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0:00 How Human Interaction boosts Sales
0:03 and Loyalty. Welcome to tie for the No
0:06 My name is Graham Smith, I'm the Marketing
Director 0:10
at SCI Sales Group. I'm joined today 0:13
by Elisha Bentley. I have about 30 years experience 0:18
in B2B marketing, a member of 0:21
the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I sit
0:25 on the Telemarketing Council of the DMA.
0:29 Elesha is a sociology graduate with an interest
in 0:33
human interaction and digital marketing, currently experimenting
0:37 with creative writing. Today's webinar is
about Human Interaction. 0:43
Let's begin. So 0:50
the emphasis on digital marketing has 0:53
we believe affected investment in other channels. The question we're asking today,
0:57 have we lost sight up the benefits of live
Human Interaction 1:03
and what it can bring to B2B sales. So there are five chapters to this webinar,
1:09 you can see the five chapters listed
1:12 Elesha will go through the five benefits of
Human Interaction which is 1:17
chapter 4, 1:18
and then I'll take over on chapter 5 1:21
and go through a case study which is based on some work we did with
1:26 eBay Motors Pro, so please do stick around
for that. 1:30
Like to first of all define what we mean by Human Interaction.
1:36 So for us it's a two-way,
1:39 one-to-one, live conversation. So with that
definition in mind we believe that Human 1:45
Interaction 1:46
is limited to Field Sales and Telemarketing 1:50
Some people may feel that 1:53
events are also a form of Human Interaction, 1:56
but we believe that events are 2:00
normally a one-to-many scenario, rather than a one-to-one,
2:04 and therefore its outside of
2:07 our definition. But if you want to include
events 2:10
in your definition of Human Interaction then 2:13
please feel free to do so. So let's take a look at the
2:18 the first section. What's happened to Human
Interaction? 2:22
So here you can see a 2:25
chart of UK advertising spend. 2:28
It tracks the years 2002 to 2:32
2013 and you see the spend in 2:36
some cases remains static and in other cases it's taken a bit of a dip, you'll notice
2:42 that both
2:42 spend on press and TV
2:46 took a fairly big dip 2009-2010,
2:49 and has taken a dip again.
2:53 What's the reason for this relatively lackluster
performance 2:57
in advertising spend? Well there's one 3:00
channel missing from this chart and that's 3:04
the Internet. So let's take a look. I think it's fairly obvious what's happened
3:09 Spend on internet advertising
3:12 has rocketed going from last place to
3:17 pole position and, as all
3:20 marketing budgets are limited,
3:23 that has obviously affected the amount of
budget available for other channels, 3:27
including Human Interaction channels of Telemarketing 3:31
and Field Sales. There's some 3:37
research that we did on 3:40
where and how frequently you should 3:43
use human interaction, we're going to 3:46
review the results now. So the 3:51
first question we asked was did you have Human Interaction
3:55 before making your last 3 purchases?
3:59 And the results of that
4:02 are going to be displayed, so
4:05 here's the number of buyers who had Human
Interaction 4:09
before purchasing. Sixty-eight percent. 4:13
Sixty-eight percent of buyers had some form 4:16
of Human Interaction, either a telephone call 4:20
or a face-to-face meeting, before making a purchase
4:24 on their last three purchases. So
4:28 this figure includes both new and repeat orders.
4:31 If we examine just new purchases, the figure
actually 4:35
rises to eighty-nine percent. So the benefit of human interaction
4:40 in winning new business is clear. But the
research becomes even more 4:45
revealing and interesting when we examine 4:48
order value. So average order value 4:52
with HI is £68,000, well £68,032 to be precise, 4:58
Average order value without 5:02
Human Interaction drops to just £1,000 (£1,018). 5:07
So this supports the theory that when it comes to
5:11 high-value complex sales, buyers want to talk
to someone 5:15
and have the reassurance that they're making the the right decision.
5:18 Now there's further details of this research
5:23 in our white paper which you can download
from our website, 5:26
please go to 5:30
www.scisalesgroup.com/knowledge 5:34
So let's now take a look 5:37
at frequency. So 5:41
over the years with notice to on a 60-day program
5:45 that can involve somewhere between 8 to 9
5:49 interactions, one of the reasons that the
figure varies 5:53
is because it depends on whether you include events
5:56 as a Human Interaction. As I said earlier,
5:59 for us it's outside of our definition but
you may well decide differently. 6:04
So let's take a look at a typical sixty-day program.
6:08 So this shows all of the
6:12 non-HI interactions over the 60-days.
