Transform your business development

Sales Lead Generation Ideas

Some thoughts and observations on all things business development related. Read on to learn about how to generate new sales leads and create sustainable lead generation activity...

My time at Qualifa – by Pascal Stein

Hello, bonjour,

My name is Pascal, from North East France, near Luxembourg, here at Qualifa for a six week trainee period to improve my English.
I wish tell you, in a nutshell, my impressions and feelings about Qualifa.

First, what Qualifa is not !

I thought Qualifa’s main activity was to increase website sales, specifically by increasing search engine ranking.
Let’s say right now, it is not at all !

So, what goes on within Qualifa ?

As the Qualifa website explains, its core activity is to deliver qualified new business sales leads for its clients, high tech IT and media companies.
What does this mean in concrete terms ?

Basically, Qualifa’s goal is to target key decision makers, mostly IT DMs (Information Technology Decision Maker) in companies across the globe.

Qualifa makes initial contact in a way which facilitates the building of a relationship between the client and the prospective candidate.

Right, I am a head-hunter now !

After targeting the strategic clients, a whole team searches for details to prepare for phone calls. Trust me, it’s not easy to find the details of the ITDM of a remote South American tyre plant ! (1)

Many teams are busy throughout the day – due to the global time zones – calling targets.
It is anything but an ordinary call center : telemarketers don’t sell anything, they just take the first step of a long term strategy, to engage in, for Qualifa’s client, a fair relationship and the subsequent sales.

“Le style, c’est l’homme”
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (September 7, 1707 – April 16, 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author.

Sorry! impossible to translate ; “The style is the man !” doesn’t make sense in English !
It means a human being has to be stylish to go down in history as the form is more important than the content.

Credit where it is due : James Burton, a exceptional manager.
As every manager should be: demanding and always ready to listen.
He comes and sits at an ordinary desk in casual clothes.
Really ? this guy is the boss ? Definitely, he manages the company as he is : demanding but relaxed, balancing results and a good attitude.
Believe me, I have rarely known a boss like him in France, unfortunately!

More than a team : a crew  !
“Indeed, Mankind is the only true source of wealth”
Jean Bodin French jurist and political philosopher 1530-1596

First of all, what is obvious is the youth of the staff, maybe 25-30 average ? but thankfully, those of us who are slightly older are welcome ;-) !
I had the opportunity to attend a staff meeting about 2011 figures and 2012 goals.
It was fantastic : complete transparency, high targets but at the same time high awards for the company and for individuals!

Qualifa recognises success. Indeed, people working within Qualifa know exactly what is expected of them and what to expect back from Qualifa.
Obviously, you earn money through incentives and you are motivated to do your best.
But it isn’t the sole motivation. As it is a young company , you can easily be promoted and increase your responsibility as the company grows.
Most of the middle management began as telemarketers so they really know what they are talking about.
In light of all this, you can understand the fantastic growth of the company in less than three years !

Cultural diversity is a massive advantage

It is so obvious here!
For example : The Recruitment Manager Rosie is organizing a football competition. What could be better for team building ?
But unfortunately, I know lots of french firms where it would be impossible (although as our saying goes ‘impossible is not French’ ;-) !)  simply because of the social rigidity.

What strikes me the most is the general good mood and, at the same time, it is a hive of activity in 15 languages !

Here the Three Musketeers are not Athos, Porthos and Aramis !

I would like to mention my fellow countrymen  : Francois, Jean and Francois …and Alix
without any chauvinism ;-) for their panache !

Jean (from Brittany) is the great wizard of computing and managing, always busy and concentrated behind his screen, in a key role.

Francois (from Touraine) makes me think of Asterix ! Ever in a good mood, energetic , running around all day long to organise and enthuse the teams… to achieve targets in order to meet the deadlines.

The second Francois (from Lille), is unquestionably the Lord of the Leads !

D’Artagnan ?…if she were..a Lady… could be Alix (from Rennes) : last but certainly not least for her talent and kindness, could be in Guinness World Records for her results.

