TTMC’s commitment and resilience deliver high conversion rate and accelerated results for Microsoft Gold Partner, DMI

Founded in 2001, DMI are a leading global digital transformation consultancy, systems integrator and Microsoft Gold Partner. With 26 offices and over 2000 employees worldwide, they have a large international footprint. The company includes five business units, Transformation, Data and Analytics, Application Development, Digital Commerce and Managed Services.

DMI are highly regarded by industry analysts and have for the past five year ranked as global leader in Managed Services on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. DMI’s vision is to help their clients become digital leaders through a mobile-first, human-centric approach that eases their digital transformation journey

Campaign objective and project background

DMI approached The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) to carry out a lead generation and appointment setting campaign. They needed an agency that was a technology-sector specialist with good knowledge of the Microsoft stack that could communicate technology propositions well.

The requirement was to generate a pipeline of sales-ready leads for DMI’s Transformation business unit. The appointed agency would be tasked to call and engage with senior IT decision makers within large organisations, understand their implementation and investment strategy for the Microsoft stack and book appointments directly into the sales team’s diaries.

Having delivered over 100 lead generation campaigns for Microsoft’s Channel Partner Programme and native language demand generation for Microsoft in EMEA, TTMC was considered the perfect fit.

Project execution

A briefing took place during which the client presented their proposition and the breadth of services offered by the Transformation business unit. The Transformation team specialise in delivery and system integration capabilities for Microsoft’s full technology stack including Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure. They provide a portfolio of services from design, strategy, and consulting, through to implementation and customer experience. The briefing also covered DMI’s brand and company values as agents needed to represent the business with credibility, in line with the client’s hard-won industry reputation and Microsoft Gold Partner status.

TTMC sourced a list of IT decision makers within large businesses to support calling. The data included sectors where DMI already has a strong presence including pharma, travel and leisure but also a broad mix of other industries such as public sector, manufacturing and retail.

TTMC launched the programme and scheduled regular reviews, providing the client with access to real-time results and activity through TTMC’s online reporting portal. As calling progressed, it quickly became clear that agents were struggling to reach IT decision makers, an audience already receiving high volumes of sales calls, in an extremely competitive and commoditised market. TTMC further qualified the list to home in on those specifically responsible for digital transformation; these decision-makers were separated into target lists and prioritised within the calling schedule. When agents did get through to the right contacts, however, agents then found that prospects were often unwilling to engage in a discussion around such a vast topic as company-wide transformation on a first call. In addition, decision-makers sat within large organisations that often had consultants or systems integrators in place already, so overcoming inertia around a major shift to a new provider was extremely tough.
 
Although these factors hampered progress, the client was patient and worked closely with TTMC to adapt the approach and find ways to overcome barriers. Despite both parties’ best efforts, however, the contact rate remained low, and results were still not forthcoming, so it was agreed that a new strategy was needed.
 
DMI provided a list of registrants and attendees of workshops they had run in conjunction with Microsoft over the past six months in the UK and Europe. The client had not had a chance to follow up with attendees, so this was a good opportunity to do that, whilst at the same time evaluating a new approach for the telemarketing programme. Workshops had focused on specific topics including ‘Business Intelligence’ and ‘Power Virtual Agents’ so attendees had a defined remit and a specific need, which DMI and TTMC hoped might make them more receptive to a conversation.
 
The calling schedule was quickly adjusted based on the new brief and TTMC began to call through the warmer workshop data. It became clear very quickly that the new strategy would be more fruitful. Prospects were already aware of DMI, had a defined requirement and were open to a conversation around how DMI might help with their needs. Whilst the lists were relatively small, contact and conversion rates were much higher as calls were more structured rather than needing to cover the very broad topic of digital transformation. As a result of conversations with workshop attendees, TTMC agents were equipped with anecdotes and examples that improved their overall fluency in positioning the DMI proposition. They revisited the original dataset and were able to improve conversion of those prospects also, albeit at a much lower rate than the qualified workshop lists.

Results

The client has been very impressed with TTMC’s agility and commitment to delivering value to their client despite challenging circumstances. The new strategy accelerated results dramatically and DMI now has a good feed of high-quality leads and a solid foothold with qualified decision-makers within large businesses from which to develop a broader conversation around digital transformation.

Integrating telemarketing alongside other channels, has also improved the return on investment in the marketing workshops and identified a successful new approach. As a result, DMI has adopted this model and engaged TTMC to support all upcoming events.