Mantra Diamond. A Surat diamond house that rings Birmingham from a UK number.

El reto

Mantra Diamond cuts and sets diamonds in Surat, Gujarat, the city that polishes most of the world's stones. Natural diamonds, lab grown, custom pieces and iced watch cases, sold wholesale to the jewellery trade rather than to the public.

Trade buying still happens on the phone. A retailer deciding whether to put a new supplier's stones in his window wants to hear a person describe the certification, the lead time and the terms. An emailed catalogue does not close that conversation. It does not usually start one either.

The constraint was who makes the call. International sales here is one director covering two hemispheres. Birmingham opens when Surat is mid-afternoon, Sydney when Surat is still asleep, and covering both properly means two shifts of salespeople in a business whose margin does not carry two shifts of salespeople.

La solución

Two agents, two markets, and a local number in each one. Sarah opened the UK campaign on a +44 mobile on 9 October. Ema opened Australia on a +61 number thirteen days later.

That detail does more work than it looks like it does. A Birmingham jeweller sees an ordinary UK mobile rather than a long string of digits from a country code he does not recognise, and he answers it.

The calls are short, and they are not a pitch. 347 completed outbound conversations averaging between 32 and 37 seconds: who we are, what we cut, would you take a catalogue and a proper call with the sales director. The job is to qualify and book, not to sell diamonds down a phone line.

Nine knowledge base documents sit behind it so the agent can handle what comes up before any buyer agrees to anything. Certification, lab grown against natural, minimum order, shipping, who the house already supplies.

• 🇬🇧A +44 mobile for the UK and a +61 for Australia, so the call lands local instead of offshore
• 🕐Both markets worked in their own business hours, from a time zone that matches neither
• 📋Nine knowledge base documents: certification, lab grown, minimums, shipping, terms
• 📅Qualify and book in half a minute. The selling happens on the follow-up.

Los agentes de la cuenta

Sarah

UK trade outreach

170 conversations, 32 sec

Ema

Australia trade outreach

177 conversations, 37 sec

Los resultados

Cold B2B phone outreach is usually quoted at one to three percent. Mantra Diamond booked 31 conversations from 296 companies called, better than one in ten, and 21 of those companies rang the number back themselves.

Más allá de los números

El verdadero salto llegó al descubrir por qué los clientes abandonaban en primer lugar. Las transcripciones de las llamadas de Callsy sacaron a la luz las objeciones recurrentes:

Esa información se tradujo en mejoras en las FAQ, las páginas de destino y los flujos de email. Abordando las objeciones antes para que menos carritos lleguen a abandonarse.

Qué viene ahora

Twenty-one of the companies called rang the number back. On a cold list that is the figure worth watching, because a buyer who dials you has already decided you are worth five minutes of his afternoon.

Australia opened on 22 October and is under a fortnight old. The UK campaign had a two-week head start and the two are already level on volume, which suggests the approach travels rather than depending on one market's manners.

Fifty-one messages against 376 conversations. This is a voice channel with SMS as a receipt, and in a trade where relationships start with a conversation, that is the right way round.