Telemarketing For 2012

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Telemarketing And Lead Generation

Lead generation has always been a problem for many businesses, as there is normally a saturated market, chasing down new business is normally a difficult process and one that is reserved to seasoned sales people.

Over the last few years with the growth of the internet, many companies have swapped their lead generation strategy from proactive marketing (such as telemarketing) to reactive forms of marketing (such as SEO and PPC on the internet) however as the internet has boomed, even this is becoming hard.

Telemarketing has been a strong part of the lead generation process for many decades now, but how is this being affected by the recession.

Why Was Telemarketing So Effective

The process was quite simple, pick up the phone, find out the contact name, hunt them down and sell to them. This is basically the process involved with tele selling, however prospects were receiving dozens of calls a day from businesses, telesales companies (working on behalf of businesses) that action had to be taken. Receptionists were told to block calls, people became rude on the phone, answerphones blocked calls.

However despite the problems, selling over the phone was the best way to target new business. For companies that were trying to target a specific market or client type, the old fashioned 'identify, research, target and close' sales process still worked (eventually).

How Have Things Changed

Competition has increased as the number of companies in the UK has increased, the market has stayed the same, so the concentration of competitors vs customers goes against anyone selling.

The internet has made the world smaller, it has changed peoples mindsets, so instead of reaching for the yellow pages, a local internet search is done. Instead of spending a day getting quotes for insurance from the phone book, a few minutes on price comparison sites saves time.

The recession means that a lot of companies are not spending, they are being cautious, which means that the number of 'active prospects' is less.

Can Telemarketing Work In 2012

Consider the above:

The competition is higherMarkets are quieterCustomer numbers are down as companies close

For this reason, telemarketing is more important than ever, as more businesses are struggling to sell their products and services. True that the internet has changed buyers perspectives, so now people feel 'if I need it, I can find it myself when I am ready'; however there does need to be a degree of 'prompting'.

Telemarketing can be used for relationship building, to build a relationship with a buyer so they see you as a friend rather than a sales person. This way they will buy when they are ready (with a little subtle helpful guidance) or when they feel they are ready.

Choosing The Right Telesales Partner

There are over 600 teleselling firms around the UK as well as hundreds of freelancers plus full time staff. How do you choose the best solution?

There are pro's and con's to outsourcing or using internal sales sources, mainly being around cost. It is more expensive to bring someone on (recruitment fees, training fees, incentives, salary, NI contributions, commissions etc.) rather than using an external source.

One thing to bear in mind is that by outsourcing, you are bring on an experienced agency, one that should know what they are doing and provide some sort of guarantee as to results.

Shop around, get quotes (as all telesales companies are profit making businesses) and talk to some of their current clients (to see if they are getting ROI on their telemarketing campaigns).

Marketing Quotes is a free price comparison service to UK businesses to help get free quotes and advise from local marketing companies.