However, I can’t forget other managers, the two fantastic young Italian ladies with their beautiful sunny accents !  I would also especially thank Rosie and Sara for their help and kindness…
Then, as I can’t mention everybody, I hope nobody will be hurt… I apologize.

 

Pascal ? you said ‘in a nutshell’, didn’t you ?
It’s time to conclude now !

Definitely, I know I’m too chatty !
Just a word to say all my prejudices have been proved wrong : English people are so nice, food and climate … bearable ! and  the atmosphere of British Pubs is totally unique !
Brighton is a good place to live, at only one hour from London.
All you, charming people, you were so kind, I will miss you!

I want YOU for Qualifa !

So, if you’re a hard worker, enthusiastic, easy going,  wishing to join a young promising company within a nice place and a congenial atmosphere … take my advice :
Come on in ! Qualifa is hiring !

So, as I can speak a little English now, I need a new challenge !
Decisions, decisions, to learn Welsh or the bagpipes ?

Pascal

(1) Amazon Yellow pages ;-)

February 10, 2012 – 1:43 pm
By James | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Winners!

We’re delighted to announce that Qualifa were winners in the category ‘Most Promising New Business’ at the Sussex Business Awards.

Huge congratulations and thank you to all employees, in particular those that have been with us since the early days – Fiona Pritchard, James Lewendon, Clare Mace, Fabiana Macri and Jean Le Gal.

Special thanks to Vanya Gencheva for completing our submission.

 

December 5, 2011 – 9:54 pm
By James | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

My time in the UK by Coralie

For the last four weeks we have been lucky to have around bright and hard-working Coralie as an intern at Qualifa.  She is 21 and looking forward to a successful future. Always ready to help, smiley and having the right attitude to work – our next intern has some very large shoes to fill in! This is what she shared with us on her very last day of work…

 

Bonjour,

My name is Coralie and I come from France. I study foreign languages (German and English) and in order to obtain my degree I had to complete the final stage which is work experience abroad. This I managed to organize with the help of  “Stages UK” – an organisation that provides work experience especially for overseas students. Thanks to them  I not only found my professional training in Qualifa but also my host family. It was great to learn more about the English culture and now I am convinced that English food is not as bad as we think in France!I have been working for 2 months in Qualifa and I was in charge of contact research. It was a pleasure to work within this company because the atmosphere feels really good. It was very interesting to work with people with different backgrounds, coming from variety countries. Thanks to this experience I could practice my English and become more confident when having a conversation. Moreover I feel I have improved my sense of organisation and I gained deeper understanding of how business functions.

Thanks to working here I had the chance to discover a new city, which is said to be one of England’s best.  Brighton is a lovely place where you can, if the weather permits…. benefit from the beach!

For all these reasons I strongly encourage young people to dare to dream and take up work experience in the United Kingdom!!

Greetings,

Coralie

August 26, 2011 – 2:52 pm
By Vanya | Posted in interns, Stages UK | Comments (0)

New business prospecting. What I have learnt about performance based lead generation in 12 months..

As our smart multilingual telemarketing company ploughs on through the summer months I am going to look back at what I have learnt, experienced and gained through this past year whilst working as an intern at Qualifa.

Before starting at Qualifa I had only worked in retail and administrative positions I did not have much experience of having my own projects, clients and work to organise and manage. I discovered how to self manage, self-motivate and time manage my work. I have learnt how to have professional working relationships with our clients after having been given the opportunity to attend client facing meetings and get really involved with the nuts and blots of a sales campaign in the ‘early days’ of Qualifa.

As we grew and expanded into multilingual telemarketing, I experienced how the sales teams work. Being involved with daily calling, whilst challenging, gave me a real insight into the day-to-day operations of ‘performance related’ telemarketing and a new-found respect for telemarketing as a career. I was given opportunities that I never thought I would get like conducting 2 stage interviews for prospective interns, hosting an intern training day. Writing content for our website, blogging, representing the whole company in front of clients and gaining in-depth understanding of social media and marketing as a whole through various research tasks. Amongst many other things, I have experienced a lot of different aspects of a businesses operations, which is rare in an internship. I was part of Qualifa during some of its most challenging months and some of its best, when there were just 4 people in the office to now almost 40.

