phone leads

8 Advanced Tactics For Increasing Your B2B Telephone Sales

Phone lead generation is still a highly effective way to reach prospects. Give these 8 advanced tactics for increasing your B2B telephone leads, sales and outbound ROI a try.

Telephone sales aren’t what they used to be. It took only 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect in 2007. Today, it takes around 8 attempts, more than doubling the difficulty of landing sales over the phone.

But as you know, phone sales certainly aren’t dead. They just require a higher level of strategy and mastery. A study by Baylor University found that it takes roughly 7.5 hours to secure one referral or appointment through cold calling methods. If you only have one dedicated phone salesperson, your company could have one new appointment or referral every day via cold calling.

For most B2B businesses, where phone selling strategies are most commonly found, one lead per day per salesperson represents a very strong ROI.

Today, we’re going to help you sell over the phone like a modern pro.

Here are 8 Advanced Tactics for Increasing your B2B Telephone Sales

1. Take Timing Seriously

In sales, as in many areas of life, timing is everything. You will often accomplish more during peak hours than you do the rest of the day. So even if you are in a position that requires around-the-clock calls, it’s important to be at peak efficiency during those peak hours.

So when are those peak hours?

An in-depth study out of MIT gives us several interesting insights:

The best time period to contact leads is between 4:00-6:00 p.m.
The best second best time period is between 8:00-10:00 a.m.
The worst time period to call is between 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
The best days to call are Thursday and Wednesday.
The worst days to call are Tuesday and Monday.

It’s worth checking out the study, because these aren’t insignificant differences. For example, calling on Thursday versus Tuesday increases results by an average of 50%. Calling at 4:30 p.m. versus 11:30 a.m. increases results by an average of 114%!

Timing might seem cliche, but what other tactics do you know of that can immediately double sales?

2. Call The Right People and Present them with the Right Pitch

I’m going to borrow and re-spin an example from Jason Quey.

Sid works at a large SaaS company. When it comes to larger tool purchases, he makes the decisions. However, Sid rarely creates content for the team. Tyler is in charge of content.

If your sales team is attempting to pitch a solution to the content problems Tyler is facing, appealing to Sid around those challenges won’t be effective. The best way to pitch Sid is very different from the optimal way to pitch Tyler.

The Gartner Group reports that in a company of 100-700 people, an average of 7 people are involved in buying decisions. If you aren’t tailoring your pitch around these people, you will struggle to succeed in B2B phone sales. There’s no getting around that.

3. Lay The Groundwork

We know that cold calls can work, but there’s a way to make them work better. UNC professor Dave Roberts said it best, “Cold calling is old fashioned… Aim for hot calling.” The more prepared you are when you call, the better that call will generally go.

We live in an age of the internet and social media. Before you call a prospect, Google them. Learn everything that you can before ever making the call. This can help you know what the customer’s needs are, what their objections might be, and what interests them. You may happen upon what their biggest pain is right now.

You can even make some level of initial contact before calling:

Connect via shared acquaintances
Comment on their social posts
Mention them in a blog post or comment
Etc.

There are many ways to make a superficial connection with someone that quickly turns you into a known entity versus a cold call.

4. Follow A Sales Script

There are no downsides to using a sales script… only to using one poorly.

When used correctly, having a sales script results in the following benefits:

They force you to create and refine a consistent sales methodology.
They allow you to provide a baseline for your entire sales team’s performance.
They allow sales reps to spend less time thinking about what they’re going to say and more time listening to the potential customer.
They provide talented sales reps with a strategic baseline off of which they can improvise.

To learn how to create your own sales script, check out this guide from Close.io.

5. Navigate Objections

Navigating objections is a central part of any sales process, but there can be a bit of a misunderstanding about this issue.

Some objections always need to be covered and getting out in front of them can be beneficial. For example, if your product is twice as expensive as every other competitor, it’s almost guaranteed that issue is going to come up, and addressing it before the customer does gives you the chance to frame it in a positive light.

Not all objections are created equal, however, and sometimes, bringing up certain objections simply bogs down the sales process and creates doubts that weren’t there to begin with. Instead, have a plan to overcome these objections IF they are brought up.

