Telemarketing is such a dirty word that the American Marketing Association doesn’t list it in their dictionary of marketing terms. With the “Do Not Call” Registry – which allows consumers to list their phone number on the registry and bar them from the majority of solicitation-based telemarketing calls – there was some concern that this channel was dead as a viable business medium. However, the legislation primarily prohibits cold calling – if there is a verifiable relationship or if the customer responds to indicate interest – the telephone can be used.
Details on the legislation can be found at the following links. Please note that the FCC link is the official government site for the Do Not Call Registry – subsequent links provide articles and thoughts that have been published to guide those in the marketing and advertising industries.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/donotcall/
http://ezinearticles.com/?FTC-Do-Not-Call-Registry-And-Cold-Calling---The-Facts&id=219062
There are two different kinds of telemarketing – inbound and outbound. Inbound is a call generated by the customer. Outbound is a call that is generated by a soliciting company. Inbound telemarketing is still pretty wide open and was not much impacted by the recent legislation.
Overall, the telephone is simply another medium. And, it happens to be the medium most suited to personal interaction outside a personal sales person. Telemarketing is still around and is likely to be around, in spite of recent legislation – because people feel comfortable speaking to someone on the phone. What the legislation has done is to reduce the amount of calls that are received by the typical household and to make the calls more likely to generate a positive response. As a result, good marketers who can create a relationship where a phone call is legitimate and legal, can achieve a great deal of success by using this medium.
One other important note – the limiting legislation applied primarily to individual or residential phone numbers. Business-to-business phone calls still have little limitation under the law, and cold calling is still an important part of many business sales.
In addition to live person to person calls, telemarketing has expanded to include recorded messages that are sent out via telephone – often with an option to transfer to a live person by pressing a button. These are less expensive than traditional telemarketing, because you just record one message and blast it to a list of telephone numbers. However, these are also a great deal less personal – even when someone famous records the message.
You may be using telemarketing and not even realize it. Inbound telemarketing is the most commonly used tool – and if you’re taking orders by phone, receiving and returning customer phone calls, or calling customers to schedule appointments or in follow-up to meetings … then you’re using telemarketing in its most basic sense.
The phone is one of your most important business tools. It helps you build relationships that are personal, it lets you contact someone very quickly, and it allows for interaction. Ignoring the phone and your use of it just doesn’t make sense.
If you’re using the phone for your business, then you may be missing opportunities if you don’t implement some simply telemarketing tactics in your phone calls. Each time you speak to a customer or a potential customer – you are selling.
You may be answering a question, solving a problem, or taking an order … but these are all opportunities to gather information about your customer that can open the door to future selling. Much like the guidance on CRM – you should take full advantage of these opportunities to ask the next question and gather as much information about your customer as possible with each conversation. And, where it makes sense, offer cross-selling and up-selling options – you may be surprised at how often they are accepted!
You may be able to implement some simple telemarketing principles on your own. Especially if your volume of calls is low – then your existing staff can usually handle the flow of calls effectively. And, if you’re taking calls or making calls to customers and prospective customers, you should definitely implement some basic telemarketing principles to get the most out of this media.
Tips for Do-It-Yourself Telemarketing:
- Identify Every Phone Contact you have with customers. Be sure you are being deliberate about each telephone interaction between your organization and prospects, customers, and vendors.
- Consider phone etiquette training to be sure there is consistency about how each employee answers the phone, identifies the company and themselves, and proceeds through their business.
- It’s wise to develop scripts for those telemarketing conversations that represent repeated processes – collections calls, welcoming calls, introductory calls, etc. If you have a script, you can ensure that the right points are being made in each and every call.
- Practice your telephone calls using the scripts you have developed. Make each employee who makes regular customer and prospect telephone calls simulate calls and practice conversations. They will come off smoother and more professional – and you will have the opportunity to provide feedback and work toward improvement without impacting your precious customer base.
- Monitor live phone calls periodically. Even if you don’t have sophisticated call monitoring equipment, you can still ask your employee to turn up the volume on their phone so you can hear the customer’s responses and evaluate the call.
- Make telephone etiquette, script usage, and sales and conservation goals part of your employee’s performance review. If you want to see your telephone contacts improve – you have to be willing to reward employees for the behavior you want to see, and take action to address the behavior you don’t.
There may be times when a specific marketing campaign does make sense to have a telemarketing component. If so, you need to determine how many calls you expect to get – so you can see if your staff can handle the calls or if you’ll need to get help. If you’re doing something on a very small scale, you can certainly execute that kind of campaign without an agency – but if you expect to take a significant volume of calls, or if you’re looking to testing closing sales via the phone – you may want to hire a professional call center.
A call center is a place where multiple trained agents take inbound and make outbound calls, either for sales or service. Some full-service advertising agencies also offer telemarketing services, but you might be better off hiring two separate vendors. Call Center expertise is very specific, and a full-service advertising agency may not have the state-of-the-art dialing, tracking, and monitoring equipment, nor the highly specialized, trained phone representatives.
If you do hire a call center, you might consider asking them to put some of their compensation at risk against attaining your sales goals or other goals for the project. Making them a partner whose agenda is aligned with yours is an important key to success.