The experience of being in a growing start-up company allowed me to have more scope in what knowledge I could gain and now as I go into my fourth and final year at University I feel well equipped to deal with the challenges that I will face not only during university but also for the rest of my working career.

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank our MD James Burton and with a fond farewell I pass the blogging baton onto our new intern Vanya Gencheva. If you want to check out how I do in my last year or follow my progress my twitter account is http://twitter.com/#!/PhoebeYates .

August 9, 2011 – 11:31 am
By Becky | Posted in Multilingual telemarketing | Tagged | Comments (1)

New Office

Regular blog readers may remember a few months ago I fondly referred to our basement Brighton office as the ‘Dungeon’. It may not have had many windows but it housed the Qualifa team for around ten months until we outgrew it in February of this year. We were at one point in four different offices around Brighton and were on the hunt for a suitable place for our Headquarters where we would be able to fit all 40+ of us in. It has been what seems a long time in the making but we are finally ensconsed in our new 50 capacity sea-view open-plan office and for the members of staff who were inhabitants of the ‘Dungeon’ it is a welcome change!

Here are a few pictures to show you our new home, please click on this link for the Flickr Slideshow .

Please feel free to come and visit us we are at 5th Floor, Queensberry House, 106 Queens Road, Brighton.

 

June 16, 2011 – 2:03 pm
By James | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

My time in the UK by Marcel & Daniel

For the last 3 weeks we have had 2 German students at Qualifa HQ, gaining experience of living, studying and working in the UK. So we thought we would give you the opportunity to have an insight into their time here and what they have learnt about us and Multilingual Telemarketing. First up it’s Daniel..

 

Quick introduction
Hey everyone, it’s me Daniel, who is talking to you.
I am 22 years old, live in Germany and I am happy to have the chance to do a work experience for four weeks in England.

Usual friendly English people
After we arrived in the very beautiful city Brighton, we went to our host families and I think I do not lie if I say all our host families are fine. In the first week we went to the LTC – Language Teaching Centres and had very nice lessons to improve our English. All teachers were very cute and we had a lot of fun at school. But not only the teachers in school have got a nice character, it seems to be that all English people are very helpful, friendly and polite.

About multilingual lead generation and telemarketing company Qualifa!
This impression was also confirmed at the first day here at the multilingual lead generation and telemarketing company “Qualifa” (which is in the centre of the Brighton and is very easy to arrive at) too. Everybody at “Qualifa” helps you to assimilate you very fast and from the first day I felt very welcome. The atmosphere in the office is very nice, too. And if you have got a problem, I am sure there will not be one, because you find every time one person, who speaks your language, doesn’t matter Spanish, French, German, Italian etc..

Learn more than making coffee or tea
I did not really need to wait a long time to get my first exercise. It was maybe about five minutes after the nice introduction and walk around the company, when I started with my first challenge. I had to find out contact details of persons by phoning or Internet searching. It is interesting and exciting work, because of that you do not need to watch your clock all the time and think about when you are finally finished. So you are not at “Qualifa” to be exploited, in the opposite, everybody is happy about your work!

I never feel bored
Not alone working is very nice in Brighton. After you have finished work at “Qualifa” you have got only a five minutes walk to go to the beautiful beach. There you can relax after work, if the sun is shining, of course. Otherwise you can go shopping and do a lot of interesting things, so you will never feel bored!

For the future
Finally I can say it is a very nice time here in Brighton at the telemarketing company “Qualifa” and I would do this experience every time again. If you are thinking about a work experience, I can say to you “do it”, maybe at Qualifa, too.

A report of Daniel, Thank you!

 

Marcel’s time at Qualifa…


Let me introduce myself, my name is Marcel Meinert, I’m 21 years old and was born and live in Münster, Germany.  After finishing my A-Levels, I started an apprenticeship as an IT-specialist. In order to this I was informed about a scholarship from the EU, which helps apprentices to find a company in a foreign country which offers 4 weeks internships. The EU also financed the majority of the costs for the flights, the internship agency, and the accommodation. I decided to apply for the UK – Brighton, and after a long wait I got the confirmation. Soon the date of departure arrived and our group of 16 people started.

