CallFire

Dr. Billy Williams mentors clients, especially insurance agents, across the country. He has been a fierce advocate of using CallFire’s Voice Broadcast, Cloud Call Center, and Hosted IVR campaigns for lead prospecting and customer outreach and retention. The following post is a guest blog with some of the tips he has shared with business professionals.

Why Automated Dialing Should be a Marketing Tool All Businesses Use

By Billy R. Williams, Ph.D., President – Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring

Effective marketing is pretty simple:

1. Put your message in front of as many people as possible
2. Build lists of prospects that are interested in you, your product, and/or your expertise
3. Reach out to the lists regularly with timely, effective, problem-solving information
4. Reach out to as many people as possible on days that are important to them
5. Use affordable automation to help you stay consistent with your keep-in-touch campaigns

My partner agencies and the majority of our member agents use a company called CallFire for automated marketing, so I will use their functionality to explain how to target each of the 5 marketing areas I mentioned above.

1. Put your message in front of as many people as possible

• We use the Cloud Call Center to prospect DNC-scrubbed lists of prospects. You can have 1 or 100’s of telemarketers ready to speak live with a prospect.
• We use voice broadcasting to communicate important, non-solicitation, focused messages and announcements to current customers and opt-in prospects
• We also use “Press-1” campaigns to help us accomplish number two on our marketing list:

2. Build lists of prospects that are interested in you, your product, and/or your expertise

• Direct a press-1 campaign to a live person or to a CallFire IVR (message tree, automated survey, or hotline) that can be used to gather or give important information
• Every time someone responds positively to your telemarketer, or presses 1 on your voice broadcast campaign, that is one more person that you just added to your opt-in lists of potential customers

3. Reach out to the lists regularly with timely, effective, problem-solving information

• CallFire gives you the ability to easily schedule follow-up campaigns from calls that were not answered, requested a callback, needed bi-lingual help, etc.

4. Reach out to as many people as possible on days that are important to them

• We create weekly phonebooks in CallFire (Yes, 52 phone books) and each week we run a birthday audit from our database and add the phone numbers into the correct phone book. Then we quickly send out a Voice Broadcast birthday message. We do the same thing for recurring events like upcoming policy reviews, graduations, wedding anniversaries, etc.

5. Use affordable automation to help you stay consistent with your keep-in-touch campaigns

• The more a person hears your consistent message, the more credible you become. By using a low-cost solution like an automated dialer program, you are able to keep a consistent keep-in-touch program operating. You will not benefit long-term from a flash-in-the-pan marketing campaign. Here are my two rules of thumb when it comes to keep-in-touch programs:

1. Don’t send out information that has no real value to the prospect
2. The first time they hear you or your message is an introduction; the second time they can say they know of you; the third time they start to become familiar with you, but it takes four or more times for the prospect to feel like they are developing a relationship with you.

Follow the tips that I have just provided to you when setting up your automated dialer campaigns and you will see an awesome ROI.

Billy Williams, Ph.D., is president of Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring and Williams Family Agency Inc. The group currently has 23 member agencies and produces $360 Million in production annually. He is an expert at helping insurance agents and agencies double or triple their current production using no-cost conversations and processes, low-cost, efficient, marketing and advertising platforms, and technology.

CallFire is hosting a Do-It-Yourself lead-generation webinar series for real estate businesses and agents on Tuesday, December 7th and Wednesday, December 8th. Both days, sessions will begin at 11:00am PST, and Tuesday’s session will be followed by a 12:00pm short session. One of CallFire’s experienced real estate consultants will show participants how to use Cloud Call Centers, Power Dialing, IVR, and Voice and SMS Broadcasts to broaden their reach quickly and simply.

The Tuesday 11:00am PST session will cover how to use Cloud Call Centers and Power Dialing. This includes instructions on how to create an easy-to-use virtual call center that will quickly connect agents to customers; You will also learn how to upload an Excel list of existing and potenctial customers, and how to monitor agents and hit customer contact and sales quotas.

