For many businesses, outbound calling services are a vital resource that keeps leads coming in. This role combines customer service skills, some product knowledge, and general business acumen. In many cases it’s the tip of the spear for a team’s entire marketing operation. But knowing the right skillset to hire for at each stage of your business’ growth is tricky. You don’t want to take any chances hiring the wrong talent for this vital and often overlooked position.
Wing Assistant provides you with a dedicated human caller focused on generating leads and closing deals. Whether it’s cold calling, B2B telemarketing, conducting surveys, or appointment booking, you’ll get the services you need at a fixed monthly rate. Before diving into the details of what Wing Assistant can do for your team, let’s look at how outbound calling should be driving growth for your business.
The Role of Outbound Calling Services in Business Growth
Calling agents interact with your customers on a daily basis, so there’s no one better team member to make client connections and target specific customer segments. In this section we’ll explore how callers can drive growth.
Establishing customer connections beyond online interactions
In an era when so many competitors are opting for virtual communications to save costs, personalized communication sets your business apart. It’s well-documented that people like the sound of human voices over machines. A dedicated, human outbound caller creates a warm, memorable experience that keeps clients coming back.
Wing Assistant callers have experience working with clients in a variety of industries, including:
- Tech
- Real estate
- Healthcare
- E-commerce
- Healthcare
- IT
Your Wing assistant responds to SMS messages, phone queries, email, and live chats and can move conversations easily from the impersonal online space to a more personalized, in-person conversation. That’s not an option with automated solutions.
Identifying target audience segments for outbound calling
Segmentation is an important technique that helps your team save time and prioritize tasks. Identify and organize your audience segments well, and you may even find some overlooked opportunities. Savvy teams will start this process early with detailed information collection on clients.
Deploy Wing’s outbound calling services for your large-scale customer survey project to collect much-needed information about your prospects. Your Wing assistant can create, distribute, and collect customer surveys. Calling assistants can also collate the results in a datasheet or report and distribute to your team. You’ll keep everyone informed and focused on prospective goals with the help of a skilled assistant who knows your business.
Benefits of Outbound Calling Services
Everybody knows outbound calling is a way to increase sales. If you’re bringing on a new dedicated outbound caller though, you want to ensure you’re getting the best ROI for your investment. Let’s take a look at all the other benefits outbound calling services can provide.
Enhancing lead generation and conversion
Proactive engagement with potential clients means more conversions. But nurturing leads through the sales funnel takes time and dedicated personnel. You need to build trust with your clients in order to grow your sales pipeline.
Wing Assistant callers are experienced and can take on large-scale outreach projects to give your team the bandwidth it needs. Once prospects start coming in, your Wing calling assistant moves prospects through the sales funnel with your team’s agreed upon email and calling cadences. Some calling services charge you by the minute or the number of calls, but not Wing Assistant. Your dedicated Wing caller can make an unlimited number of calls during designated working hours every day, from month to month.
Customer retention and relationship management
Customers are much more likely to respond to a brand if they perceive it to be a personalized experience. Research also shows that a personalized experience can turn customers into effective brand advocates, in a sense multiplying your ROI. To create a strong connection with your customer and develop this brand loyalty, there’s simply no substitute for a dedicated outbound caller.
Unlike other calling services, your Wing Assistant caller focuses only on your business. Clients may interact more than once with your outbound calling staff. We make sure that when they do, they’re talking to a familiar voice. Having consistency on your calling team also helps support you with post-purchase follow-ups and feedback collection. Wing can also handle B2B relationships and calling tasks, including telemarketing, appointment booking, and bill collection. For a low monthly rate, you can grow your business, build personal connections with your client base, and get paid on time.
Gathering market insights and feedback
Market insights provide real-time feedback on your team’s products or services. A flexible team can use this customer response information to adapt strategies on the fly. But data is only as good as the people using it. Inexperienced calling teams won’t know how to leverage market insights to close deals.
The best safeguard against this is hiring outbound calling services that will take the time to learn about your business. You don’t want a one size fits all automated solution if you can afford it. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression with your clients.
Best Practices for Effective Outbound Calling
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of outbound calling services, let’s take a look at how to use them as effectively as possible. Here is a list of some of the key practices for effective outbound calling:
- Comprehensive Training and Scripting
- Prioritizing Timing and Frequency
- Embracing Empathy and Active Listening
- Personalization and Customization
- Leveraging Technology and Analytics
Let’s dig into what each of these practices is about so you can effectively manage your calling team.
Comprehensive Training and Scripting
Callers are often the first impression your clients have of your business. If a caller is unprepared, this can create a lasting impression of unprofessionalism. A lazy script can also cause confusion and disappointment as your client moves through the sales pipeline. This wastes time for everyone involved.
If you don’t have persuasive, conversational scripts, we’ll work with your new Wing associate to write them. Wing Assistant provides all callers with extensive professional training before they even begin working with clients. Our team contracts former consultants and sales professionals from top global consulting firms including McKinsey, SAP, and Deloitte to optimize cold-calling materials. Leveraging expertise from multiple industries and providing expert guidance, this service is offered free of charge to Wing Assistant customers.