The first challenge in Brighton was to settle down in the host family. But don’t worry, the first experience you will have is how polite, friendly and patient the English people are. The first week you’ll spend in a language school, to refresh your English, become familiar with the differences in English people’s habits and behaviour, to learn more about the city of Brighton and to show you how working in an English company works. After all I’ve learnt more English in this one week than in 3 years of school English before.

In the second week you’ll start to work, in my case it was at Qualifa, a multilingual telemarketing service. I had actually no idea what kind of work waits for me, especially because I was provided for an other company, which refused just 3 days before I should starting to work and Qualifa stand in very spontaneous (what I really appreciate). First I was introduced to my colleagues and to Barbara, who supervised me in my projects.

From the first day I was given my first project which centres around contact research. In this project that means to call several companies and to find the Head of HR by asking. My colleagues were a great help and helped me with each problem and had good tips on how to call and get the right information. I was really positively surprised that I was used for the normal telemarketer work like everyone else here does, and not for typical boring trainee tasks like copying or making coffee! To summarise it I would say I got a really good insight in the business of Qualifa and a learnt a lot about telemarketing services.

I would like to thank the whole team for the support and possibility to work with them!

Marcel Meinert

May 11, 2011 – 12:04 pm
By Becky | Posted in Appointment Setting, Multilingual telemarketing, Multilingual telemarketing, sales leads, Telemarketing, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Hello, Hola, Hallo, Bonjour, Ciao!

How many different ways can you say hello? Well there is an estimated over 6000 languages spoken throughout the world, the majority of which are spoken by less than 1000 people. Nowadays most of us take communication for granted and the ways and speed in which we can do so is incredible.

Our multilingual telemarketing service allows companies to gain insight into perhaps previously unattainable markets and gain knowledge on what matters most to foreign companies. In my previous blog post I explained how multilingual telemarketing can help your business grow but I didn’t actually explain how we do what we do. So now I will give you a little insight into our multilingual telemarketing team.

We have a team of full time multilingual telemarketers and also some part time employees, that work as and when we get new campaigns and contracts. Our clients dictate which foreign languages we have flying around in the office and currently we have around 10 but this changes almost every day! It is great working in such a multilingual environment and learning new things every day, not many offices have those kinds of surroundings.

With each language and country that we work on, different challenges arise, especially when it comes to time differences and how our telemarketers find solutions. French, Spanish, German and Italian Telemarketing involves working around smaller time differences, yet they are still significant and rely on an understanding of the countries hours of work and when will be the most effective time to call and actually speak to the right people as its different for every country. As well as working on Pan-European contracts we work on Asia – Pacific and American time specifications. Our Japanese telemarketing relies on our dedicated telemarketers to work from the early hours of the morning to ensure that we can achieve our daily Japanese contact quotas for our clients, that kind of dedication and commitment sets us apart from other telemarketing companies.

Our diligence means we can span the entire globe and ensure that customers have complete country coverage and they know that we can be flexible when it comes to starting a new campaign or contract. Our multilingual telemarketers do initial contact research and refining then it is on to calling. The variety of languages and telemarketers that we have working for us means that we always have bilingual speakers on standby to cater to our clients needs, the fast reaction that we have to changes in demand make us unique. Our level of flexibility means that we can keep up with day to day changes in demand and client needs to guarantee that we give the best service possible and 100% quality leads.

Our multilingual telemarketing service is based upon the hard work of our telemarketers who not only speak a multitude of languages but who are extremely hardworking and dedicated to Qualifa and our client needs. Why not contact our Head of Sales James Lewendon to find out even more about our Multilingual telemarketing services on 0203 195 0001 or email james.lewendon@qualifa.co.uk .

April 20, 2011 – 1:28 pm
By Becky | Posted in Multilingual telemarketing, Pay On Results, sales leads, Telemarketing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

BANT over BANTer why these four letters are key in your Telemarketing Strategy…

It has been a few weeks since my last post and I have decided to blog about Qualifa’s current core business Telemarketing (also multilingual telemarketing). It is what we do best and what businesses are looking for in today’s tough market. As any sales director/manager will tell you finding hot sales leads isn’t easy and many times in my blog I have written about how companies need to be more flexible and open to future sales as finding leads with the right amount of budget, the exact need for their product, and the desire to spend their money now ( always highly unlikely) AND the fact that we have to converse with key decision makers, all makes it rather difficult.

