Should You Be Using Telemarketing?
This is a question many companies are faced with in this very difficult financial climate we find ourselves in today. To answer this question, you must first answer another question. Would highly qualified sales leads be an appropriate fit for my business model? The answer to this question is usually yes. Whether your business is IT, training & development or professional services, everyone needs new business opportunities. And, more and more companies are making telemarketing a part of their business plan, simply because it works.
The reality is, it’s more than likely your competitors are already using it for their lead generation. Telemarketing can be used for general business growth, or if there is a specific area of the business that you are looking to grow or develop. It can be used for qualified lead generation and appointment setting. It can be used to survey your target market or just to get back in touch with some cold leads or lapsed customers.
If you have internal sales guys making calls to generate new business – that’s great. But are you getting a strong return from their efforts? If closing is what they do best, why not keep them closing? A lot of companies are now realising that their top closers should be only speaking with decision makers, and not doing all the leg work. It’s a simple concept, if I give my top closers more hot leads to close, I’m getting a stronger return from them. Companies are now looking into lead generation or face to face appointment setting campaigns to do this.
Some companies out there will decide that they can do it themselves and set up an internal telemarketing function. Other companies will take a smarter approach and look tooutsource this to a professional telemarketing agency. Recent studies have shown that outsourced telemarketing is 40% more effective than in-house telemarketing. Generally most companies nowadays are outsourcing this due to the large overheads involved in setting this up internally.
If you decide to speak to an outsourced telemarketing agency you need to understand what you are hoping to achieve by doing so. What exactly am I looking for, lead generation orappointment setting? How many leads do I want on a weekly or monthly basis? How does their costing structure work? Does this risk involved justify the potential rewards? Have they done this before, can they provide proof of concept?
These are all important questions you need to ask yourself and the agency in question. Forming a mutually beneficial partnership with the right telemarketing agency could be the best marketing decision you make this year.
Tags: Blogs, Telemarketing, Using Telemarketing