Fleet - Automatic Vehicle Location Systems

Tele-marketing Appointment Setting keeps direct sales force out on the road and reduces the cost per lead by tenfold.

Background
Siemens Datatrak Location and Information Systems provides real-time vehicle tracking for companies running a fleet of 5 or more vehicles. Their product provides efficient fleet management and peace of mind for payroll deliveries or heavily insured goods.

Situation
Customer acquisition is the most important and most expensive part of the sales process. Since Siemens product offering meets a very specific need, direct sales gets a better response than mass marketing techniques such as advertising. Running a direct sales force of 12 people is an expensive overhead. In order to maximise investment in the direct sales force, Siemens management hired ICM to set appointments for the sales team.

• Reduce the cost of sales
• Represent the Siemens Datatrak brand personified
• Deliver genuine sales opportunities through lead qualification
• Establish sales pipeline management
• Partnership on diary management
• Provide a thorough sales briefing for each appointment

Solution
The basic concept was to keep the direct sales force out on the road doing what they do best – selling "face-to-face".

In a very short time ICM acquired the expertise to intelligently match business needs with Siemens products and set better targeted appointments.

Since there are few eligible UK companies for business-to-business sales of this type, ICM used data supplied by Siemens Datatrak and screened companies for the most appropriate named individual, either with budget responsibility or with a very clear need.

Prospects were qualified as to where they were in the sales cycle at the time of the call and we ensured consistency in identifying prospects at each stage of the sales process.

Results
Cost per new business lead reduced by tenfold.

Siemens Datatrak were very satisfied with both the quantity and quality of appointments ICM generated. In fact, the quality of appointment set often meant that sales people were able to close the deal with smaller prospects on the very first appointment.

Based on analysis of previous Siemens Datatrak advertising campaigns, the ICM tele-marketing approach proved to be 10 times more effective for lead generation than advertising.

The cost per lead from awareness advertising was often up to around £1000 each. By contrast, each lead generated by ICM costs about £100 - even after direct mail costs are added.