However I’m going to look at a different angle to view sales lead generation. Not just through emailing and cold calling but through targeted calls with a sharp and smart pitch that gets straight to the crux of companies sales problems. With our long list of telemarketing services for example event attendees, profiling, market research and BANT research there is an area of telemarketing that would benefit any company. I mentioned BANT just then and this is an anagram for…

B = Budget
A = Authority
N = Need
T = Timescale

For many of our contracts we use BANT to make sure that all of our clients requirements for a particular lead is fulfilled. Im going to expand them a bit further and explain why they are key considerations when conducting and managing sales lead generation telemarketing campaigns.

 

Budget

Does the company your calling have a budget for what your asking? Would they be able to justify the amount of budget that you are looking for in a lead? Many people would be extremely reluctant to give information on budget to someone over the phone but with a few succinct questions it is possible to indirectly get the information that you need regarding budgets. Some of our databases also have the amount of people that work for any given target company and this is also a key consideration when debating a new call, would a company with 25 employees really have the need for major new IT network development?

Authority

Are you on the phone to the key decision maker when asking the qualifying questions? This is very important as our clients use the contact information that we find to build up their own database of key decision makers. It is also important so that you can get a direct answer from them so as to update your own notes and give more information to your own client.

 

Need

The need is more subjective, it is your own analysis after taking into account all other factors of whether this company would realistically have a need for the product or service that your client is offering. Need also links to…

 

Timescale

As if they say ‘we are not interested now but call us back in 6 months’, you can note it down as a positive lead as they have expressed a future possible need for your clients service, they have also given you a timescale which is good for managing your call backs and follow ups. Again this links to Authority as if you have found the correct point of contact getting a hold of them again will be a lot easier.

BANT is important when doing more in-depth profiling and lead generation but these four things are just a more specified view of what sales people should look for when developing and discovering leads. There are other factors that you can look at, but the above are, in my opinion, the most significant. There is going to be a part 2 of this blog where I shall be outlining more of our services and ways in which telemarketing can help you that you may have not thought of before. Until then why not get in touch and let us help you with your telemarketing needs.

March 21, 2011 – 3:57 pm
By Becky | Posted in Appointment Setting, Lead Generation, Multilingual telemarketing, sales leads | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Sales Lead Generation, how to prepare for a new Business Development Campaign…5 weeks on.

My profuse apologies for the 5 week gap in blogs, as you will be able to tell I have been super busy with our new campaign and as it is half term (worst time to try and get hold of people) I thought I would write a new post on my progress so far and what I have learnt during the process and other general ramblings.

So after having been encouraged to start calling our prospects we started on the challenging task of getting through to senior members of staff at top UK retailers. It was not easy sometimes, but actually where emailing had previously been our contact method of choice, calling certainly renders more information when you get through to people and gives the client valuable follow-up leads for the future. This is important as you want the lead generation process to continue for as long as possible and not just stop when you have run out of contacts. So after about a couple of weeks calling and calling we were left with not many leads but lots of prospect company information. So we decided to opt for a change in strategy, we started emailing and the mixture of a fantastic pitch and great hook given to us by our client we are doing really well. It is important to keep up to date with contacts you have already emailed or called and make sure that you stay on top of them and chase them up or find new contacts to email for different companies. By the end you should be able to look at your list of prospect companies and have an answer or meeting from every single one.

The best thing about securing meetings is watching the target get smaller and smaller, as I said in my last post, the prospect of getting so many meetings is really daunting, but after the first few, it boosts you so much and leads to a more motivated outlook. So we shall keep emailing and calling on the never-ending pursuit of qualified sales leads!

