5 tricks to learn from publishing telesales to help you boost your sales

Publishing companies use telesales. And they do it to increase sales. And, like most businesses, they look to lower their costs. It’s an interesting sector, often mixing B2B and B2C, and mixing inside sales and outsourcing.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how big publishers use call center software and telesales, and what businesses in other sectors can take away.

1. Business and brand value from wide-ranging call center activity

Publishing companies leverage their call center operations to create value across the breadth of the business. They typically engage in a variety of programs, including sales, customer service, billing and collections.

They get a consistent, high standard of customer experience from brand ambassadors in sub-contractors. This is accomplished partly by working long-term with sub-contractors that build sector and product knowledge, and also by making maximum use of technology and integrations.

2. Everything. Blended. Together.

Publishing telesales leaders take advantage of efficiency gains from blended outbound and inbound agent workflows. Publishing operations typically have a low volume of inbound enquiries. These can be handled by sales-focused staff – if their software and systems are up to the task.

Modern call center software means that agents can call out using a lightning fast predictive dialer, and simultaneously access an inbound queue, including emails, texts and calls. This enables highly efficient customer service and reduces costs.

3. Timely, accurate, secure data. And insight.

One area where LeadDesk offers unique tools to publishing companies is reporting and auditing. LeadDesk Software includes automated reporting routines and sophisticated call recording, storage and QA functions.

The devil is in the detail. Additional agent interface data and compliance features, such as IBAN code and postal code validation, create incremental efficiency gains that mount up.

Publishing telesales companies focus on customer satisfaction metrics, such as call quality, service level, and Net Promoter Score. That’s in addition to typical call center metrics, like answer speed and abandon rate, that are vital in high volume B2C.

Publishing companies also link their offline activity e.g. direct mail into KPIs for multiple contact handling. All of LeadDesk’s publishing telesales clients use surveys to constantly monitor their call center activity. Overall, this weight on holoistic customer experience metrics helps publishers understand their audience, monitor their sales teams, and increase sales.

4. Total control of systems integrations

Easy, reliable systems integrations are vital to enable publishing telesales companies to use call center software to their sales up and costs down. Integrations fall into four main areas:

• Web-based content in the agent GUI
• CRM integrations
• Integrations with other third party and bespoke client-side systems e.g. ordering, logistics, financial etc.
• Contact list management and contact data handling

(There’s more on our API and custom integrations specifically for list management in part 5, below.)

One reason agents love LeadDesk is that our interface is very fast and intuitive to use. Having one unified interface, and avoiding app switching, is important for agent efficiency. In LeadDesk, defined web-based content can be seamlessly accessed in the agent interface all from one window. In this sector, this is great for inventory and promotional offers for outbound publishing telesales, and for accessing product information and knowledge bases in inbound.

We also have a lot of API-based integrations running with bespoke systems and client-side CRM systems. Getting customer histories and orders synced to LeadDesk is common to help agents rapidly close more deals.

Microsoft Dynamics call center integration with LeadDesk

For companies that want to combine telesales with a CRM that has powerful BI capabilities, Microsoft Dynamics call center integration is the answer. We have pioneered Dynamics integration with our API for many clients, including one of Europe’s publishing giants. The LeadDesk API-based approach offers:

• Faster time to dial for new leads
• Options for predictive, power, preview and click-to-call outbound dialing
• Inbound contact record popping
• Fast, unified interface
• All call data accessible in Dynamics
• Advanced call center quailty automatic inbound routing and IVR

5. Advanced list management

Along with consumer-facing companies in telecoms telesales, we have found publishing companies have very demanding needs for list management.

We work with publishing companies that have extensive in-house and external publishing telesales resources. They often combine international, national, regional and local campaigns. They may also have complex offers with multiple simultaneous promotions, and multiple call centers on different campaigns.

If that wasn’t enough, it’s a rapidly changing regulatory environment. We have found that the best publishing telesales operations have an agile approach with sales campaigns at short notice to take advantage of market opportunities, in addition to year-round and seasonal campaigns.

“What about the good leads?” Lead quality is everything. It’s vital that every call center, team and agent has the best leads and the whole system is integrated with smooth data flow. Publishing telesales campaigns use a combination of vanilla LeadDesk features and API-based integrations and custom solutions for advanced list management. Some of the highlights are:

• Filter outsourcer lists against client-side “head office” lists
• Filter debtors and inbound contacts from outbound campaigns
• Contact updating to all lists
• Order status to client lists (and systems)
• Analytics to create new client-side lists
• Automatic network list distribution 

Large, successful publishing companies run a powerful network

Publishing sales, including magazine, newspaper and other media subscriptions, is a very competitive field for call centers. Some publishing companies have inside sales teams and the largest outsource to many call centers. These major clients expect the best from their call centers, and they expect the best from their technology providers.

LeadDesk has been working with the Nordic countries’ largest publishing companies for many years. We have a unique position, embedded in the business. On one hand, we work with publishing clients on specific integrations to make network outsourcing possible. And then, individual call centers of all sizes also use our software. We are able to provide major efficiency gains for outsourced networks. When ten sub contractors use LeadDesk, it makes sense to use LeadDesk.

For more info and to book your one-to-one demo, please contact LeadDesk sales