TELEMARKETING

Telemarketing has been used for decades as a means to increase sales. Telemarketing is essentially calling someone who is unknown to you or your company (cold calling) in order to solicit their business. The advent of cheap offshore call centers in Asia has increased the volume of Telemarketing. Once the domain of large companies, Telemarketing is now widely used by small and medium size companies due to its low cost. Call centers use computer based dialers which can enable one telemarketer to dial out to over 100 contacts in one day to promote your products and services.

Done properly, telemarketing can allow you to engage with customers on a level not possible with other marketing techniques. There are many advantages to using telemarketing like the ones listed below

However if you are seriously thinking about engaging a call center to perform telemarketing make sure you take the following into consideration.

COST

Telemarketer typically charges you by the hour. The hourly rates differ vastly between using a North American call center or an Asian call center. Some telemarketers also require a commission on a successful sale in addition to the hourly rate. Commissions are a good incentive to the telemarketer, but in exchange you should get some relief on the hourly rate. In some cases if it’s a big ticket item, a telemarketer will work strictly on sales. Don’t feel pressured to enter into an agreement if you are not comfortable with the compensation scheme proposed by the call center. For example, it sound nice to pay only a commission as this mean the telemarketer makes money only if you make money. However, you may get paid by the customer in 1 month but the payment terms with the Telemarketer may dictate payment within 2 weeks of making the sale. So you will have a cash flow issue. Some call centers will dictate that you must hire a minimum 5 telemarketer while others will be flexible and give you as many as you need.

EXPERERINCE

If you want to find a company to tellemarket your products, see if they have had experience selling a similar product or service. The learning curve on your product will be much shorter for the telemarketer and hence make them productive quicker. Beware of reference letters provided by the call center. The letters may be from legitimate companies but obviously only companies that had a successful campaign would provide glowing recommendations. Ask about client who were not so pleased with their service. Not having experience isn’t a bad thing but you will just have to invest more time with telemarketer to bring them up to speed. Often, telemarketers pitch them selves as being an extension of you sales team. Don’t make the mistake of letting the telemarketing on auto pilot when it comes to developing a sales pitch or script. Moreover, you need to actively monitor the calls the telemarketer are placing. After all they are representing your company.

PERFORMANCE

You obviously want to see result quickly. Unscrupulous telemarketers will say they can give you result in a matter of 2 weeks. However in reality it can take up to a month to get you sales pitch and quality up to where you need it to be. If you did signup with a telemarketer that was promising results in 2 week but have not seen any, you may feel compelled to continue with them because of the time and money you have already of invested. Telemarketers love to make excuses from “oh it just Friday or the weather is bad” to explain poor performance. The only metrics you should be tracking is the number of sales, the number of leads generated, and the cost incurred to make the sale/lead. This information will be more beneficial and help you asses whether Telemarketing is the way to go or not.

This information is provided M3i Telecom Business Advisory Services .For more information on Telemarketing or to help you make the right business decision write to us at info@m3itelecom.com.