The Tuesday 12:00pm PST session will cover Voice Broadcasting. This will include instructions on how to upload an Excel list of existing and potential customers, how to set up special event and appointment reminders, and how to let potential clients know about homes that would be a good fit for them.

The Wednesday 11:00am PST session will cover IVR (Interactive Voice Response). IVR can be used in conjunction with advertising to set up services such automated answering machines that allow callers to enter property numbers they are interested in, listen to further information about the property, and leave contact information for follow-up purposes.

To sign up, e-mail sales@callfire.com with “Real Estate Webinar” in the subject field, or sign in on our Webinar page on the day of, right before the webinars begin. Feel free to include any questions you want answered during the webinar in your e-mail. For more information, please call 877.897.FIRE.

CallFire is hosting a Do-It-Yourself Mortgage & Insurance lead-generation webinar series for mortgage and insurance companies interested in generating leads and increasing revenue on November 23rd & 24th. Both the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions will begin at 11:00am PST. One of CallFire’s experienced mortgage & insurance consultants will show participants how to use Cloud Call Centers, Power Dialing, and Voice and SMS Broadcasts to broaden their reach quickly and simply. Both business owners and agents are encouraged to join in and learn new ways to increase revenue and efficiency.

The first session, held at 11:00am PST, will cover how to use Cloud Call Centers and Power Dialing. This includes instructions on how to create an easy-to-use virtual call center that will quickly connect agents to customers, how to upload an Excel list of existing and potential customers, and how to monitor agents and reach percentages.

The second Tuesday session, held at 12:00pm PST, will cover how to use Voice and SMS Broadcasts to communicate important messages to existing customers and provide an easy way for them to respond. This includes instructions on how to create an effective recorded message for a voice broadcast campaign, how to upload an Excel list of existing and potential customers, and how to create an option for customers to call back with a simple press of a button.

Wednesday sessions will follow the same format.

To sign up, e-mail sales@callfire.com with “DIY Mortgage & Insurance” or “Webinar” in the subject field, or sign in on our Webinar page on the day of, right before the webinar begins. Feel free to include any questions you want answered during the webinar in your e-mail. For more information, please call 877.897.FIRE.

The CallFire Development Team is working hard at HQ on CallFire 3.0 – our most feature rich product to date. These photos were taken last Friday, when the CallFire team held its’ weekly developer “Show and Tell”. Our team utilizes an agile dev process called “Scrum” methodology and we release features & deliverables in a time-span we call a “Sprint.” (SCRUM on Wikipedia). Supporting an enterprise cloud platform isn’t easy – here are a few tips that make constant innovation at CallFire possible.

Caption: (left to right) TJ, Adrian, Dan, Komnieve, Ryan,
James and Jacob attend the developer “Show and Tell”
to provide feedback on the next iteration of CallFire.

SCRUM BABY SCRUM

Scrum is an iterative, incremental methodology for project management often seen in agile software development. Scrum helps to:

• Brings focus to specific tasks
• Agility in the development process
• Measure daily/weekly progress easily

Caption: Edmond To, CallFire’s in-house graphics &
user-interface expert, discusses the new Voice
Broadcast user interface in CallFire 3.0.

SALESFORCE IT UP

Salesforce is a software as a service (SaaS) company that distributes business software on a subscription basis. Salesforce hosts the applications offsite. It is best known for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products.

• 360-degree view of your customer
• Detailed care/support management
• Problem resolution management

JIRA TIL YOU DROP

Jira is a proprietary issue tracking product, developed by Atlassian, commonly used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management.