For more on covering objections, here’s another top notch guide from Close.io.

6. Stop Talking. Ask and Listen.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

The more your prospect is talking, the better your chance of closing the sale.

Outbound sales and inbound sales follow up are an inherently aggressive activity. You are on the offensive. You are seeking out people to sell them something. But often, the solution is simply to slow down and get out of your own way.

The best sales scripts and salespeople are focused on asking the right questions. The prospect doesn’t need you to create challenges for them. They have numerous pitfalls and problems on the path to their goals. Your job is to create a situation where the prospect is articulating those challenges… not you.

Ultimately, B2B sales isn’t about tricking people into getting a product or service that doesn’t work for them. It’s about matching beneficial solutions to the businesses that need them, and that requires a two-way conversation.

Don’t miss out on How to Pick a Conversion Optimization Consultant for your Online Business

7. Focus On Customer Value

Your goal as a salesperson is never to sell someone on a price. Your goal is to sell them on value – such incredible value that the price seems like a no-brainer.

It’s very, very important that you focus on this value BEFORE discussing pricing, for a number of key reasons.

First, if pricing is brought up first, your product/service will be evaluated as a commodity. Once a number has been mentioned, everything will be filtered through that number. You will have zero leverage in presenting your value.

Second, if you don’t pitch you value before getting to pricing, the prospect will consider the pricing based on their preconceived assumptions about the value of your product class. And remember, they aren’t currently using your product, so it’s likely they don’t consider the value to be worth the cost.

Finally, if you don’t understand the prospect’s needs before you get to pricing, you might propose a price that is too low or too high. Too high, and the conversation is essentially over. Too low, and you won’t be considered a serious player. Without getting to know the prospect first, you are playing a dangerous guessing game.

8. To Close Is To Follow-Up

You already probably know your “hook, line, and sinker.” You have your closing speech down to a science. That’s great, but just know that you will talk to a person several times before they’re ready to hear your golden pitch. According to Marketing Donut, 80% of sales require 5 (yes, FIVE) follow up calls. 44% of salespeople quit after just 1 follow up. Don’t be a quitter!

Also, stop leaving the follow-up in the customers’ hands. Don’t say, “Give me a call if you’re interested.” Geoffrey James, author at Inc. said, “I’ve read dozens of so-called sales letters and sales emails that end with a suggestion that the customer should call or contact the seller…The people who send these letters always complain that they don’t get any responses. No kidding–you’re asking the customer to do your work for you.”

Instead, change your follow-up strategy and set up a time to talk again. For instance, “I’m going to call you next Wednesday, after you’ve had time to look at everything, so that we can discuss whether it makes sense to continue discussing our offer.”

Conclusion: Upgrade Your Phone Game

Telephone sales are more challenging than ever, but they are worth the trouble. Use these 8 advanced tactics to improve your B2B sales calls and close more sales.

Do you need help increasing the number of inbound leads? Would you like your phones to ring more often? Find out how Conversion Sciences can help with results-driven lead generation solutions.

Rachel Africh

Contributor: Rachel Africh is the CMO of TheLeadsWarehouse.com and is an expert on marketing tactics and generating targeted leads that convert for sales industry professionals.

July 26, 2017/by Jacob McMillen

The 4-Step Process For Drastically Increasing Inbound Calls

Conversion Optimization, Lead Generation

Generate more sales leads. Follow this sure fire 4-step process for seriously increasing inbound calls.

Phone calls don’t get cold.

Phone calls are answered and voice mails are returned. There is no CRM icebox where your contacts can be sent to chill while everyone updates their lead reports.

Even if you have highly sophisticated marketing automation campaigns that move people through the sales funnel, none of them is as efficient and successful as a human being — listening, answering questions, and handling objections.

In our experience, inbound calls are worth between 500% and 1,000% (that’s five to ten times) more in revenue than a completed contact form.

Your business wants more calls. Your sales team wants more calls.

Today, I’m gong to give you a 4-step process for drastically increasing your inbound calls.

Understanding Your Inbound Callers

Before we attempt to increase calls, we must first understand who our callers are.

There are two kinds of people coming to your website who need to talk to someone. They won’t be satisfied by completing a form or reading a report.

