Business to Business
Telecom/Internet Industry
Outbound Calling – Blind Survey plus Follow-up Lead Generation

Client: Regional provider of phone and Internet services for business

Situation: Client provides phone and internet service to small-to-medium sized businesses in several major U.S. metro markets. Client is challenged to reach owners and managers due to the high marketplace clutter in these large markets, as well as the competitive threat by several very large competitors. Client is further challenged in not being able to anticipate the specific service features needed, or the specific budget limits for various types of target companies.

Solution: Affinitas recommended a two step outbound calling strategy. Targets were identified as owners and managers of companies in Client’s metro markets with 5 to 50 employees. Affinitas sourced and purchased the calling file.

Step one was for Affinitas agents to make outbound survey calls to target companies. Calls were blind, Client was not identified. Rather, Affinitas was identified as an independent market research firm. Targets were asked questions about current providers, current services, budgets, and specific triggers that might motivate them to switch (e.g. – specific % savings, contract buyout, better service, etc.). Survey findings were compiled and reported back to Client. Affinitas segmented responders into several groups of similar budget and service needs. Client formulated specific offers for each group.

Step two of calling started one month later with the objective of generating qualified sales leads for Client. Affinitas called the segmented survey responders, identifying itself as calling on behalf of Client and making specific offers to each segment, as driven by survey responses. For prospects that showed interest, Affinitas collected contact information and set an appointment for a visit from a field sales rep. A daily file of leads was automatically generated and emailed to the sales manager in each of the Client metropolitan markets, who then distributed to the field.

Results: Step one calls were very effective in identifying decision-makers in each business and specific offers that might convince them to switch providers.

The very targeted step two calls experienced a dramatic 15% conversion rate of qualified leads, 5 times higher than average. Client sales teams were able to close service contracts on 65% of these leads, nearly double their average sales rate.

Client did not provide specific ROI, but said that based on their relatively low average customer churn percentage, ROI was easily over 1000%.