• Tool to implement Scrum cycles
• Doubles as a bug / feature management tool
• Shows insight into task complexity

CallFire announces a new Do-It-Yourself Lead Generation webinar for businesses interested in generating leads by using Power Dialing, Opt-in Voice Broadcast & intelligent Call Tracking to drive new business in the United State,  Canada, or Internationally

The DIY Lead Generation webinar series first aims to educate business owners and at-home sales agents on how to save money by using Cloud Call Centers and Cloud Telephony tools to quickly connect themselves to other businesses.  The second half of the seminar covers how to use opt-in Voice Broadcast notification and Call Tracking to communicate important messages to existing clients and track marketing efficacy of your campaigns.

Session 1 How to use Cloud Call Centers and Power Dialing at 11:00 AM

* Preparing an Excel list of my business telephone phone numbers.
* Optimizing ROI by developing a thoughtful callback strategy.
* Monitoring other sales agents that work from home.

Session 2: How to use Voice Broadcast & Call Tracking for notification & lead gen at 12:00 PM

* Preparing an Excel list of my customer phone numbers.
* Developing an effective recorded message for my voice broadcast campaign.
* Creating Call Tracking campaigns to track marketing efficacy & continued notification.

To Sign up, send an email to sales@callfire.com with DIY Lead Gen Webinar in the subject line

* By Signing up ahead of time, you have the opportunity to ask any questions you want answered during the Webinar in your sign-up email.

*Please include which session(s) you wish to attend.

To attend CLICK HERE at 11AM PST 2/18/2010

Sign up for the CallFire Spark newsletter and learn about Cloud Telephony here.

CallFire announces a new Do-It-Yourself Lead Generation webinar for businesses interested in generating leads by using Power Dialing, Opt-in Voice Broadcast & intelligent Call Tracking to drive new business in the United States and Canada.

The DIY Lead Gen webinar series first aims to educate business owners and at-home sales agents on how to save money by using Cloud Call Centers and Cloud Telephony tools to quickly connect themselves to other businesses.  The second half of the seminar covers how to use opt-in Voice Broadcast notification and Call Tracking to communicate important messages to existing clients and track marketing efficacy of your campaigns.

Session 1:  How to use Cloud Call Centers and Power Dialing

* Preparing an Excel list of my business telephone phone numbers.
* Optimizing ROI by developing a thoughtful callback strategy.
* Monitoring other sales agents that work from home.

Session 2: How to use Voice Broadcast & Call Tracking for notification & lead gen.

* Preparing an Excel list of my customer phone numbers.
* Developing an effective recorded message for my voice broadcast campaign.
* Creating Call Tracking campaigns to track marketing efficacy & continued notification.

To attend CLICK HERE at 11AM PST 9/22/2009

Sign up for the CallFire Spark newsletter and learn about Cloud Telephony here.

Hi Everyone!

My name is Tina and If you use CallFire then you may have participated in my Webinar.    I get a lot of calls about “best practices” for using CallFire’s Virtual Call Center, Voice Broadcast & various Cloud Telephony tools for outbound call center sales.   Here they are:

Outbound Call Center Sales Tips:

1. Creativity is important
   Phone interactions are impersonal, so be sure to smile in the message.    Feel free to use humor, wit & charisma to engage your potential customer over the phone.   Building trust & relationships is key to making sales.
2. Use fresh data & scrubbed lists
   Generating leads & sales can only be accomplished if you have a great list to call.   Existing customer databases, InfoUSA business listings, and online lead-gen are great sources for high-quality data.
3. Use a woman’s touch
   Try using a woman’s voice for your recordings.   Many DIY’ers use their own voice to save a few bucks.  Check out services like Voice123.com to get a professionally recorded greetings.  Your target demographic may react differently to voices of varying gender.  Try to diversify every aspect of your outbound effort!
4. Communicate with your customers
   We all get wrapped up in our amazing sales vision, but don’t forget to ask your customers what matters to them.  For example, you might want to figure out what time of day each of your customers prefer to receive telephone updates & callbacks.  Use this data to schedule your campaigns accordingly.
5. Try Call Tracking & Text-To-Speech
   A balanced outbound sales effort strives to track it’s efficacy over time.   Call Tracking & Hosted IVRs are a great way to track your marketing efforts, at the campaign level!  If you haven’t checked out advanced voice services, give us a call, or watch this video to learn more.

