Only 57% of telephone sales representatives asked a caller requesting a business-to-business catalog for their telephone number.
And only 7% asked for an e-mail address. A mere 2% requested permission to send the caller promotions, and just 64% offered a thank you.
Taking advantage of a telephone lead is not a high enough priority for many B-to-B catalogers, said Bill Ruppert of ResponseB2B in Southlake, TX, who conducted the study.
Ruppert conducted the study, in which 155 business-to-business companies were called and asked for a catalog, in May.
Delivery time however was more respectable. Seventy-three percent of the requested catalogs were delivered within one week. But when the catalogs arrived however, 37% had misspelled the requesters name and 13% were hand addressed. Twenty one of 155 catalogs requested had not arrived in eight weeks, Ruppert said yesterday at the MeritDirect Business Mailers Co-op in Stamford, CT.
Meanwhile, 55% arrived first class, 18% presorted standard and 17% USPS priority mail.
Letters were the most common component included with the catalogs at 51%. In 28 packages, the letter was the only extra component. Samples were the second most common component with 14% or 19 catalog. Other components included testimonial sheets, guarantee cards, business reply envelopes, product flyers, business and Rolodex cards and bags of candy.
Ruppert said the opportunity shouldn’t be missed to add a welcome letter or some samples when delivering a catalog. “I love samples,” he said.
Only 10%, or 14 of 134 packages, offered an inducement to buy, the most common being a 10% to 25% discount on the first offer. The second most common was $5 to $30 off an order of at least $25 to $150. Most of the offers had expiration dates of 14 to 90 days.
As for follow-up, 84 mailers made 379 contacts, 46 made no contacts and 21 made one contact.(These statistics are from the 2000 survey. The 2001 results are not yet complete.)
Ruppert, who used variations on his name to track how often and who rented his name for the study, said he was astonished to discover that 37 lists were rented 397 times. Of those, Successories sold his name 47 times, Hello Direct 39, Nelson Marketing 38 and Siegel Display 26 times.(Ruppert said these numbers were approximate).
As for the quality of the sales reps, 35% were rated OK, 35% good, 14% good or excellent, 13% used voice mail and 1% was found to be poor.
The bottom line is to pay more attention to lead generation and the catalog request process and to make sure phone reps understand the importance of inquiries, Ruppert said.
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