As the Annual Shed Towing Championship continues on the M5 / A30 heading West its a great time to be getting hold of people who are at work.

Fully qualified sales appointments with Heinz, Baxters, Del Monte, Bolton Wanderers , Norwich City and Birmingham International Airport .......to name but a few confirm the fact. ...Call me on 0800 988 7253 to find out who , what and where

Good to be back in the saddle after 2 weeks out. Back refreshed, relaxed and excited about some large account starts. Ought to go away more often!

The team doing a great job in our abscence.

Great atmosphere in the office right now. We obviously sell on behalf of all sorts of clients across a whole host of b2b market sectors. Looking back over the last 18 months there have certainley been times when this has been more difficult than ever with some lock down on budgets. It is far easier when pushing at doors, when opened ,that actually have budgets behind them ! This seems to be happening now in just about every sector. It still takes a very well crafted telemarketing approach to unpick the lock sometimes but worth the effort.

We have countless examples of BIG budget spends in the last quarter that we have found and unlocked for clients. Call and ask us how on 01822 618537 or use the enquiry form if you are shy

Interestingly we are seeing a good deal of activity and enquiries from recruitment companies . We are currently engaged in a fascinating project with a UK based , web based recruitment crew who specialise in pan European , multi lingual recruitment.

We have also seen enquiries from 3 other recruitment businesses in the last week - all looking for both client accounts and candidates.

This may of course just be a fluke but perhaps there are economic stirrings that is stimulating companies working in this sector.

If you want to find out more about how Broadley Speaking's unique approach to telemarketing and telesales can help boost your sales - contact us here

We've also just boosted our own team ! Meet some of the newies here

Nice piece in todays Herald about telemarketing , Broadley Speaking and our growth. http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/business/Firm-new-recruits/article-2341553-detail/article.html

In the first of a series of interviews with sales professionals Broadley Speaking' s roving reporter tracks down Commercial Director of Maple Lake Uk to ask him ...............21 questions - go see ! Have a good weekend and fingers crossed for England tonight !

Telemarketing and telesales has always been a strange old business and we've been at it for almost 14 years as Broadley Speaking and I first picked up a telephone in anger in 1984 ( the term "Telemarketing" didn't exist then!) and over that time we've pretty much seen and worked in every b2b market in this country and abroad.

It does bring amazing diverity and means no day is the same. Today has seen in depth conversations about massage training; IT support , video conferencing, frozen/ chilled/ ambient transport and accountancy services - all in a days work!

An increasing thread running through many accounts is environmental considerations we currently are working on 6 accounts all of which contain strong environmental themes in the sales proposition; water, electricity, stack emissions , video conferencing [ YES - saves flights , petrol and you can avoid ash and striking air crews too!!].if you offer a product or service that has an environmental aspect give us a quick brief and we'll give you some free advice on how you might best go about it. Send your short brief here.

One of the less interesting calls ( but perhaps more amusing) was from another company in what is the broad telemarketing space - we'd never heard of them , another one that has miraculously popped up in the last year, guy on the end of the 'phone virtually unintelligible - no language problems [ they were based in the UK ] but apparently unable to string a cohesive sentence together. Blimey how do people earn a living using their brains , mouths and ears when there is no evidence of the 3 being connected ?

Attended an absolutely invigorating talk from Scott Gould at the Plymouth Creative Brkfst this morning. Scott is speaker, writer and co founder of Like Minds a fast growing and innovative conference where Scott has already hosted some of the world's leaders in Social Media and people to people thought.

Scott gave a fascinating presentation about the revolutionary/ evolutionary progression from broadcast to social media in a marketing context. It was videoed so hopefully we will be able to gain a link to it shortly. The cut and thrust came back to the rise and importance of "digital word of mouth" . As any marketer appreciates Word of Mouth has always been the marketing nirvana.

Whilst its appreciated there is a whole load of new media tools with which to develop meaningful relations with prospects and potential customers such as blogs, linked in , twitter, face book etc that if used correctly allow relationships to be built away from the old "broadcast" marketing models, and can create WOM tellingly Scott pointed out that interested folk might find news of a new product launch on , say , Twitter - if you were too embarrased to pick up the telephone to tell them . Well telephones are digital and what we create is effectively word of mouth ! Doesn't this absolutely fulfil the criteria that makes professional sales advocacy using the telephone the ultimate social media?

It depends what your perception of telemarketing and telesales is . Many peoples perception is, of course, defined by experience of receiving calls at home or work. Script led , vast numbers of calls to carelessly targetted "suspects" - its a clear case of old style broadcast marketing - chuck the message out and see what sticks. This is a World away from what we do at Broadley Speaking - professionally crafted sales calls to carefully selected senior individuals in which a dialogue is created [ sell not tell ]. Each call and conversation absolutely individualised depending on the defined needs of the potential customer.

Scott pointed to the ludicrous nature of those recorded messages that masquerade as telemarketing I guess. This is the polar opposite of our intelligent sales approach. Our bespoke , unscripted calling produces "intelligence" , intelligent responses and a level of "intimacy" and engagement unlikley to be found in the most social social media - and all this drives sales.

If the criteria for "social media" is the individuality of communication , the ability to create a dialogue ( as opposed to broadcasting messages) , to listen at a rate of 2:1 to talking , to engage at a different level and in depth with prospects , to create Word of Mouth referal we would maintain Broadley Speaking's intelligent sales approach to telemarketing / telesales is the ultimate social media.

