Phase 3: The Ongoing Campaign
As you may have guessed, we love to sell; we just don't like to drive. We love the challenge of the hunt, and the celebration of victory. And so once we've figured out how to grow your business, scaling up is where it all comes together for the long term.
First, What Can Happen At The End Of The Trial?
Pilot programs can result in a number of outcomes. It's certainly possible (although unlikely,) that the program doesn't find any new opportunities for you at all, or we might generate too little business (i.e. for the cost,) or we might find opportunities that aren't going to be profitable for you, in which case we might simply choose to part ways. We can, of course, analyze the situation and see if we can fix it but, as we said before, no one can guarantee success in marketing - there are simply too many "unknowns" when you're getting started.
By the same token, once a pilot program is completed, everyone will have a very clear idea about what's out there, and what it will cost to find it. We'll know how many dials it will take to get through to a decision maker, and how many conversations we have to have in order to persuade him to meet. We'll know what we need to ask in order to uncover his needs or unhook your competition, and we may even know the close rate and the margin. In other words, by the time we're done you should know everything you need to know to build a business case that you can literally take to the bank.
Most of the time, we find that there's real opportunity out there for our clients; and we bring it in. And just as importantly, most of the time the pilot program will have done it with a profitable, scalable process; and the whole program not only ends up paying for itself, but you can now see it becoming a major profit center and source of growth for your company. And so that's where things get interesting, because once we understand the true costs and benefits, you can construct an incentivized process where there is virtually no risk.
The Option of an Incentive-Based Program
While many clients choose to continue their campaign on a fixed-fee (i.e. hourly,) basis, once we've proven that the program works, you have to option of switching to a structure that can motivate very high levels of performance. That is, if the trial proves that outsourced B2B telemarketing can reliably feed your company's need for increased revenue and profit growth, you may switch to a pricing program that includes a performance-based incentive that can reduce your up-front cost and risk, enhance the results through incentives, and motivate your Lead Generation Specialists to do an even better job.
The incentivized pricing structures available in Phase 3 vary depending on the contact rate, the appointment rate, the close rate, the length of the sell cycle, the average sale, the margin available, and a few other factors; but certain structures will make intuitive sense. We can put a model together for you, though, that will help you understand your options, and build a successful, long term program.
Summary
Nothing requires that you switch to an incentive-based pricing plan in a continuing campaign, but many owners like the idea of aligning incentives in this way. We can continue at an hourly rate, or you can purchase discounted blocks of time for your continuing campaign. But performance-based incentives are a great way to motive salespeople and reduce your risk. Overall, we find that incentive-based pricing provides us with the opportunity for a true win-win, and a long term partnership for growth, and we look forward to working with you in this manner.