“PRTA are very easy to work with and go the extra mile. If they speak to a contact that wants to be rung immediately, they will pass this information on straight away. We appreciate this type of efficiency.” Kimberley Silva, Powerlift marketing manager. HIGHLIGHTS Powerlift Nissan is one of Australia’s leading importers and distributors of Nissan equipment. It engaged PRTA’s telemarketing services to update their existing database and generate new leads. PRTA also assists with Powerlift’s opt-in email newsletter campaigns. Powerlift says the relationship has been very successful and it has been impressed with PRTA’s reporting and professionalism.

Lead Generation (Continued...)

Powerlift Nissan

Telemarketing provides the right lift
Today’s time and cost pressures mean it is more important than ever to ensure any equipment used in the running of a business is the best available. Since 1987, Powerlift Nissan has grown to become one of the largest and most experienced operators in the Australian materials handling industry.

The company provides a wide range of products from the renowned Nissan brand, including pallet stackers to container handlers, and has branches throughout the country.

Telemarketing is just one part of Powerlift’s overall marketing strategy and has proven to be a very important element. It offers excellent value by providing an immediate response as well as lead generation.

Powerlift sales manager Chris Burns said the flag waving that you get when you advertise in industry magazines and through direct mail is more of a scattergun approach, which is hard to monitor. “With telemarketing you know exactly what a campaign is costing you and what your return on investment is,” he said.

While Powerlift has two permanent inhouse telemarketers it wanted to expand its reach by outsourcing their telemarketing campaigns. It hired telemarketing specialist PRTA in April 2008, initially to build on their database and to generate leads.

“We had both short-term and long-term goals for our campaign,” Burns said. “The relationship has been very successful. PRTA send us a weekly summary of their calls and go through each call providing us with details on which recipients want to be contacted.”

Powerlift has 10,000 businesses on its database and PRTA’s role is to call them and establish who the correct person in the organisation is to speak to, to ensure all details are correct. When one of PRTA’s staff rings a contact they discuss points such as the type of equipment they use, current supplier, their buying cycle and whether they rent or purchase.

“When we receive this information we pass it onto the sales manager so they are fully armed when they call the contact,” Burns said. “The PRTA team have only the company name and the telephone number when they make contact so they go in quite cold. Their role is to fill in all the gaps such as who is responsible for forklifts within the organisation.”

Burns said PRTA do a lot of the legwork with obtaining contact details, and while he expects the sales person to do a bit of this digging, in the end they are paid to make sales.

“We also have a commitment to the sales team that we will provide them with leads and this is what we get from PRTA,” Burns said.

The research also helps with Powerlift’s long-term planning. “Some of the leads PRTA generates may be for next year or sometime in the future,” Burns said. “This type of information we get from campaigns is particularly useful as it helps with our forward planning.”

Another service that PRTA provides to Powerlift is email direct mailers.

“During the initial call to a contact on our database, PRTA will obtain the email address of the relevant person and ask whether they want to opt into the newsletter mailer,” Powerlift marketing manager Kimberley Silva said. “Sending emails is very cost effective for us as it eliminates postage and handling and not only do we send them to people who want to receive them we can monitor who has actually opened them.”

Telemarketing remains an important part of Powerlift’s marketing strategy and Silva said she likes the professionalism that PRTA brings to the operation.

“They are very easy to work with and go the extra mile,” she said. “Although they provide us with weekly summaries, if they speak to a contact that wants to be rung immediately by Powerlift, they will pass this information on straight away. We appreciate this type of efficiency.”