort and let our salespeople concentrate on what they do best, close deals. Bringing in OnBrand24 is one of the better business decisions I've made."
Another big ticket company, this one in the life sciences industry, hired us to conduct an extensive market survey and scrub their database - with the ultimate goal, naturally, of lead generation and appointment setting.
We trained a small team of call center telemarketing services agents to the project, and in a matter of a few weeks they generated more than 1,500 completed surveys - and nearly 200 immediate new sales leads - out of a call list of more than 5,000 accounts. Those new sales leads offer tremendous new revenue potential for the company.
"You scrubbed our database very effectively, but more than that, we now have much better overall insight into the markets we're selling into - and into the individual accounts we need to penetrate," the client told us. "I had no idea a call center services firm can deliver such value."
Those two projects supported high price/low volume clients. But OnBrand24 call center services are also effective for companies with low price/high volume business models.
For example, we ran a highly successful B2B lead generation and appointment setting "win-back" program for a consumer products company that has thousands of customers nationwide. Our outbound telemarketing call center agents went to work and convinced more than 3,000 former customers to take another look at our client, including nearly 1,000 who either were referred directly to the client's sales team or committed to a sales appointment.
One immediate benefit: significant new sales revenue directly generated by OnBrand24 outbound call center services.
"Your win-back lead generation program breathed new life into our marketing and sales efforts," said the client. "It's also contributed nicely to our bottom line. We're very impressed with the ROI and per-opportunity cost delivered by OnBrand24."
Call center outsourcing from OnBrand24 means you get a dedicated team that is accountable and measurable on cold calling effectiveness. That's what we're all about. And let's face it, most sales people only do cold calling when they've exhausted all other work options. That's why lead generation just doesn't draw the intensity of effort many sales managers would like to see. That's when you need to consider outsourced call center services.
Give me a call. Let's talk about how we can make finding new customers a more effective part of your sales operation.
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Tue, Jan 05, 2010 @ 01:28 PM
It's still the first week of January and already we're hearing about broken New Year's resolutions.
But there's one resolution business managers annually make and work hard all year to keep, and that is to drive down business costs while increasing productivity. Crack the code of that contradictory resolution and you're on your way to a very good year.
More than ever in this, the second year of the Great Recession, boosting productivity while reducing expenses is more than just another New Year's resolution. It's a necessity.
For sales and marketing managers, outsourced call center services is a proven means of significantly improving productivity, of generating new revenue and of avoiding the cost of adding new staff.
I'm not talking about offshore outsourcing. I'm talking about outsourcing to a domestic call center that employs Americans who can talk with your customers, and potential customers, in the most effective means possible.
The gains can be huge. OnBrand24's clients consistently report ROI of between 5-to-1 and 10-to-1 of revenue realized over call center fees. The gains are even bigger if you account for technology cost savings. In addition to providing a talented staff of call center agents that drive new sales lead generation and processes customer sales orders, we also save our clients the expense and trouble of building a powerful, optimized telemarketing technology infrastructure. We've already got one in place.
So, getting back to our New Year's resolution, how do we drive costs down and productivity up? Let's take new sales lead generation and appointment setting, two focus points of our outbound call center services. To reduce business costs, many companies have cut their sales staffs. The salespeople still on board maximize their time and compensation by trying to close deals. The result: expanding the customer base and new sales lead generation fall off the table.
Smart companies are attacking this problem by using call centers like OnBrand24. We can assign a group of agents to "swarm" a market, cold call hundreds or thousands of accounts in a matter of weeks and generate a high volume of new leads and sales appointments. And we do it at very low cost.
We're doing it right now for healthcare, life sciences and consumer companies at extremely favorable per-opportunity costs.
Over on the inbound call center side, we augment the order processing, customer support and help desk operations of companies across many consumer and B2B markets.
The principle is simple: extend the time your provide customer support and order processing capabilities and you boost revenue. The key is to do it without adding a lot of new costs, staff or technology. Companies turn to OnBrand24 because we offer optimized, low-cost inbound call center services that operate 24/7/365.
Companies ranging from candy purveyors to software vendors have reaped the benefits of providing expanded e-commerce and catalog order processing customer support from OnBrand24.
Cut costs while adding revenue -there couldn't be a better New Year's resolution for businesspeople. With call center services from OnBrand24, it's a resolution you can keep.