We're finding our clients ( in combination with us) are being even more inventive with their use of our telemarketing services . As well as driving new business campaigns increasingly we find ourselves up and cross selling to existing client bases.It's amazing just how unclear customers are of all the services their respective client offers.

David speaking at Creative Breakfast July 2nd Ocean BMW Plymouth

Talking to the creative community in the South West about acquiring new business through cold calling to client acquisition – using case studies from clients such as Prego, Clear , Artavia and the like

Thanks to Nathan fromm Tee Design for the invite

It’s good news for marketers!

The latest IPA/BDO Bellwether report announced growing optimism and confidence alongside increased marketing budgets for 2010 in comparison to last year.

Effective marketing & advertising spend will be essential in 2010.

It's fair to say that everyone will be thinking very hard about how best to spend their marketing budget

As per the last "Precision Marketing" contact centre survey: " ....outbound telemarketing looks like one of the major bargains of the direct marketing industry"

Great to be embarking on a significant project with the NSPCC - interesting and important stuff !

Segmenting to one – the role of professional sales advocacy

Many marketing professionals contemplate the principle of “segmenting to one” and the effect that reaching that nirvana may bring in terms of response and subsequent sales.

The ability to give bespoke marketing and sales messages to each and every of your prospects has never been nearer in so many media forms; advanced data handling tools, marketing analytics, digital print, online media and much more will be on show at the forthcoming TFMA at Earls Court – all with the promise to give more individual messages to more individuals, more reliably than ever before.

However there is one media form, delivered correctly, that can already provide you with this powerful tool. At Broadley Speaking we call it “Intelligent Sales” , it is telemarketing but not as you would probably usually recognise it ! Numbers , of course, count but at Broadley Speaking we believe that successful b2b telemarketing is about ensuring every call counts , not just counting calls.

Since 1997 we have been providing , unscripted, professional and effective sales advocacy for our clients. They include some of the largest corporations in the World , but our range extends to new business start ups too.

We take on average 6 new business enquiries a day ; from SEO , PPC and most commonly through personal recommendation ( from one happy client to a future prospect). It seems to us that many enquirers quickly can get in to deep water buying what is generally termed "telemarketing".

Think just for a minute .... if you were buying on the page advertising you would make a candidate media list , crunch the sales pitch and audited demographics for each journal on the list , understand the differences between each journal,work out which candidates best meet your own target audience , look at the editorial fit, makes some price comparisons based on this research and then choose the ones that meet your needs and buy accordingly. You wouldn't pick a handful at random that roughly meet your criteria and put your ads in the ones that are cheapest right?

So how do buyers of telemarketing make their decisions for this extraordinarily crucial service ? Its fair to say some are old hands but a great , great many dont seem to have thought long and hard even about their selection criteria.

Hold that thought just for second .... you are going to get an individual or group of people you have never met before to be the eyes , ears and voice of your company and its brand(s) .. and they are going to be the folk that help you meet your sales objectives?

So .. selection criteria ....well you start to look at the websites that pop up when you google "telemarketing" . Look good ? Read well ? Isn't amazing how many blonde young women , who use telephone headsets ,work in this industry ?? Isnt it even more amazing how many logos of happy customers they have on their site??? All look good - don't the words sound good and remarkably similar ? Yes remarkably similar ! Whilst we are happy to accept imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, we have seen whole chunks of our web site material pretty much cut and pasted into a new entrants new sparkly web site. We even have one instance of our entire , old , web site being hijacked and used wholesale ( only changing the name at the top) by a US start up ! We all know you can make web sights look great but open the bonnet and see whats underneath ! It is quite easy to spoof most things online - whats difficult to spoof ............real , hard won, business to business sales experience .

Ask the questions and LISTEN closely to the answers . Ask what the company was doing ten years ago , eight years ago , six years ago.....did it even exist ? When it says it has a track record what EXACTLY do they mean ? Talk to the people who run the company , what were they doing 10 , 15 , 20 , 25 , 30 years ago?? Their experience , style and know-how inform the culture of the organisation - ask the question. If they have to seek out a teenage car wash round as vital business experience that will help you meet your sales goals - good luck to 'em ( seriously that one is true)

At Broadley Speaking you are investing a vast array of relevant , hard won sales experience. The senior management team alone have over 100 years of sales experience ( there's only 4 of us ). My own experience covers high level b2b sales , selling across 4 continents , too many countries to mention and across many , many market sectors. Whilst I also had a paper round in my youth , personally , I believe a 28 year record of selling at board level is probably going to be more useful to you in achieving your goals. Apply the same notion to the people that will be making the calls - ask about their CV's. Whilst we have nothing against youthful exuberance, youth does not have the monopoly on energy and exuberance but, almost by definition, experience only comes with age. Combine the two and bingo you are away !

So what price "experience" ? In our view and the view of our clients almost priceless. We most certainley aren't the cheapest you will find and we almost certainly wont be matching the cheapest quoute you get online ( you will find many a "premium" service whose prices fall quicker than you can keep track of if you give them a push). We have had "competitors" who in the space of hours drop their rates to keep their call centres busy. Ths happened only last month - what happened ? The client went with Broadley Speaking at a higher rate - why? when the other candidiate were pinned own on their "wealth of experience" , the client twigged they had only been trading for 4 years and couldn't possibly support their claims.

When purchasing "telemarketing" - think experience , experience , experience - it does have a price but one on almost every occasion its one well worth paying