We know something about these two kinds of people.

The first kind has a Myers-Briggs type index including NT, iNtuiting and Thinking. Well-known consultants Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg call them Competitives. They are on a mission to find the things that make them better. They expect things to work logically and abhor sloppiness. They are smart and goal-oriented.

The second kind has a Myers-Briggs type index that includes N and F, iNtuiting and Feeling. The Eisenbergs call them Humanists. They don’t do business with companies, they do business with people. They seek relationship and connection. Trust and empathy are the things they look for.

When you say, “Let’s put a phone number on our site because someone might actually call,” you are thinking of these visitors. The problem is, that adding a phone number as an afterthought is exactly what these visitors don’t want. The Competitive sees it as sloppy. The Humanist sees it as stand-offish.

Increasing inbound calls is both about appealing to these users AND making it easier for everyone else to call your business as opposed to contacting you via different channels.

Leverage Your Growing Mobile Traffic

If you are equipped to accept phone calls, you have an advantage over businesses that can’t. Too many businesses are ignoring their mobile traffic because it converts at a quarter to one-half the rate of their desktop traffic.

We have more than one client whose mobile conversion rate is higher than their desktop conversion rate. This is because they accept calls.

Buried deep inside every mobile phone is a phone. That’s why we call them mobile phones. With the right testing program, we can find the right calls to action and proper placements to turn tepid mobile traffic into gold.

Regardless of where the calls are coming from, there are some important steps to take when optimizing for phone calls.

The 4-Step Process For Drastically Increasing Inbound Calls

Now that you understand your inbound callers and leveraged your mobile traffic, let’s dive into the proven 4-step process for increasing your inbound calls and generating more sales leads.

Step #1: Improve Your Website Data Tracking

To tie calls back into an analytics package, we’ve worked with a number of services, including IfByPhone and Marketing Optimizer. Others on the market include Mongoose Metrics, LogMyCalls, and RingRevenue. This allows you to calculate a conversion rate with more accuracy.

The ways these packages work are different and beyond the scope of this column. Nonetheless, they let you take credit for real activity in sales.

Step #2: Perfect Your Offer

Those who bother to write an invitation alongside their phone numbers resort to engaging messages such as, “Call,” “Call us,” “Call us today,” or the daring “Contact us.” None of these offers a why or tells you what to expect. Adding an exclamation point doesn’t help.

Home Instead Senior Care is really working hard to get visitors to pick up the phone.

There are four things that you can use to make your phone number more enticing to those who would call:

1. Alignment means that your “call-to-call” mirrors the need of the visitor. Often, it is sufficient to match the invitation in the ad or link what brought them to the page.

2. Adding Emotion shows that you relate to their real non-logical pain or desire.

In the example above, “Struggling with caring for a parent” would be aligned, but not emotional.

“Feeling guilty about caring for a parent?” definitely carries emotion. If you think that this kind of message is too bold, think again. We had a 43% increase in calls for an invitation that read, “Ready to stop lying to yourself? We can help. Call …”
Emotion is a powerful tool.

3. The visitor wants Clarity about what will happen if they call. Who will be on the end of the line? Will they be an expert? Will they try to sell me or educate me? Can I call on weekends? Be clear about what will happen on the call.

4. Finally, you must build the Value of the call. Like all good calls-to-action, the call-to-call must reek of WIIFM (“what’s in it for me”). It has to promise enough to the visitor that they would prefer to call you over any alternative. Lay it out there.

These four components — Alignment, Emotion, Clarity and Value — make for effective calls-to-call, and are great for other calls-to-action as well.

Step #3: Put Things In The Right Place

Just sticking the number in the upper right corner isn’t going to get you those calls that make you powerful. The number should be there, as this is where callers look. But the other two places that make the phones ring are:

In the headline at the start of content.
About 75% down a page of content.

The following image shows a wireframe of a typical content page with proper placement of calls-to-call. We’ve tested them all over the page.

Ask for the inbound call in the headline and again about three-quarters of the way down the page.

We tested messages at the top, left, right, bottom and middle. These are the places that worked for us on several sites. Bigger and bolder text can also increase your calls.

