Favorite Articles - Telemarketing Services

Sales lead telemarketing is one of the most controversial elements of advertising and sales that has ever been. With a turn towards avoiding this means of marketing, business are looking elsewhere. But, can an effectively run business to business telemarketing services campaign still pay off? Is your business the right type to take on the telemarketing world? There is little doubt that telemarketing leads has been successful, but with so many worries about legal action, it is necessary to do several things to ensure your telemarketing campaign is successful.

For example, with many new laws in place regulating the use of business to business telemarketing services to specific time frames as well as to only individuals who have not said they do not want to be called, it is necessary to insure that the company that is used to market is of the most highest of standards. If you consider your business not at risk, think again. The image alone that the customer has when they are 'bothered" is not one you will want to tarnish your business's name. But, with the use of regulated services that really do pay attention to detail, you can benefit from telemarketing leads.

Sales lead telemarketing is necessary to many businesses. It can be done quite successfully. If you are considering the use of telemarketing leads to promote your service or company, insure that you use a company that screens employees, hires and trains employees effectively and that has a successful rating. With these things kept in mind, just about any need that you have in sales lead telemarketing can be fulfilled successfully.

There are also many information portals now devoted to the subject and we recommend reading about it at one of these. Try googling for "telemarketing" and you will be surprised by the abundance of information on the subject. Alternatively you may try looking on Yahoo, MSN or even a decent directory site; all are good sources of this information.

Many companies are using telemarketing services to increase revenue and reduce costs. Effective and efficient sales lead telemarketing saves time, money and effort for both the companies and their customers.

The telephone is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to reach prospects and potential customers. You can call hundreds of prospects a day at a minimal cost in the comfort of your office or even your home. While the time and cost of sending unsolicited catalogs can be tremendous, the cost of meeting the customer in person is yet higher.

Not only do you save your time using the telephone, but your cost of sale also drops dramatically. Sales lead telemarketing also saves time for the customer. It is a lot easier for a busy person to allocate a few minutes for a telephone call as compared to meeting in person.

Thus, if you are selling any type of product that can be sold over the telephone as your primary tool, business to business telemarketing makes a lot of sense. Then, what about those that need face-to-face meetings for products that need to be demonstrated or experienced firsthand? In such cases, the telephone plays a valuable role in pre-qualifying prospects and scheduling the sales meetings with the prospect.

Sales lead telemarketing allows you to enhance sales and should become one component of your overall marketing and sales efforts. Cold calling is one strategy for business to business telemarketing. This means you take a list of names about whom you currently know very little, and you start calling them, one at a time, and give them your sales pitch over the telephone.

Used skillfully, the telephone is a quick way to sound out a prospective customer. There are three criteria to qualify a prospect. They are money, authority to order from you and a need for your company's product or service. Once qualified, the extent to which the salespeople can act depends on the nature of the product. There are products that can be closed over the phone with money being collected typically via credit card. Only the fulfillment is handled by the company's back office. An example would be motor insurance or home content insurance policies.

Business to business telemarketing can be a daunting task if you expect people to respond positively most of the time. Most people, in fact, are wary of receiving calls from telemarketers. To make life less stressful, the telemarketer should first accept this as well as the fact that everyone you call will not buy.

Using business to business telemarketing services will allow you to reach more prospects faster, increase your sales and hence generate higher revenue.

There is no doubt that the systematic use of the telephone is the fastest growing sales and marketing strategy today. This rapid growth of telemarketing has stimulated marketers from companies and organizations of all sizes to question whether or not there is some application of telemarketing in their business.

If you're one, you may be asking the question, "Is sales lead telemarketing feasible in my business?"

The answer to this question rests in the answer to two more basic questions. First, do you have an appropriate application? And second, do you have the necessary resources to give a telemarketing service a fair test?

Let's look at each of these in detail. First, the question of an appropriate application. Telemarketing service applications fall into three general categories.

1. Information Gathering

Sales lead telemarketing is the most powerful means of collecting marketing information about individual prospects and customers available today. This application of sales lead telemarketing can more than justify a telemarketing effort. Additionally, this information collecting can, and should, be an "add-on" aspect of every other telemarketing program.

Ask yourself, "Can I use a database that precisely identifies your highest-potential prospects?" Or, "Can I make use of additional information about my customers?"

Here are some examples which illustrate this application. An international manufacturer of large manufacturing equipment had been in business for over 100 years, and some of its equipment was in use for 60 to 70 years.

But, the company didn't know where its customers were. Over the years, the equipment may have changed hands a number of times. Yet they had a series of offers they wanted to make to people who owned their units.

So, the marketing task was to identify those companies who owned some of their equipment, and then to collect some information about those companies. We created a short-term business to business telemarketing program to accomplish the task.

Within three months, we had identified a national prospect base of over 1,000 companies, had the name and title of the chief decision maker, and knew exactly how many of my client units and the competitors each company owned. That was extremely valuable information, and provided the basis for additional marketing efforts.

Here's a small business example of the "Information Collecting" application. My client was a large developer and manager of office buildings. As he was preparing to build his next building, he wanted to identify prospective clients to whom he would deliver a targeted sales message. The problem was to dip into the vast universe of people who lease office space and find those who were thinking about moving.

My suggestion? "Let's call them and ask them." So, we created a business to business telemarketing program that took us through the yellow pages and compiled a list of office managers, business owners, and branch managers who indicated they were considering moving or increasing their office space in the next 12 months. We then designed a direct marketing approach to take our message to those individuals.

This aspect of sales lead telemarketing which collects information is so effective that I counsel my clients to build in "information collecting mechanism in every telemarketing program,
regardless of the primary objectives. Thus every phone conversation between your company and your prospects/customers can be a means of collecting telemarketing leads and marketing information.

2. The second general category of business to business telemarketing applications has to do with using telemarketing to complete some aspect of your current sales and marketing system more effectively or more efficiently then is currently being done. Generally this means using sales lead telemarketing to replace some task that your sales force is currently completing, or for which your advertising is responsible.

In this sense, sales lead telemarketing is used to increase effectiveness, or reduce current costs. It becomes a better way to do something that you are already doing.

Here are some examples. A client was a small, local distributor of storage equipment. In theory, almost every manufacturer or distributor within its market area was a potential prospect. The key to making effective sales calls was to get in front of the prospect at the point at which he was considering expanding, or after he had budgeted for an equipment purchase. This was the task of the outside salespeople, who were making classical cold calls in their areas, introducing the company, and probing for needs and proximity to the buying decisions.

In an effort to take costs out of the sales and marketing system and to complete this component more efficiently, we created a telemarketing effort. First, we called a suspect list, identified the primary decision-maker, and asked a few short survey questions regarding their future need for storage equipment. Those who indicated no current need were put into the database to be called next year. Those how indicated a need in the next twelve months were sent some basic information about the company, and then referred to the sales force. Thus the sales force was calling only on prospects who had already been identified as having a need and being close to a buying decision.

We took a task away from a high cost source - outside salespeople - and gave it to telemarketing to more efficiently and effectively complete it.