New EU Data Laws – How this will affect B2B Telemarketing
Under the new EU Data Regulations business development will be severely restricted as companies will be banned from gathering personal data without consent, this is going to have a major impact on how companies will able to conduct certain marketing and sales initiatives.
The new EU Data regulation makes no distinction between B2B and B2C with regard to data restrictions. ‘Personal’ data is defined as ‘full name, job title, work email address, direct line etc’. This will have massive implications for email campaigns, direct mail and some social media interactions. This ‘personal’ data can now only be held with the ‘explicit consent’ of the recipient, this ultimately shifts direct marketing from being an opt-out system to an opt-in rule, which will by consequence change the way on how businesses approach their marketing and sales strategies.
Indirect Marketing “To whom it may concern”
Under these new rules, business development will now become far more difficult and impersonal. The result will mean that companies will no longer be in a position to reach out to prospects via the traditional methods. For example, direct mail will only have access to data containing the generic company personal titles e.g. ‘Dear IT Manager’ with such correspondence usually ending up in the recycling bin. A similar issue arises within email campaigns, generic email addresses such as ‘info@company.com’ are often neglected and the majority of emails remain forever unopened and thus unread.
Ultimately the new EU regulations will remove any ‘personal’ element for new business campaigns. This is going to dramatically increase the lead times in developing business relationships to open the door for new business and subsequently sales pipelines.
Reintroducing the ‘personal’ into new business development
With almost all new purchases requiring some form of human interaction,especially larger ticket products and services, new business lead generation will suffer greatly when devoid of any initial personal element. However B2B telemarketing is the one medium almost entirely unaffected by the new regulations.
At VSL our experience of B2B telemarketing with initial data used within such campaigns means we are used to completely impersonal initial contact data starting with just a company name, a company address and a company switchboard number.
However as professional telemarketing agents we are able to convert this data into warm leads, by obtaining the personal details of a new prospect alongside industry intelligence, company mapping and even other potential leads. A company could of course divert its own human resources to carry out its own telemarketing campaign. For a company selling into a small niche market this might be feasible. However for an average sales led company this would be unfeasible.
B2B telemarketing is about to become the most direct and personal form of new business generation.
There have been many studies and reports on human interaction and selling which always highlights the importance of a ‘personal’ interaction within new business initiatives. With the new EU data regulations severely handicapping the effectiveness of email and direct mail to reach potential prospects, businesses are now looking to go back full circle to re-appraise the effectiveness and value of a telemarketing company such as VSL.
It is also important to consider that these new laws do come with teeth. Breaching these laws comes the risk of receiving penalty of up to €1,000,000. With the implementation of these new procedures fast approaching companies will have no option but to search alternative ways to generate new business. B2B telemarketing should be the number one consideration for companies interested in generating new business, as the one platform for new business which will still have the ability to get personal and reach the right prospects.
If you would like to discuss with the potential impact on your business and to look at alternative solutions to counter this new law, then please contact Andy Dickens at VSL, who will be happy to discuss this further. Please email us at sales@virtual-sales.com or call us on +44 (0)1403 788480.
Tags: B2B Telemarketing, Business Development, EU Data Laws
Andy Dickens
Andy Dickens is a veteran of IT Sales, used to leading by example. He is the CEO of Virtual Sales Limited (VSL) who offer telesales, telemarketing, lead generation and appointment setting services to B2b businesses. He previously was Sales Director EMEA for Red Hat and before that ran sales at Visio before it was acquired by Microsoft.