News Article
How to successfully use telemarketing without driving customers away
By Geoff Thomas, managing director of Integrity Business Connections
View the article on Utalkmarketing.com
If
you already use telemarketing and telesales to good effect then you
will also know the unrivalled opportunities that they provide for
developing an agency or a business. By doing the basics well, it is
possible to directly reach the key decision makers you need to influence
and leave them wanting to find out more. Carried out correctly, they
can be valuable tools in any marketing agency’s armoury to sell on to
clients as part of their campaign planning.
Some marketing
managers, agencies and new business directors are already re-focusing on
helping clients adopt good telesales and telemarketing practice, in
order to drive sales in a recession. However, too many companies are
failing to grasp simple but effective opportunities that could bring in
vital new business leads, and are even driving potential customers away
simply because the wrong approaches and poor techniques are being
employed when it comes to telemarketing.
Because telemarketing is
often not incorporated into the broader marketing and sales plan,
activities may be poorly timed and objectives not clearly defined from
the outset and businesses can then struggle to assess the return on
their investment. This, in turn, sometimes cultivates a negative image
of telemarketing as a business tool.
In the current economic
climate quality, high-level business-to-business telemarketing that
generates appointments with senior personnel in blue chip organisations
could well help to save a company. As the downturn bites, now is a prime
opportunity to stand out from the crowd by investing in
well-thought-out and executed telemarketing, harnessing its ability to
raise profile and separating your company from the competition.
Here are a few pointers to success:
1. Telesales or Telemarketing? Define at the outset which you mean:
Telesales
is the use of a telephone to generate a sales order for a product or
service. Telemarketing is the use of the telephone to make appointments
with decision makers. The latter is a more complex process requiring a
highly professional phone call, which might require some flexibility in
conversation and a dialogue to establish trust and credibility.
2. Prioritise your most important prospects or clients to call:
Success
in telemarketing is often achieved after a number of follow-up calls
and carefully selected supporting information being sent by post or
email.
Both Business to Business and Business to Consumer
approaches have their place depending upon the industry and type of
business or agency making the calls. It is vital that at the outset, the
type of call required is clearly defined.
3. Remember it
doesn't have to be high volume to work. It's more about identifying the
key people you want to have appointments with:
To achieve
successful telemarketing it is essential to integrate it into the
broader marketing and sales plans for your company. Position
telemarketing strategically to ensure that when you call prospects or
clients they are warm and receptive to the messages being delivered. If
they have seen an advertisement or press article or received some direct
marketing material that supports the telemarketing messages they will
be far more likely to both understand the reason for the call and
respond favourably to the request for an appointment.
4. Think
of adding telemarketing into your plans at the same time as you plan a
new sales brochure, product launch or strategic sales drive into a new
market:
The best order of play for effective telemarketing
is to position it in the middle of the new business marketing process.
As an example:
- Design and develop sale brochure
- Issue press release
- Ssend out direct marketing materials
- Telemarketing to drive sales appointments
- Follow-up direct marketing as appropriate
- Secure sales
- Aftersales support, testimonial stories for website, press releases and sales materials.
5. Plan your telemarketing up to twelve months ahead to boost
times when sales peak and fill the troughs when sales leads are scarcer:
If
you can, include telemarketing to support the generation of sales
appointments around or just before the key buying times of your products
and services to ensure that your sales pipeline is always full at those
important times. Plan telemarketing in advance to boost those peaks and
perhaps to also fill the troughs when sales are otherwise hard to come
by.
6. Work backwards from the sales value you want to
achieve, to calculate how many people you need to call and how many days
of calls are required. This will show you clearly the return you can
expect on your investment:
Knowing the number of appointments
you need to attend to secure a sale will help you to determine the
amount of calling you need from your telemarketing agency who should be
able to give a clear indication of the number of appointments they are
able to make for you.
7. Work out the real cost and value of doing telemarketing in-house, compared to using a professional agency:
A
lot of companies and agencies may believe they have the expertise to
run effective telemarketing campaigns and activities in-house. In some
cases this may well be true with staff knowing the products and services
intimately.
However it is often worth considering using a
professional telemarketing agency and especially one that is willing and
able to get into the heart of your business and really understand your
strategic objectives.
Writing a strong brief will help such an
agency to get things right first time, so work through this step by step
guide to make sure you have everything covered.
Your selected
agency should challenge you about the strength of your marketing
messages and work with you to ensure they are as strong as they can be.
They will also write a clear and succinct "script” that will help
callers to deliver these messages and secure appointments. Make sure you
are totally comfortable with the script before the campaign begins.
Whether
you decide to run your telemarketing in-house or use an agency, make
sure you set clear and measurable objectives at the outset and have
regular reviews and updates as you go through the campaign. Most
importantly, tell everyone in your business what's happening so that any
enquiries that come in are effectively and professionally handled, by
whomever receives the call.