Step #4: Make Your Contact Forms Long & Unattractive

You may have noticed an item on the wireframe image above: “Long, ‘Nasty’ Form.”

To maximize the number of calls you get and cast fewer of your visitors into the frigid desert of the CRM, make your forms long, and ask for some personal info. Yes, this is the opposite of what we tell you to do when you want visitors to fill out a form.
This will cook your noodle. When trying to maximize the number of calls we get, a long, nasty form works better than no form at all. That’s right. No form generates fewer calls.

I think this highlights the way our visitors assign a price to their time and attention. On its own, a phone call may seem “expensive.” However, when a long, nasty form is on the page, it makes the cost of taking action by form more “expensive.” The call looks cheap by comparison.

This is a pricing exercise, but the cost isn’t money. It’s time and attention.

The power of a ringing phone gets noticed. If visitors to your site start calling your sales team, it will be noticed. You need to be able to measure the calls and toot your own horn as well. Unlike leads, calls have a power beyond a graph in a PowerPoint presentation. To become an indispensable marketer, make the phone ring.

Bonus: Make Click-to-Call Prominent on Mobile

Maximizing phone calls from the web means maximizing your mobile traffic. There is an entire separate set of strategies for getting more mobile calls.

Visitors on a mobile phone are coming with a completely different mindset from those coming on a desktop computer or tablet. To understand how to engage these visitors, download Designing for the Mobile Web 2.0.

Increasing Inbound Calls Conclusion

There are three kinds of visitors visiting your website:

Those that will not call under any circumstances. They hate the human touch.
Those who are going to call because they trust the human voice explicitly.
Those who might call if given the right incentives.

When you focus your strategies on getting group 3 to call, you can enjoy significantly higher sales rates, bigger average order values and new customers that are more satisfied with their first buying experience.

Make calls a key part of your focus, and harvest more of those fickle visitors coming on mobile phones.

March 8, 2017/by Brian Massey

Generating Phone Leads from the Web

Lead Generation

For many of our clients, a phone call is worth seven to ten times more than a form fill. This means that we want to maximize the number of calls, but don’t want to completely shut down the forms on these sites.

Why Phone Calls are So Valuable

Phone calls are typically most valuable to businesses selling high-dollar and high-consideration products.
The term “high-dollar” is subjective. It can mean anything from plastic surgery to mortgage loan applications.
“High-consideration” products and services are those for which the stakes are high, and the buyer will generally do more research before buying. Cars, appliances, and vacations are some examples of considered purchases.
Phone calls are also valuable in markets in which doing nothing is a real option. For example, addiction treatment centers will want to get a prospect on the phone knowing that they will want to delay treatment for their addiction.
For these businesses, a human being will often have more success moving a prospect to a close than the website alone.

Please Add Me To Your CRM

When someone completes a form on the site, you know where the information goes. Someone gets an email. A record is added to the customer relationship management (CRM) system. Lead counts are tallied for your weekly marketing report. Some get contacted. Some don’t. Some get the autoresponder they had hoped for. Most don’t.
Form leads too often wither in the CRM freezer. How can we thaw out our lead funnel and give sales what they need to generate revenue?
Phone Calls. Because phone calls don’t get cold.
Phone calls are answered and voice mails are returned. There is no CRM icebox where your contacts can be sent to chill while everyone updates their lead reports.
Even if you have highly sophisticated marketing automation campaigns that move people through the sales funnel, none of them is as efficient and successful as a human being — listening, answering questions, and handling objections.
In our experience,

a phone call is worth between 500% and 1,000% (that’s five to ten times) more in revenue than a completed form will generate

a phone call is worth between 500% and 1,000% (that’s five to ten times) more in revenue than a completed form will generate.
The business wants more calls. Your sales team wants more calls. However, marketing is rewarded for leads. This is the problem.

Making the Phone Ring

There are three kinds of people coming to your website who need to talk to someone. They won’t be satisfied by completing a form or reading a report.

Those who visit looking for a number to call. We want to make sure that they find the number they are looking for.
Those who would call if incentivized. We want to make it attractive for them to pick up the phone.