6:15 You can see that there are emails, there are
6:18 downloads of product sheets and case studies
etc, etc. 6:25
So for me, this looks a 6:28
little bit sterile. But perhaps more importantly 6:32
I have to ask the question where is the 6:35
the BANT qualification which is so essential 6:38
in lead generation? Without checking if the contact has budget, authority
6:44 need or timescale, it's impossible to
6:48 move them from a lead to
6:51 an opportunity. You could indeed waste valuable
time 6:55
and money nurturing someone who will never be able to buy your product or
7:00 service.
7:01 So let's add
7:04 human interaction into this diagram
7:08 and see the impact. So
7:11 the items in red circles are where
7:14 we would argue Human Interaction occurs.
7:18 Now any lead starts with need and authority,
and that 7:22
happens on day one. So it's a quick call to establish
7:26 if they need your product or service and indeed
7:29 are they the decision maker. Now they may
not have 7:34
budget or time-scale at that point, so they need to obviously to go into some
7:38 sort of nurturing program.
7:40 So on day 5 you email them a relevant white
paper 7:45
on day 8 you would invite them to 7:48
a seminar and you can notice how the Human Interaction occurs normally after some
7:53 sort of non-HI
7:54 activity. So on day 13 your calling them to
discuss the 7:59
seminar in more detail. And that's an ideal opportunity to check BANT.
8:04 Have you now got budget, do you now have a
timescale? 8:08
Day 24 again your discussing perhaps a 8:12
case study they downloaded. Have you got budget, 8:16
have you now got time scale? And that runs all the way through
8:20 the program until day 43.
8:24 Finally on day 43 they've confirmed they do
have budget, 8:28
they do have a timescale and 8:31
that lead now becomes an opportunity. Which obviously results
8:35 in a face-to-face meeting on day 48,
8:39 another form of human interaction.
8:42 Further discussions on day 52 resulting finally
8:46 in a signed contract on day 60.
8:51 Without HI the momentum of the sale would
we believe be slower, 8:56
and an accurate BANT qualification virtually impossible.
9:01 Also just want to add that we are saying 8
to 9 interactions 9:05
over a 60 day campaign, 9:08
if it was a 90 or 120 day campaign 9:11
exactly the same number interactions would normally just spread over a longer
9:16 period.
9:18 So now let's compare HI and non-HI
9:21 channels.
9:25 So here we have the results of some research
done by B2B marketing magazine. 9:31
They asked a question 9:34
about quality versus quantity for lead generation. 9:38
And there were five channels chosen; 9:42
live events, telemarketing, email, search engine optimization
9:46 and direct mail. One of the things I'd like
to point out is that first of all 9:52
the two best channels for 9:55
quality, which is the red columns, 9:59
were telemarketing and live events. 10:02
But if we take a look at email, 10:06
we notice an email blast does deliver quantity 10:10
of leads the quality is 10:13
perhaps left a little bit wanting. 10:17
Which further underlines the benefit of 10:21
human interaction in perhaps telemarketing, 10:24
where you are able to BANT qualify the 10:27
contact before moving them on. 10:32
So HI can produce quality leads 10:35
but what are the other benefits. 10:38
Let's take a look. So 10:41
it's your birthday - congratulations! Five friends congratulate you in
10:46 different ways.
10:47 If you take a look at the the list and ask
yourself this question: 10:51
Which friend makes you feel more valued? 10:55
Is it Sally with a text message, Peter with a birthday card,
10:58 or perhaps Simon who visits your home?
11:03 Take a moment to think about that. We actually
asked the same question 11:08
to managers on LinkedIn 11:11
In fact, over 600 Managers engaged with this particular
11:15 piece of research. We asked them
11:18 which friend makes you feel more valued? Here's
the results. 11:23
So it would appear that Simon visiting you at home
11:26 makes you feel most valued, followed by Heather
11:30 and then lagging behind are Peter, Sally
11:33 and Raj. The interesting thing for us
11:37 is when way apply the results of this
11:41 within a marketing framework. So the reason
for asking this particular 11:45
question in this way 11:47
was to take out any prejudice that people may have to particular marketing
11:52 channels.
11:53 So if we look at these results within a marketing
framework 11:58
it again becomes a little bit more revealing. 12:02
So you can see that Simon is for us Field Sales,
12:06 Heather is Telemarketing, Peter is Direct
Mail, 12:09
Sally is Mobile Marketing and Raj is Email Marketing.
12:13 Notice how the two electronic media
12:17 don't make people feel as valued
12:21 as the two channels that use Human Interaction,
12:25 namely Simon & Heather with Field Sales and
12:28 Telemarketing.
