HOW TO CHOOSE BETWEEN TELEPHONE PROSPECTING OR DIGITAL PROSPECTING?
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 8:44 am
Who to believe? Two recent studies draw seemingly opposite conclusions about the best B2B sales prospecting methods. One by Marketing Prof (1) shows that telephone prospecting has the best commercial ROI (return on investment), while the other by Implisit (2) concludes that digital prospecting is the best and most economical way to generate new customers. malaysia whatsapp data
The conclusions cited are actually less contradictory than it seems. When we take into account 2 parameters: the density of prospects in your market and the time horizon of your actions.Let's take the example of a company selling laundry equipment. According to marketing, the cost and services of the equipment should attract a majority of large industrial laundries (>600 in France - well identified) and a few retail laundries (>11,000 in France - poorly identified). The expected turnover of these 2 markets is currently. In one case, we are looking for 60% of prospects among the 600 industrial laundries, in the other we want to reach 3% of retail laundries.
This is called lead density. Since the costs of direct prospecting are proportional to the number of calls, telephone prospecting will cost proportionally 18 times more for retail laundries.
This example is extreme because in reality, we can use sorting and scoring methods. These methods reduce the population of suspects to be prospected by telephone for a much more economical result. However, this example illustrates that the ROI of telephone prospecting depends heavily on the density of prospects.
In low density markets, digital prospecting methods from Inbound Marketing can be very relevant. It is estimated that digital prospecting starts to be relevant if your prospect density in the files is less than 20%.
The conclusions cited are actually less contradictory than it seems. When we take into account 2 parameters: the density of prospects in your market and the time horizon of your actions.Let's take the example of a company selling laundry equipment. According to marketing, the cost and services of the equipment should attract a majority of large industrial laundries (>600 in France - well identified) and a few retail laundries (>11,000 in France - poorly identified). The expected turnover of these 2 markets is currently. In one case, we are looking for 60% of prospects among the 600 industrial laundries, in the other we want to reach 3% of retail laundries.
This is called lead density. Since the costs of direct prospecting are proportional to the number of calls, telephone prospecting will cost proportionally 18 times more for retail laundries.
This example is extreme because in reality, we can use sorting and scoring methods. These methods reduce the population of suspects to be prospected by telephone for a much more economical result. However, this example illustrates that the ROI of telephone prospecting depends heavily on the density of prospects.
In low density markets, digital prospecting methods from Inbound Marketing can be very relevant. It is estimated that digital prospecting starts to be relevant if your prospect density in the files is less than 20%.