There is a group of those who just don’t want to talk to another human under any circumstances. We want these folks to complete the form.
When you say, “Let’s put a phone number on our site because someone might actually call,” you are thinking of the first group, those who will call. This is not going to be effective for the second group, those who might call.
Embrace the phone, or they will go someplace else.
Evaluate the location of phone numbers on your site the same way you would evaluate call to action buttons. The phone number needs to be prominent, frequent, but not too pushy. Below we talk about where to place phone numbers.

You Can’t Take Credit For What You Don’t Measure

In order for this to work, dear marketer, you first need to get credit for these calls. Instead of slapping the company sales number on the website, you need to be able to measure calls sent from the site. Inexpensive services will give you a unique number. We use Grasshopper for our 800 number service. Google Voice is a source of local phone numbers. Counting calls will be largely done by hand.
To tie calls back into an analytics package, we’ve worked with a number of services, including Dialogtech, FiveNines, Five9, Convirza, and Invoca. This allows you to calculate a conversion rate with more accuracy.
Watch our phone leads webinar with Convirza.
The ways these packages work are different and beyond the scope of this column. Nonetheless, they let you take credit for real activity in sales.

Nail The Offer

We too often think that those who would prefer a call will think of calling. It ain’t true. Someone predisposed to call still needs to understand why they should call and what to expect. The only number that doesn’t need a call-to-action is 9-1-1.
Those who bother to write an invitation alongside their phone numbers resort to engaging messages such as, “Call,” “Call us,” “Call us today,” or the daring “Contact us.” None of these offers a why or tells you what to expect. Adding an exclamation point doesn’t help.

Home Instead Senior Care is really working hard to get visitors to pick up the phone.

There are four things that you can use to make your phone number more enticing to those who would call:

Alignment means that your “call-to-call” mirrors the need of the visitor. Often, it is sufficient to match the invitation in the ad or link what brought them to the page.
Adding Emotion shows that you relate to their real non-logical pain or desire.

In the example above, “Struggling with caring for a parent” would be aligned, but not emotional.
“Feeling guilty about caring for a parent?” definitely carries emotion. If you think that this kind of message is too bold, think again. We had a 43% increase in calls for an invitation that read, “Ready to stop lying to yourself? We can help. Call …”
Emotion is a powerful tool.

The visitor wants Clarity about what will happen if they call. Who will be on the end of the line? Will they be an expert? Will they try to sell me or educate me? Can I call on weekends? Be clear about what will happen on the call.
Finally, you must build the Value of the call. Like all good calls-to-action, the call-to-call must reek of WIIFM (“what’s in it for me”). It has to promise enough to the visitor that they would prefer to call you over any alternative. Lay it out there.

These four components — Alignment, Emotion, Clarity and Value — make for effective calls-to-call, and are great for other calls-to-action as well.

Put Things In The Right Place

Just sticking the number in the upper right corner isn’t going to get you those calls that make you powerful. The number should be there, as this is where callers look. But the other two places that make the phones ring are:

In the headline at the start of content.
About 75% down a page of content.

The following image shows a wireframe of a typical content page with proper placement of calls-to-call. We’ve tested them all over the page.

Smartphones Have Phones

On your small-screen mobile site — as opposed to your tablet-formatted website — click to call is an intuitive way to get more calls.

For our call-oriented customers, their mobile sites now out-convert their desktop sites.

For our call-oriented customers, their mobile sites now out-convert their desktop sites. How do we do it? Here are some steps.

Make the phone numbers click-to-call

Click to call is crucial for mobile conversion rates.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes. Write “Tel” links explicitly.

Keep Calls to Action Available in Sticky Header or Footer

This sticky header offers several ways to take action.

You never know when the visitor will have the information they need to take action. Plus, they may find it’s their turn in line and need to take action quickly. These are mobile devices, you know.

Reduce Forms

Completing forms on a mobile device is grueling, frustrating and could scare the children. Look for ways to take action that don’t require long forms to fill.

Ironically, this is for a Webinar on mobile marketing. Too many fields.

Ironically, this two-screen form is for a Webinar on mobile marketing.

Consider using auto-fill from a social network, like LinkedIn or Facebook.

Filling in forms on mobile is hard. Consider social login auto-fill.