Thanks everyone!  ~Tina

Watch the video: Toll Free Call Tracking
Email us: calltracking@callfire.com
Call: 877.888.4515

This weekend, CallFire developers rolled out a great new feature: Inbound telephone service.  Now, you can buy Toll Free & Local telephone numbers with only a few clicks on our website!

This powerful new feature allows you to track which advertising campaigns generate you the most sales calls.

Screenshot:

So, what does this mean for you?

Buy Toll Free or Local numbers

Purchase one, or thousands of numbers for your business.  By displaying unique phone numbers to each of your advertising campaigns, your sales team can monitor which ads are driving the most phone calls.  And of course, with CallFire’s pay-as-you-go platform, you can stop receiving calls on your new number at any time.

Nationwide Call Forwarding

All local & toll free phone numbers can forward to your existing phone number.   Your cost during a forwarded call is 5c/minute for local numbers and 8c/minute for Toll Free.

Know which ADs make your phones ring

Create useful reports and visualize your callers patterns.  You may find that some campaigns drive more sales calls than others.  This data can be used to make valuable marketing decisions.

Developer tools and APIs

Integrators, please visit http://www.CallFire.com/dev to learn more about CallFire’s Voice APIs.  Publishers & large advertisers can use APIs to purchase & provision DIDs.  Call us to learn more at 877.897.FIRE.

Only $2/month + 8c/min

For Toll Free numbers… for local numbers, it’s only: $1/month + 5c/min.

Cloud telephony platforms can help your business generate inbound sales calls.  Here’s a few different ways our customers are making their sales lines ring, using VoIP.

Use Toll Free numbers to reveal ads that drive the most sales calls
Say you have 100 different online advertisements but aren’t sure which impressions eventually turn into phone calls.   Use call tracking to purchase 100 phone numbers for each ad-campaign (each number simply forwards to your sales line).  As the calls come in, you can easily visualize which ads are driving the most sales calls.  These advanced reports can be used to further strengthen your ad-campaign.

Use a hosted predictive dialer to free up salespeople’s time
Automate the way your agents make outbound calls and save hundreds of hours every month.   By using a hosted predictive dialer and your existing telephone system, your agents can fly through 100’s of calls every hour.  Agents can take lives calls immediately, and if they get an answering machine they can click a button to leave a prerecorded message, allowing them to move on to the next LIVE call.

Voice blast your PBX’s missed/abandoned list
Call centers occasionally get overloaded and you may have customers who (for whatever reason) hang up while waiting.   Don’t let these leads go to waste.  Export them to create an automated, press-1 voice broadcast.   Example: “This is an automated callback from ABC Inc. We are sorry nobody was available to take your call.  Please press 1 now, to speak with a sales agent.  He or She will be with you shortly.  Thank you.”   This automation ensures that customers get a follow up & further strengthens your customer service offering.

Add “Click-To-Call” to your website
The idea is simple – add another way for a customer to call you.  By adding a click-to-call option to your website , users can enter a phone number and in moments they can receive a live call from one of your sales agents.  How does it work?  After your lead submits their phone number in the “click to call” form, your sales agent receives a call that says “Press-1 now to speak to connect to a new lead.”   In moments both parties are connected and your sales team does the rest.

Create a unique phone experience using Text-To-Speech
Your client may appreciate an automated phone call that can read them their: account balance, schedules & timings for events, and even driving directions.  Developers can try using VoiceXML to send phone calls that can create a unique experience for users while reducing the volume of trivial phone inquiries your agents must field.

Have you used VoIP in other interesting ways?   Tell us how, using info@callfire.com.  Your story, and links to your business, could end up on the CallFire blog.   ~DR