12:31 So that demonstrates how Human Interaction
makes you feel valued, 12:36
I'm now going to pass you over to Elesha 12:40
who go through the 5 benefits of 12:43
HI while I go off and make myself a cup tea. 12:47
So here's Elesha. 12:53
Thank you Graham, so I'd like to briefly outline the five core benefits of
12:58 Human Interaction
12:59 for B2B sales. So to begin with Human Interaction
13:05 produces better product demos, we would argue
that complex sales are 13:09
easier to explain using Human Interaction, 13:12
and the real-time two-way flow of conversation makes your product
13:16 demonstrations far more effective.
13:18 very often the combination of online demonstrations
and telephone can produce 13:22
significant results. 13:27
Secondly, its intelligent selling. Smart people use Human Interaction
13:31 and this is because you can use your skills
to control the conversation 13:35
and convince the buyer about the proposition. They become relaxed and less defensive
13:39 which ultimately leads to a quicker sale.
13:45 Thirdly, it's easier to handle objections.
13:48 So within Human Interaction you can predict
possible objections and satisfy 13:52
them convincingly. 13:54
No amount of FAQ's on a website can ever cover all the possibilities nor can they
13:58 answer all the potential queries that may
arise. 14:04
The fourth benefit is the revealing insight that's often gained by HI.
14:09 It provides a great opportunity to map the
buying team, gather unpublished sales 14:13
intelligence 14:14
and BANT qualify prospects. Careful probing by an
14:17 expert telemarketing agent can also reveal
hidden information 14:20
which is often more reliable and up-to-date. 14:26
Lastly, as Graham outlined earlier, based on our research Human Interaction
14:30 makes customers feel valued.
14:32 We asked over 600 managers on LinkedIn which
channels make them feel the most valued. 14:37
Field Sales and Telemarketing topped the list by a mile,
14:40 and both have Human Interaction. And the benefits
for you are that valued 14:44
customers are more likely to trust you and display loyalty.
14:48 This is particularly relevant for internet
businesses which are situated in a highly 14:52
competitive environment. 14:54
Remember, on the web other supplies are just a click away.
15:00 So Graham has returned from his tea so I'll
just hand you back over. 15:03
Thank you. 15:06
Thanks very much Elesha, I'll finish off my tea later.
15:11 So Elesha's gone through the 5 benefits
15:14 of HI, this is actually available as an infographic
15:18 on our website. So if you go
15:21 to scisalesgroup.com/knowledge
15:25 you'll see that there's a section
15:29 on infographics. This one will be available
15:34 and indeed there's a number of other infographics
you may want to download 15:37
and share with your colleagues. So I said at the beginning
15:41 that we would go through a case study
15:44 on eBay Motors Pro let's take a look at that.
15:51 So eBay the world's leading online auction
15:54 and shopping website have a section
15:58 that's devoted to car dealers or to car
16:02 purchasing. So car dealers have for decades
relied on classified adverts 16:08
you may remember the back pages 16:12
of local newspapers being filled with adverts for car dealers.
16:16 Basically eBay have taken that and
16:19 taken it online. So adverts on eBay Motors
Pro 16:23
are designed to generate multiple leads driving footfall
16:26 onto forecourts.
16:29 So there were a number of sales challenges.
16:33 The go-to-market strategy for eBay
16:37 was a mixture of direct marketing and eBay's
own 16:41
sales resource and an external telemarketing agency.
16:45 Although the proposition was well received
by the industry, 16:48
it wasn't really achieving its full potential in terms of market penetration
16:53 and indeed usage.
16:56 So we were engaged to create awareness of
the proposition 17:01
by offering a free trial 17:04
to accelerate the registration of dealers converting them from the free
17:08 trial to sign up,
17:10 and then to offer active support particularly
for the 17:15
newly registered dealers, show them the benefits and maybe a few quick wins.
17:21 So that was the sales challenge.
17:24 How did we provide the solution?
17:28 So there were three elements, there was B2B
Telemarketing, 17:32
Field Sales and Account Management. Obviously what I want
17:35 to highlight here is that although this was
17:39 an online proposition,
17:43 we actually used Human Interaction.
17:46 So we have a mix up the the two.
17:49 So the B2B Telemarketing, I'll deal with that
first. 17:52
We assigned a dedicated team of agents 17:56
to call the principles and marketing managers 18:00
of pretty much every car dealer in the UK. 18:03
A mammoth task I think you'll agree. 18:06
We registered them for a trial and then later engaged in
18:11 further consultation calls to
18:14 gauge their experience of using the site and
to 18:17
offer any additional support. So towards the end of the trial period
18:22 we re-engaged with them on the phone and our
agents transitioned 18:27
the dealers onto contracts with eBay Motors Pro,
18:31 at which point they obviously started to actually
pay for the service. 18:37
So the next stage was 18:40
Field Sales. 18:44
The UK motor trade is kind of divide it into two categories;
18:49 there are the single site independent dealers,
and then there are these 18:53
larger group which I'm 18:55
sure you're familiar with, that have several hundred showrooms
18:58 around the
18:59 UK. Now for these larger dealers we realised
that 19:03
B2B Telemarketing was going to be the only solution.