Bonus: The Power Of A Long, “Nasty” Form

If you’ve read this far, I have a bonus for you. You may have noticed an item on the wireframe image above: “Long, ‘Nasty’ Form.”
To maximize the number of calls you get and cast fewer of your visitors into the frigid desert of the CRM, make your forms long, and ask for some personal info. Yes, this is the opposite of what we tell you to do when you want visitors to fill out a form.
This will cook your noodle. When trying to maximize the number of calls we get, a long, nasty form works better than no form at all. That’s right. No form generates fewer calls.
I think this highlights the way our visitors assign a price to their time and attention. On its own, a phone call may seem “expensive”. However, when a long, nasty form is on the page, it makes the cost of taking action by form more “expensive”. The call looks cheap by comparison.
This is a pricing exercise, but the cost isn’t money. It’s time and attention.
The power of a ringing phone gets noticed. If visitors to your site start calling your sales team, it will be noticed. You need to be able to measure the calls and toot your own horn as well. Unlike leads, calls have a power beyond a graph in a PowerPoint presentation. To become an indispensable marketer, make the phone ring.

This article first appeared on Marketing Land.

February 17, 2016/by Brian Massey

The Elements of A Converted Call [INFOGRAPHIC]

Lead Generation

Here we thought we were the only ones who loved a good periodic table. Data collected from Convirza based on millions of phone calls analyzed in the first quarter of 2014 answers the critical question: what are the differences between a converted call and a non-converted call?
McKay Allen shared the results from this study in this incredible infographic. Some interesting facts you will find:

Agents asked for the business 3x more frequently on converted calls than non.
Converted calls were 42% longer than non-converted calls.
Lead quality score was 65% higher on converted calls than non.

Please share and enjoy.

The Elements of a Converted Call

Conversion Sciences shows you how to get phone leads in our free Webinar with Convirza.

May 20, 2014/by Brian Massey

Conversation Analytics Data From Calls Analyzed [INFOGRAPHIC]

Lead Generation

Call tracking is what happens BEFORE the call. Conversation Analytics is what happens ON the call.
The Convirza (formerly LogMyCalls) Conversation Analytics uses sophisticated speech recognition technology and hundreds of thousands of proprietary algorithms to extract data from phone calls. McKay Allen shared the results from those Conversation Analytics in this incredible infographic.
Some interesting takeaways:

If an employee asks for the business, the caller is 10.4 X likely to convert.
46% of all sales inquiries are missed opportunities.
6% of calls results in caller dissatisfaction.

Millions of calls are being processed by LogMyCalls. This infographic provides high level data about all of the calls analyzed in Q1. Enjoy and share!

Conversation Analytics: Data from Every Call Analyzed in Q1

Here’s a webinar that shows you how to get quality phone calls with our webinar.

April 22, 2014/by Brian Massey

My Most Popular Landing Page Presentation LIVE Online

Landing Page Optimization

My presentation “The Chemistry of the Landing Page” has been seen by thousands of (lucky?) marketers and business people. I think it’s one of my best.
The reason I think it is so popular is that it’s different every time. Each time I do it, I critique a different bunch of actual landing pages.
I start off by boiling the process of building a landing page into five components. Then I show you what makes people leave. Attendees usually start kicking themselves when at this point in the presentation.
But the fun starts when we start applying this to real landing pages. Things always get interesting.
Would you like to have your landing page reviewed by me? I promise that I’m gentle.
But even if you end up feeling a little embarrassed about your page – and everyone does – wouldn’t more sales, leads and subscribers make it worth the discomfort?
I recommend you submit your page for my April 10 presentation right now.
http://conversci.com/LandingPageWebinar
We start at 2:00 pm EDT on Thursday, April 10. The Webinar will be recorded.
PEOPLE LOVE THE LIVE PAGE CRITIQUES. So will you. You’ll never look at another landing page the same way.
Here’s a little sample of the questions I’m going to tackle.

What is the one thing a landing page must get right?

How do you “show the product” when you offer a service or content for download?

What is “Abandon” and how do you get rid of it?

How do you “borrow trust” for your landing page?

What constitutes “proof?”

