Smart segmentation and targeted approach underpin appointment-setting success for Outset.
Outset is a progressive business services group that provides organisations with an integrated blend of legal, consulting and safety solutions. The company’s unique vision is based on the belief that its advice, whether legal, business consultancy, HR or safety should be practical, proportionate, balanced and useful, and should offer real value to clients.
Primed, Outset’s online subscription service, gives clients access to extensive employment law, HR, health and safety, and cyber security resources, including templates, documents, contracts and policies for an affordable monthly fee.
Campaign objective and project background
The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) was recommended to Outset by a venture capital firm as they needed an agency to undertake a pilot campaign in the UK, with the threefold objective to:
Having discussed their requirements in detail, Outset felt TTMC was a good fit for their needs based on the depth of the agency’s experience with similar businesses in the professional services, HR, and legal space.
Project execution
The brief was for TTMC to generate appointments with qualified decision makers interested in learning more about Outset’s services or receiving a demonstration of Primed from their sales team.
The client supplied a cross-sector database of SMEs including restaurants, hotels, nurseries, cleaning companies, dispensing chemists and creative agencies. The strategy was to target businesses with between 25-100 employees, those less likely to have in-house expertise and most likely to benefit from the Primed knowledge hub. Target decision makers ranged from MDs and Owner/Managers to Operations, Finance, and HR Directors, as well as Administrators, Office Managers, and Receptionists who might influence the purchase.
A detailed briefing took place to educate TTMC’s team on the features and benefits of the proposition. Data was segmented by sector and the briefing drilled down into the individual pain points, issues and challenges of each sector-specific group, and the relevant customer persona within those groups. The client also provided a detailed matrix and crib sheets to enable agents to cross reference the relevant benefits and selling points for each segment.
The TTMC team was also required to tailor the call according to each prospect’s level of experience and awareness of the proposition. Where prospects had used, or were familiar with competitor tools, it was important to home in on specific selling points, tailoring the proposition to each individual’s issues or pain points. If prospects had little experience or knowledge, they would focus on a broader message to build awareness and introduce the model. An additional layer of complexity was added since the competitive landscape varied from sector to sector. Agents needed to isolate different benefits, dedicated support or advisor credentials for example, and tailor the proposition to differentiate from that of the provider most prominent in each sector.
An additional goal for Outset was to validate their understanding of the competitive landscape and capture new market intelligence. In order to gather insight, a range of profiling questions were incorporated into the call flow including:
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Had prospects had people or safety issues requiring external support within the last 12 months?
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If so, how frequently and what was their level of spend on professional advice?
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Where would they currently go for support, and what was their experience with other providers?
Once the programme launched, TTMC worked closely with the client, providing continuous feedback, and flagging new intelligence, particularly in the early stages to support ongoing refinements in performance. Multiple agents were trialled to find the best fit in terms of style and approach and to maximise output. The client also had access to TTMC’s real-time reporting portal to give complete visibility of results, analytics and shared call recordings to reinforce the feedback loop.
TTMC applied qualification criteria as defined by the brief, scheduling appointments with prospects within a six-month buying window. However, early insight showed that contractual and operational models, whether rolling, fixed, short- or long-term, varied dramatically across providers and sectors. As a result, the qualification process and criteria were adapted to accommodate this variance. Whilst short-term ‘in scope’ opportunities were prioritised, longer-term leads were logged to create a future pipeline based on up-to-date contract renewal dates captured during the call. Given the diversity of models encountered, messaging was adapted also to bring to the fore Outset’s flexible contractual arrangements and highlight the benefits of operational versus capital expenditure models.
As the programme matured, further tweaks were made to secure appointments in diaries and improve conversion. TTMC has now taken responsibility for sending out meeting invites directly after the call and for making pre call checks, including reminder calls in advance of each meeting to minimise ‘no-shows’.
Results
This flexible, targeted approach and focus on incremental improvement have produced 70 high-quality appointments with prospective customers interested in more information or a demo of Outset’s Primed service. In addition, Outset has a robust future pipeline of prospects who can be strategically targeted based on accurate contract renewal dates and detailed insight into their current usage and operating set-up.
The client also has a complete analysis of responses to profiling questions, equipping them with valuable market and customer insight, and competitor intelligence to feed their sales and marketing strategy. Over 20,000 updates have been made to the original database and 78% of those called are now opted in to receive email updates.
Following the initial pilot, the programme has been extended and is now ongoing, with client and agency looking to tighten collaboration and further strengthen the partnership.