In other news myself and my colleagues Alex and Fiona have moved out of the ‘Dungeon’ and onto the top floor of our building which has real windows and sunlight (sometimes) and plant life! We literally burst out of the seams in the Dungeon and are now looking to relocate, so things are all very exciting at Qualifa HQ and we could now make a Qualifa FC, with a good number of substitutes :-)

February 24, 2011 – 3:03 pm
By Becky | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Lead Generation – How to prepare for a new Business Development Campaign..

So on Monday I came into work and the first thing I was told by my Manager was ‘Phoebe, I have some exciting news for you!’, he then proceeded to disappear to a meeting. So I sat at my desk working and wondering what the news would be, a new heater, a new client, a new office!?!

When he came back he said that we had been given a major sales campaign, by one of my clients to work on. At first I was extremely excited, thinking about the commission and prestige that went with managing such an important campaign. Then I started to think about what they had asked of us… 48 meetings in 2 and a half months, fully qualified with top brands…. and I started to panic.

However, this blog post is all about what you can do to fully prepare for a new campaign and how to make sure you don’t run out of data and consequently sit there twiddling your thumbs. As I have stated in previous blog posts, Sales Lead Generation is invaluable to every single company that operates, if no one will buy their product or service, then they are rendered obsolete. That is why I have the important task of finding these opportunities for our clients to go into a meeting, show them what they can do and how much they can benefit their company and hopefully they will leave the meeting with a new client opportunity.

So to start, it is imperative that you look at the data that you have, you need to have the right contacts within the right companies to target. You do not want to be wasting your time booking meetings with companies that your client does not want to see. Obviously with the brief you are given you should know the sectors to target, the seniority of the contacts to target and the qualifying questions you must ask. As we have a large database of contacts we can sift through them quickly and make large sub-databases full of people and companies to email and call. The problem with many databases that you can buy from the Internet is that the contacts are out of date, the emails may be wrong and they just are no use. That is why the data you use is very important to the success of a campaign, ensure that if you buy data in, that it is from a reputable seller, also do not underestimate the use of LinkedIn and Jigsaw for finding contacts.

So once you have a large database what is the next step? In my opinion it would have to be the pitch, a salesperson is only as good as their last pitch! It is essential that the Lead Generation pitch is eloquent, punchy, full of information and includes a call to action. Personalisation is also advantageous as it makes the reader of the email consider that it is not just a mass email marketing mail-out. So by adding the contacts job description and company that they work for, it can make people feel that we have taken the time to research the company and genuinely recognise that we can help them in some way. If your client has case studies you must also include them, so that the pitch is more interesting and engaging.

Lastly it is important to plan your activity down to the last detail, here is a list of how you should plan your time:

  1. For your own use, plan how many emails you can send a day and set yourself goals, so that you stay focused for the duration, repeatedly sending emails can be tough!
  2. Focus on a specific sector and then sub-section it so that you can mould the pitch exactly to fit each sector, for example for the retail pitch tweak it slightly for men’s and women’s retailers and department stores etc.
  3. If you are doing the campaign with other members of staff, start some friendly competition and perhaps offer small prizes or bonus commission for the person who obtains the most meetings during the campaign.
  4. Keep correspondence with your client, ensure that they are up to date with progress on a weekly and even daily basis. This allows the client to adjust the process if needs be and feel confident that you are doing all you can to reach their goals, as they want these meetings even more than you want the commission!
  5. Use a mixture of targeted emails and calling to make sure that you get as much information as possible, some people do not get a chance to reply to emails and sometimes calling and speaking to the person you are trying to get hold of actually renders more information. After all they may not be looking for your service now but in 6-12 months time you could organise a meeting, you must always log these possibles as you will be grateful for them when the time comes!

To conclude as a Business Development Intern I have learnt just some of the ways of lead generation, but I am certain there is a lot more to learn! I hope that these tips help you in your own pursuit of new leads, however always remember that Qualifa is here to help, if you have an amazing digital media product or service and are not sure how to go about letting people know about it then send an email to james.lewendon@qualifa.co.uk and we can show you just how beneficial outsourcing Sales Lead Generation is.

January 14, 2011 – 2:23 pm
By Becky | Posted in Appointment Setting, Lead Generation, sales leads | Tagged | Comments (0)

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