19:07 We needed a Field Sales team.
19:10 So we employed a number of Field Sales agents.
19:14 They were incentivised to acquire a number
of dealers per month 19:19
and they applied what we would call a consultative selling technique
19:24 to ensure that every major dealer fully understood
the 19:28
benefits, but also so that we fully understood 19:32
there needs and wants. And obviously that insight was then passed back to
19:37 eBay.
19:41 The third element was the Account Management.
19:44 So we employed a number of
19:48 Account Managers, field-based Account Managers,
19:52 and their job was to enhance the relationship
between 19:56
eBay and their clients. So think of the Field Sales team as being the
20:01 hunters
20:02 and the Account Managers as being the farmers.
20:07 So these Account Managers met with dealers
on a regular basis. 20:10
Worked with the users of the site to ensure their listings were correct,
20:16 searches were being optimized, and that the
20:20 larger car dealers
20:23 were deriving optimum ROI from eBay Motors
Pro. 20:28
So during this obviously they built a rapport 20:32
with the the dealers over a period of time and it kind of underlined eBay's commitment
20:37 to the dealers, and made it more tangible.
20:41 The idea was that they would attend around
about 40 meetings per month 20:46
and provided detailed reports 20:50
to eBay on the dealers views, 20:54
some insight and allowed eBay 20:58
to adapt and enhance their value proposition. 21:04
The results of all this? Let's take a look. 21:08
So in the first three quarters of the engagement you can see that we
21:12 doubled
21:13 eBay's base of registered dealers.
21:16 And the conversion rate of trial to registered
users? 21:21
Managed to increase that by approximately 10 percent.
21:24 But it's the next stat that we're particularly
proud of, and I think that 21:27
this does underline 21:28
the value of HI, increasing their market share from
21:33 8 percent to 42 percent. I think you'll agree
that that's 21:37
quite remarkable. You can see 21:40
that we've got a testimonial from the Director of Business
21:44 Development at eBay Motors Pro,
21:46 just to underline what we're able to achieve.
21:51 So I've demonstrated there a case study where
21:55 3 forms of Human Interaction were used and
the results that we were able to 21:59
achieve. 22:01
What I'd like to do now is 22:05
come to a conclusion on this webinar and 22:08
cover off 3 main points. 22:13
So what's happened to Human Interaction? We've shown you that the
22:17 last decade has seen a rapid increase in spend
on the Internet 22:21
and Digital. naturally that's affected the amount of budget available for other
22:25 channels,
22:26 including HI. So is it possible
22:29 that we've lost sight of the benefit that
two-way, 22:32
one-to-one live dialogue can bring? 22:36
Where and how frequently should HI occur? 22:39
You've seen that with HI average order value is
22:42 £68,000, without HI it drops to
22:46 just £1,000, underlines the value
22:49 of HI in those high-value, complex sales.
22:54 When it comes to winning new business 89 percent
of 22:57
new orders had some form of HI, either a telephone call
23:01 or a face-to-face meeting. How frequently
should it occur? 23:06
It will vary from campaign or program to program, 23:10
but on a typical sixty-day campaign you're looking at about 8 to 9 human
23:13 interactions,
23:16 and when we compare HI and non-HI channels,
23:19 for us HI is really the best way to
23:22 BANT qualify a sales lead. Top 3
23:26 most effective channels, according to research
by B2B Marketing magazine, 23:31
for lead generation at least - Events, 23:34
Telemarketing and Email. A program that uses all 3
23:39 could prove to be the winning formula.
23:43 So that concludes come todays webinar I hope
you found it 23:47
of use. The 23:50
email addresses for both myself and Elesha are
23:53 on your screen now. If you have any further
questions please do email us. 23:57
Also like to draw your attention to the QR code in the bottom right hand corner,
24:02 click the link and you'll be taken to
24:06 a discussion page on LinkedIn, please do join
in the 24:11
the debate. Also want to highlight that 24:14
the white paper that formed the basis for this webinar
24:18 is available from our website
24:22 scisalesgroup.com/knowledge.
24:25 Thank you again for taking time out of your
day to attend this webinar 24:29
we really do appreciate it. Enjoy the 24:33
rest of your day and I hope that it's profitable.