Won’t you join us? Even if you can’t attend live, register to see the replay, which will be recorded.
http://conversci.com/LandingPageWebinar
Let’s have some fun and make more sales.
Best regards,

Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist

April 4, 2014/by Brian Massey

The Scent that Increases Online Sales

Ecommerce CRO

We test just about everything we can here at Conversion Sciences. We are always surprised by what new technologies teach us about people, even if the technologies aren’t widely available.
We’ve been fortunate to participate in a trial of the new oPhone, a device manufactured by Vapor Communications. The oPhone transmits scent across the Web, right to the desks of shoppers and to their olfactory receptors. Vapor has put the device into a large group of beta testers who keep it attached to their computers while they go about their daily tasks.
We designed a test to understand which scents drove more sales of which products on a client site that sold a variety of products. Would a leather scent sell more shoes? Would a male cologne make women buy more?
We designed a system that would send one of ten different scents to any individual oPhone beta users that visited a client website. They were never told when they were visiting an oPhone enabled site.
The scents we tested were leather, lavender, bubble gum, Old Spice cologne, new car, pine, Febreze®, Chanel No. 5, mint, and no-scent. Each of these scents required that we have a separate oPhone attached wirelessly to a one of ten computers. These were then routed through our testing software for delivery to the oPhones attached to the beta testers’ computers.

Why odor is different from our other senses

Odor is of particular interest to us because of the way the brain processes odors. It is the only one of the five senses that bypasses the thalamus, the traffic-cop of the brain. Smells, it seems, have free and direct access to the limbic system – the “lizard brain” – and the neo-cortex, where memories and experiences are stored. This, it is believed, is why smells are able to transport us to places we’ve been before, affecting our moods, emotions, and appetite.

Smell requires fewer “clicks” to reach it’s destination.

Smell requires fewer “clicks” to reach it’s destination.
The oPhones device both “records” scents and “plays them back.” It will accept a scent in the form of a gas, spray or aerosol. The devices analyze the odor and transmit a signature to the host computer who then controls when that signature is sent (scent?) to the visitor’s computer via IP triangulation. If the visitor’s computer is connected to an oPhone, the odor is reproduced for them.
As our tests reached statistical significance, the “Old Spice cologne” odor was winning for all products in all categories, far above the other eight scents and the control (no scent).
“Why was mint so successful in driving sales?” we wondered. So we played the scent back on our oPhone.
It wasn’t Old Spice.
The subtle, yet nostril-inflaming aroma was quickly identified as belonging to the methane family of gases. Methane is rare in urban society, outside of the water closet.

One of our scents goes awry

It seems that keeping track of ten oPhones and ten computers and ten test treatments proved too much for the person setting up these tests. An investigation revealed that one of the team members dropped an oPhone into their lab coat pocket in a rush to get off to the bathroom.
During their extended visit to the loo, our test assistant was back in the lab capturing scent samples from each of the oPhones. She didn’t notice that one was missing. As far as we can tell, she captured a smell signature from the oPhone sitting in the pocket of his bowl-clearing colleague. It was supposed to be the “Old Spice” odor.
Of course, we were relieved to have discovered the error. We would have had trouble convincing people that this guy had the odoriferous secret to sales of almost any product.
We were also able to recommend some dietary changes to our colleague. Something just wasn’t right there.
Nonetheless, we were left with a puzzle. Why did a scent that no one would consider odorable win so handily in our tests.

Relief is a powerful motivator

We believe that the issue at work here is “relief.” Whatever our oPhone-stealing colleague had eaten the night before, the central compound in the odor was methane. This is true for all of us. After years of daily visits to our porcelain sculpture gardens, our brains learned to associate methane with a feeling of relief; a lighter feeling; a feeling that our vertical leap is maybe a few centimeters higher. All of these feelings were accompanied by one distinct smell: methane.
Methane means “things are good” to our limbic brains.
We speculate that people are tense when they shop. Perhaps the olfactory signal that relief has arrived made them feel more comfortable buying online. It could be true.
Another hypothesis is that the odor made them feel that they needed to empty their carts quickly, before they “had an accident.”
None of these conjectures can be verified without more testing.
What scent do you think we should test next? Let us know in the comments before April Fools day is over.

