Connect With Prospects During a Global Pandemic

The Outbreak

The coronavirus outbreak is first and foremost a human tragedy, affecting virtually everyone around the world. It is also having a growing impact on the global economy.

Businesses will inevitably notice the effect on their bottom line, notably with the need for working professionals to self-isolate or be placed under quarantine. 

A study issued by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday showed signs that the escalating coronavirus epidemic has begun to weigh on U.S. market morale, even though the U.S. economy has grown at a mild to moderate pace over the past several weeks.

The Corona-Effect on Bottomline 

With the turmoil caused by COVID-19, B2B businesses are facing a major challenge in prospecting, impacting lead generation and ultimately affecting revenue.

What would be the primary reason for the roadblock in the lead generation initiatives?

It all starts with communication.

In this crisis where events have been canceled, travel suspended and your prospects are out of the office indefinitely, communications strategies are more important than ever to maintain steady lead generation.

If your sales reps are struggling to find a way to connect with decision-makers, you are not alone.

Most businesses are facing the same challenges as work from home has limited the ability for reps to connect with prospects, particularly over the phone. 

Why is it particularly difficult to get people on the phone during this crisis?

SDRs often rely on cold calling. They either try to track down contact details in business directories or on company websites. 

Often a reps’ only option is to call switchboards and try to get connected to the decision-maker they’re attempting to reach. They end-up calling on the borderline numbers where they have to answer the interrogative questions to connect with the decision-maker.

But now that prospects are working remotely, calling into switchboards will often only leave the rep with the option to leave a voicemail and hope for a callback. Keep in mind that this crisis has developed extremely rapidly over the last few weeks and many organizations did not have time to set up any kind of call forwarding. 

Even if you have a direct dial to someone’s desk phone, unless they had previously configured their work telephony system to forward to mobile numbers, you’re still likely to only be able to leave voicemails. 

Emails are the other way around but when working from home, prospects might not feel the need to respond to emails as quickly. At SalesIntel we have seen a definite dip in engagement metrics on our email campaigns.

How can we be so sure about this?

Well, being in the B2B data industry for eight-plus years, this is what we are hearing from our prospects when our sales reps call them while working from home. 

Wait… Did you just read ‘calling the prospects when they are working from home?’ 

Yeah… You read that right. 

Not only are our sales reps able to connect with our prospects at home, but our clients are also happy to connect with their prospects during this outbreak.  

Mobile Numbers To The Rescue  

While the problem with reaching prospects while working from home might appear insurmountable, the solution is to improve your connection rate by using your prospect’s mobile number. 

Here are some useful stats around the effectiveness of calling on mobile numbers. (Source)

• It takes 22 minutes to connect using switchboard numbers, but with direct dials, it only takes 5 minutes
• When dialing a direct dial phone number at the director level, your SDR is 46% more likely to connect. 
• When dialing a direct dial number at the VP level, your SDR is 147% more likely to connect.

Not being able to reach prospects during a crisis like we are currently experiencing can easily make sales reps feel demotivated, especially when they are also working from home, resulting in low productivity.   

Having a list of mobile numbers will keep your sales reps motivated and to hustle harder – boosting the bottom line for everyone.

The benefit of having accurate mobile phone numbers not only saves your sales team time but grows your revenue – fast. 

Even if your prospects are in the office you can easily bypass switchboards and receptionists by connecting directly to your prospects.

If you have the mobile numbers for your prospects, chances of connecting are significantly higher compared to calling into company switchboards, irrespective of where they are working. 

How To Get Mobile Numbers

Vital information like mobile numbers are not easily available, especially if you are targeting B2B companies. However, you can get this micro-level information by working with a reliable B2B data partner. 

Because they are difficult to gather, most B2B data vendors do not offer mobile numbers though. Instead, most only offer the switchboard numbers, or at best direct extensions. However, given the need to work from home, these numbers and even direct extensions have limited value. 

Even vendors who do offer mobile numbers, at best you can typically expect data vendors to only have an accurate direct dial or mobile numbers for around 50% of their contacts. Others may only offer mobile numbers at a significant premium.

But just like you deserve good quality B2B data, you deserve the convenience and advantage that comes with mobile numbers. Especially now, when you need them the most.

Fortunately, SalesIntel has the highest percentage of mobile dial numbers and verified email addresses on the market. 

In fact, SalesIntel has over 48 million mobile numbers so that you can get to a decision-maker straight away, and use that time for more important tasks than waiting on a switchboard operator or leaving a voicemail. And all human verified mobile numbers are re-verified every 90 days by our research team to ensure data accuracy.

Pandemic emergencies like COVID-19 can come at anytime. It is important for you to learn from these situations and prepare yourself for the future so that it doesn’t disrupt productivity or your pipeline.

With SalesIntel, you can start having sales conversations with your prospects today.