Once you choose a Wing caller, he or she will undergo a training process to be equipped with product knowledge. Calling agents are available 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and you can pick the window. Should you have any questions, Wing Assistant’s award-winning customer support is available around the clock and responds within minutes.
Prioritizing Timing and Frequency
Time is a non-renewable resource. It’s cliché, but true. When it comes to outbound calling services and hiring virtual talent, you need to make sure you’re optimizing every minute to get the best ROI. This means identifying optimal timing for contacting prospects and avoiding excessive calls that cause customer frustration and annoyance.
Outbound calling agents from Wing Assistant are skilled at booking meetings and managing schedules. Each Wing assistant is trained in using business software like Slack, Salesforce, TalkDesk, Asana, and more. If your team uses different software to communicate and optimize your time, just let your Wing Customer Success Manager know and we’ll make your associate is prepared.
Embracing Empathy and Active Listening
Connecting on a human level with prospects is an undervalued talent in today’s data-driven business climate. Research shows that people far prefer the human voice to any automated solution. An experienced caller listens actively to client concerns and responds with empathy. Callers also need to be familiar with your business to know what types of solutions your team can offer.
With Wing Assistant, you can be sure your calling agent has plenty of experience working with customer relations. All Wing associates are fluent in English but work remotely from all over the globe. The assistant pool is diverse, educated, and motivated to make a difference for your team and clients. Whether it’s following up with clients after a conference or managing daily intro calls and demos, your calling agent can take the lead and drive meaningful change in your sales calling strategy.
Personalization and Customization
A skilled outbound caller is prepared with a script, but flexible and savvy enough to tailor messaging for specific demographics. To do this, your caller needs to be very familiar with your business and potential value your team can add.
Many Wing Assistant callers can be trained to use CRM data for more personalized interactions. With the Wing approach, you’re working closely with a live, remote caller. It is a much more tailored and customized approach versus a bulk outbound calling center. Whether it’s the way the caller speaks, the questions they ask, or the workflows they follow, you can tailor everything to your market insights.
Contact us today to learn about add-ons and other customization options too. Bi-lingual English/Spanish callers, weekend coverage and multiple caller coverage are all popular options for clients.
Leveraging Technology and Analytics
Successful outbound calling services leverage a continuous flow of data on call metrics to drive performance. But today’s CRM systems track and record so much data, it can be difficult to execute on those analytics effectively. In addition, you might be using a CRM that new hires aren’t familiar with. Here is a list of a few of the most popular CRMs:
- HubSpot
- ClickUp
- Salesforce
- Zendesk
- Clio
- Intercom
- Zapier
Wing calling agents are trained on each of these CRMs. In addition to CRM technology, Wing Assistant accounts get access to other useful software tools for workflow management, messaging, and more. When it comes to tech, communication on your calling team is also important too. You can manage your Wing calling agent with our mobile app on Android and iOS, to send messages and provide instant feedback.
Overcoming Challenges and Objections
Every position has its hurdles, but calling agents have very little room for error since they work directly with clients. This section will explore how handling rejection and managing compliance regulations are crucial considerations for your calling team.
Handling Rejection and Objections
Rejection happens to even the best outbound callers. A skilled caller can sometimes spin this rejection into an opportunity to eventually close the deal. To do this, managers need to provide training and guidance on how to turn objection into opportunity.
Hiring our talent means investing in an economy of learning approach. Our team drives efficiency and growth through thoughtful training and career development. You don’t have to focus on training on the job. Your Wing Assistant caller shows up ready to contribute and add value.
Managing Compliance and Regulations
If your team is closing a lot of great deals but not playing by the rules, these indiscretions will eventually catch up with you. Issues like gaining explicit consent for communication and data privacy and telemarketing laws are ongoing concerns in this space. Here are a list of some compliance and regulations issues your team should be considering:
- Call monitoring consent
- Fair Debt Collection Practice
- Do Not Call Registry
- GDPR
- The Dodd-Frank Act
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
There are plenty of other regulations to be aware of, like the Telemarketing Sales Rule, so make sure someone on your team is keeping tabs on regulations and their updates to avoid costly strategic errors.
Dedicated Outbound Calling Services from Wing Assistant
Wing provides quality sales calling services with no hidden fees. For a fixed monthly price, you get a dedicated caller on a consistent weekly schedule that you select. All Wing Assistant callers are fully managed by our inhouse operations staff. We also provide additional services like virtual assistants and receptionists to handle action items for growing businesses.
You can get a customizable Wing caller and a Wing receptionist with one click set up. To learn more, schedule a quick intro call with Wing Assistant today. We’ll get information on your business, set you up with a Customer Success Manager, and discuss how we can help you with outbound calling services.
Dan Eder writes frequently about digital marketing trends, SaaS, and e-commerce. He has previously worked as a content writer at an SEO agency for tech companies, an e-commerce specialist at a Fortune 500 company, and a journalist for several educational outlets. Read more from him at www.daneder.com.
