Best Practice in Telemarketing

When choosing a good telemarketing company it is vital you have total confidence they will represent your company in a professional manner.

You also want to select one that will help you build and strengthen the image of your company.

Listed below are important areas to consider when choosing the right telemarketing company.

Specialised Areas and Experience

Try to find out if the telemarketing agency have the necessary telemarketer skills in-house to promote your business? Do any of their staff specialise in a specific business area or have the agency ever run any similar campaigns in the past? Ask to see recommendations or testimonials from companies who have used their services.

Proposals and Scripts

Obtain written objectives & targets for the proposed telemarketing campaign and ensure they have all the correct company and product information. Request written examples of what their staff are going to say on the telephone, either in form of a script or guide and ask to see how they will handle objections etc.

Meet the People

Always try to meet and speak to the people who will be making the calls on your behalf. Does the agency offer an open door policy to its clients? Face to face contact is the best way to build relationships and maximise results. Always try to check out the environment from which they will be working from, is it an office or from home? To increase performance, telemarketers must feel good about themselves, good about their company and good about your product and service. Does the company belong to a trade organisation or professional body?

People Knowledge and Experience

What do you know about the background of the person who will be calling for you? Ask their age and experience in telemarketing & selling. Are they incentivised in any way – look for balanced incentives schemes that reward quality and quantity.

Feedback

How are the results passed to you? Will you get daily summaries on performance? Good telemarketing companies will provide detailed feedback on results achieved on whatever basis their client requires. Can they book appointments online and send confirmation emails on your behalf? Request a detailed summary of results once the campaign has finished and compare it to the campaign targets.

Contract or Ad-hoc Basis?

Good telemarketing agencies will offer their clients both options. Contract basis usually lends itself to have lower rates if committed to a longer campaign compared to ad-hoc campaigns. Ask to compare both costs to see which meets your criteria or budget. Also reputable telemarketing companies will offer both daily rates and cost per appointment basis.

Approach Telemarketing employs only experienced staff with previous experience in telemarketing or sales. Full telemarketing proposals and telephone scripts are provided with detailed daily reports on all calls made. The company offer a two-day pilot scheme for all new customers and then offers a choice of paying on a cost per appointment basis. Tracy Marshall, Proprietor of Approach Telemarketing is also a recognised fellow of the Institute of Sales & Marketing.

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The Different Types of Telemarketing Company

Cold calling (done the right way) is one of the most successful and cost effective ways to generate new business leads fast, but for many companies it can also be time consuming and difficult.

So its not surprising that many companies are choosing to employ the services of a telemarketing company.

However, with so many different telemarketing companies out there how do you decide who to use?

There are three main types of companies to choose from; Call Centres, smaller specialised Agencies and Freelancers. Fortunately each category specialises in their own field and has a very specific and targeted market.

Call Centres

Call Centres operate successfully by handling a high volume of both inbound and outbound calls, usually with a low value product or margin. The calls tend to be very short, scripted conversations and are most effective when the product or service can be sold over the telephone quickly and without any additional decision makers, requiring time or further discussions with colleagues before purchasing. Most call centres can also offer to data-cleanse a large database of records very fast and efficiently and generally work within the business-to-consumer market.

Telemarketing Agencies

Smaller Agencies are able to really understand their clients business and business needs and are able to find out what makes their clients services or products different from their competitors. They can use this valuable information to qualify genuine leads and gain sales appointments and quotation opportunities. Agencies can also build quality business relationships over time and help in providing a steady and consistent sales pipeline. As opposed to Call Centres, Agencies always offer the opportunity to talk to the telemarketer who will be making calls on their behalf and representing their company. Over time becoming an indispensable and invaluable tool in their Clients Sales & Marketing activities or at best becomes a seamless extension of the customers business.

Freelancers

Freelancers tend to be very flexible in their approach usually conducting market research or database cleansing campaigns. They usually work along side businesses in their premises, thus providing direct access to the front line of the campaign. They tend to provide campaigns on an ad-hoc basis with no fixed terms and tend to handle very a small number of records.

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Telemarketing in an Economic Downturn

Many companies concentrate on cutting costs during a recession. Whilst in principle this is always a positive action to take, this should never include cutting back on sales or marketing activities.

Since business lost due to adverse economic circumstances usually cannot be saved, the only answer is to replace it with new. This is why cutting sales and marketing activities essentially means giving up on replacing the business lost and possibly condemning the company to a downward spiral.

New business is still out there to be had, albeit a little harder to achieve but nevertheless it is still there. If you do not continue prospecting and gaining new business, rest assured your competitors will be! A downturn could be used as a prime opportunity to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate to your customers and potential customers your strength, commitment, and customer focus to survive the recession and stay ahead of the competition.

Telemarketing lends itself to be used as a tool to focus directly on increasing sales. It can be used to free up salespeople and allow them to focus on other more productive sales activities. It can also provide consistency in a sales pipeline which often is one of the biggest obstacles faced by most companies.

Telemarketing allows you to track your return on investment precisely and provides a fast and inexpensive way that will produce results quickly. It can provide a revenue where you can easily interact with a customer or prospect and answer directly and efficiently any questions or concerns they may have.

When the telephone script is structured correctly it can incorporate a lot of vital information in a very short space of time and a great tool to improve a relationship. Calls can be made locally, nationally and even globally making it easier to expand a sales territory.

Approach Telemarketing has the expertise & knowledge in-house to implement a pilot scheme effortlessly and without delay.

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