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Wed, Dec 23, 2009 @ 12:00 PM
2009 has been a great year for OnBrand24. I say this with full compassion for the difficulties so many people and companies are going through right now. But for us, we've never had more clients or handled higher inbound and outbound call center service volume.
A big reason for our growth is, simply, that OnBrand24 delivers premier call center services based a highly effective telemarketing methodology that we've developed and honed for 20 years. Our reputation is strong, as are our long-term client relationships.
But another reason for our growth is that outsourced telemarketing and telesales offers a very attractive business model for companies across a variety of consumer and B2B markets.
In short: at very low cost we boost companies' existing sales operations.
Let's take outbound lead generation and appointment setting. Many companies have cut sales and marketing resources to the bone. Their salespeople focus on closing deals and maintaining relationships with existing customers. The result: market outreach, expanding the customer base and lead generation goes by the wayside.
That's where OnBrand24 comes in. We can assign a team of call center agents to "swarm" a market, cold calling hundreds or thousands of accounts in a matter of weeks and harvest a high volume of new leads and sales appointments. And we do it very inexpensively.
We're doing it right now for a number of companies in the healthcare, life sciences and consumer industries at extremely favorable ROI and per-opportunity cost ratios. Clients using our lead generation services consistently report ROI of between 5-to-1 and 10-to-1 on their OnBrand24 program fees. In this economy, a low-cost means of generating new revenue is highly attractive.
On the inbound call center side, we're augmenting the order processing, customer support and help desk operations of companies across many markets.
Lots of companies find if they can boost revenue by extending the time they provide customer support. So they've turned to us because our call center operates 24/7/365.
We've got U.K.-based clients that want to be responsive to their European customers round the clock, and we have technology clients with customers who work the night shift. In all these cases, they need flexible, agile call center services that can handle inbound customer needs any time,for any time zone. At low cost.
There are a lot of other reasons we're doing well. The quality of our smart, talented call center agents is one. As is the know-how and experience of our senior managers, who have built and implemented hundreds of telemarketing programs for our clients. And there's our state-of-the-art telemarketing technology infrastructure, which enables us to offer flexible programs that match our clients needs and monitor the effectiveness of our services.
As the expected economic recovery develops in 2010, we see nothing but continued good things for OnBrand24. So with that hope in mind, all of us wish you and yours Happy Holidays and a healthy, prosperous New Year.
-- Mark Fichera
Posted by Mark Fichera on Sat, Dec 19, 2009 @ 11:35 AM
A sales pipeline full of quality leads is the quickest way to make salespeople very, very happy. And productive.
But lead generation is not easy, and the effectiveness of lead generation programs can vary widely. It's critical to put the right ingredients in place to ensure the program's success.
The single most important success factor is development of a solid campaign strategy, one with measurable goals that addresses a specific need, such as a customer win-back program or a market survey on the product choices of potential customers. A defined strategy will make the other elements of your lead generation campaign far more effective.
Here are five critical steps that contribute to successful B2B lead generation campaigns:
1. Quality of the list - The more specific the better. Define your target market, type of business, geographic area and who, specifically, will be called (CFO, IT, CEO etc.). Most often, you get what you pay for.
2. Agents - Every campaign has a "personality." Matching the agents' personality to the campaign's needs is vital. You'll need to consider whether to use male callers or female. Is it a technical call? Should a friendly tone be taken or aggressive? What specific areas of expertise are needed?
3. Quality of the script. Simpler is better. Does the script support the campaign goals? Does it let the agent quickly articulate your key message? Make sure it captures the necessary results in the shortest period of time.
4. Measurable results- Define success. Each call should have an associated result. Then, measure the results against your objectives. Your goals may be five leads per hour, 20 surveys completed per day, 25 sales appointments per week. Whatever they are, defining goals enables you to measure success and incent the call center and its agents.
5. Program adjustment - Be flexible. Monitor calls, quantify call center activity and productivity, analyze results, figure out what's working and what isn't. It may be necessary to change callers, edit the script, change lists. It's critical to measure results and adapt to them. Doing this, by the way, requires the call center to have a sophisticated telemarketing technology infrastructure.
Here at OnBrand24, we've run hundreds of lead generation programs. As a call center manager, it's tremendously rewarding for me to work with clients on the development of their campaigns -- and then see the sales leads flow from our call center to their sales force for closing. Few things are better for jump starting a company's sales operations and revenues.