April 1, 2014/by Brian Massey

Mobile Phone Calls = Higher Conversion Rates

Lead Generation

This is a guest post by Jason Wells of Convirza (formerly LogMyCalls), who has some interesting data on the power of phone calls – and good reasons to measure your web-influenced call traffic.

One of the byproducts of the mobile marketing explosion is an increase in the number of phone calls businesses receive. BIA/Kelsey, in a report released in mid-June, says that the number of phone calls most businesses receive will double by the end of 2013. You read that correctly. Most businesses will receive twice as many phone calls in 18 months.

It sounds staggering, but it makes sense.

Google says that 61% of mobile searches result in a phone call. xAd says that 52% of all mobile ads result in a phone call. Add those numbers to burgeoning smartphone penetration and it all equals more phone calls.

What Does this Mean For Conversions?

I can hear you, expert online marketer, panicking a bit here. Won’t this mess up your conversion rates for landing pages? Won’t it make things ‘messier’ to track if people start calling you more? Maybe. But it will also make your conversion rates go up.

Convirza tracks conversions resulting from phone calls, and here’s what our research shows us.

Inbound phone calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert than inbound web leads. In other words, someone that downloads a White Paper or attends a webinar is significantly less likely to receive a Demo of your product or buy from you than someone that calls your business.

Not surprisingly, the same BIA/Kelsey report notes that 61% of businesses rate their inbound phone calls as ‘excellent leads.’ Only 52% rate web leads as ‘excellent leads.’

Recently we ran 3 different email campaigns with 3 different advertisers. Each campaign advertised the same White Paper. Because we’re obsessed with marketing analytics, we tracked these campaigns fastidiously. We tracked how many people downloaded the White Paper and we tracked how many phone calls each landing page produced.

Here’s what we learned.

This landing page saw a 47% click conversion rate and a 50% call conversion rate.

Campaign 1 – The landing page converted at 42.1%; a respectable, 11.7% of those leads wanted a demo of our product. We also placed a phone number prominently on the landing page. That phone number produced sixteen phone calls, ten of which resulted in demos. That means 62% of the phone calls resulted in a demo. That’s higher than 11.7% :-)

Campaign 2 – The landing page converted at 40.1%. And a reasonable 13.2% of the people that downloaded the White Paper ended up receiving a demo of our product. Again, this landing page also generated phone calls. Around 50% of those phone calls resulted in demos.

Campaign 3 – The landing page converted at 47.4%. And a very, very poor 3.6% of those leads wanted a demo (this campaign was conducted very recently so we expect that number to rise). Again, over 50% of the people who called via the landing page requested a demo.

Phone conversion rates are higher. It is just that simple.

Mobile Marketing Produces Calls, Conversions

Google says that pay-per-call mobile Adwords campaigns have 6% to 8% higher conversion rates than pay-per-click mobile Adwords campaigns. They also say that including phrases like ‘Call Now’ or Call us Today’ in the mobile ad copy improves conversion rates.
Calls are king.

The reason for these higher conversion rates for mobile is simple: it is natural for mobile searchers to call. After all, they are searching on a phone. Mobile callers also enter the sales funnel at a much lower point. Mobile searchers rarely do extensive research on their mobile device. Rather, mobile users search when they are looking for something they need immediately. This means action is more likely and a phone call is more likely.

What Does All This Mean?

The first thing it means is that a landing page conversion rate is simply not as ‘clean’ as it used to be. You have to factor calls into the equation. To ignore them is to ignore the highest performing element of the landing page. And that would be silly.

Second, it means that businesses need to be staffed and prepared to answer phone calls and answer them effectively. Because, just like a landing page, small tweaks to phone pitch can make a close rate go up or down.

Third, it means that you shouldn’t measure mobile conversions in the same way you’ve measured online conversions for the last 10 years. Mobile is not about pageviews and abandon rate.
Finally, we should point out that some businesses will be impacted by mobile more than others. We recognize this. But, keep this in mind: if you have a lead type (inbound phone call) that is converting 30%, 40% or 50% of the time, why wouldn’t you want to generate more leads of that type?

July 3, 2012/by Jason Wells