by Todd Stearn, CEO
Warm leads are incredibly valuable. A warm lead is qualified, interested, and likely to buy. It’s the kind of lead every business wishes to receive. Of course, getting a warm lead either requires the customer to find you independently and reach out to you, or they need to be “warmed up” by a talented salesperson. Few businesses have entire sales teams to dedicate to this process, so what’s the answer? A warm transfer campaign.
What is a warm transfer campaign?
A warm transfer campaign enables you to be connected with those customers who are ready to make a purchase, rather than wasting time on those who were never going to buy. This type of campaign allows you to utilize talented call center staff’s skills to “warm-up” customers for you so that when they are transferred to one of your agents, all they need to do is push the sale over the edge.
Often, a warm transfer campaign can be an expensive one to run, and so you may find that it’s not worth the investment. However, there are ways to cut down the cost of a warm transfer campaign to make it worthwhile and profitable. Here is the step-by-step process of how to set up a warm transfer campaign without breaking the bank.
How to Set Up a Warm Transfer Campaign Without Breaking the Bank
Step 1: Budget appropriately
Before you get started, you must budget appropriately. This kind of campaign can be lucrative, but you’ve got to put the right pieces together if it’s going to get the results you want. For that reason, you should earmark around $15,000 to get a basic campaign up and running. Like any campaign, you should also be prepared to invest more once it becomes successful and you start to hit your KPIs.
It’s best to expect your first $15,000 to get everything in place and then ramp up to become profitable as the campaign finds its stride.
Step 2: Locate a call center team who can dial out to your leads
The next step is to find the right call center team to warm up your leads. Ideally, this team will be local to your customers, as offshore, while often cheaper to pay, can lead to problems. If you’re determined to use an offshore team, make sure you don’t have issues finding buyers who want offshore transfers.
When it comes to costs, call centers typically charge ‘per seat’ that you can rent out for a minimum of a 2 to 4-week commitment. This minimum commitment is a good length of time to test your warm transfer campaign because it gives you a chance to test out a few different data sources to find the data that best converts. Like any campaign, you’ve got to give it time before you have enough data to accurately analyze how it’s doing for you.
Of course, if you find that after 4 weeks you just aren’t getting the number of warm leads you were expecting, you can move on and find another team. It pays to do your research at this stage and find a call center team you have faith in.
Step 3: Supply a script
You also need to make sure that you supply whichever call center you choose with an appropriate script. Don’t be afraid to get creative with this script, but don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Tried and true sales scripts are best, so if you’ve got something that works in-house, share it with your call center team. Remember that a great salesperson can make a script shine, and an adequate salesperson will convert with a great script. Invest in your script!
The best script will be simple and fast – all it needs to do is qualify your leads; it doesn’t need to make the sale. Make sure that your script is thorough enough to filter out the unqualified callers. Fewer highly qualified leads will always be better than many lukewarm leads. Your call center must only be transferring qualified callers. Otherwise, you will be wasting time on callers who were never real prospects in the first place. Focus on quality, not quantity.
Step 4: Find a lead vendor that can supply you with data
Step 4 is to find a lead vendor that can supply you with data for potential customers. Actually, find a few, and make sure to negotiate so that they give you data for the lowest possible cost. This enables you to sample it out before committing and investing a larger amount of money in their organization.
Lead vendors want long-term partners and can be convinced to work with you. Just be cautious here. You don’t want to buy data from a third-party if you are not sure that they have received the proper opt-in from consumers.
Do your due diligence here. Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lawsuits are a big risk for any call center, and it could be catastrophic for your business. Therefore, you must do your due diligence before creating a partnership with any third-party company.
Step 5: Find a network with multiple buyers in a given vertical
The final step is to find a network with multiple buyers in a given vertical. Multiple buyers of Medicare calls, for instance, may not perform the same for your call center and your data, so only with multiple buyers do you stand the best chance of fitting your warm transfer campaign neatly into the existing ecosystem.
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