Telemarketing Service, in spite of being unpopular with customers, is a multi-billion dollar industry. Telemarketing is one of the most cost-effective ways of promoting products and services, and collecting feedback from customers. Recent studies have shown that small and mid sized businesses that have invested in a professional telemarketing service have been successful in increasing their sales revenues and profit streams by 2x.

How does telemarketing work?

The job of a telemarketing service is to receive calls from customers or make calls to a target audience to promote products and services. The goal is to generate sales leads and build relationships with decision makers. Whether a call is inbound or outbound, the telemarketer’s task is to engage the customer’s interest and answer queries.  Normally, professional telemarketing companies call customers 2-3 times before closing a sale or scheduling an in-person sales meeting.

Many telemarketing services use a combination of customer service reps and automated answering systems to handle with call volumes. Automated answering systems are not a great hit with customers unless their query is very straightforward and common.

What are the typical services offered by telemarketing companies?

Telemarketing is often burdened with the task of generating qualified leads. With a telemarketing service qualifying leadsfor your business, the field sales force can focus their time and energy on closing them into sales. Advancements in technology have made outsourcing telemarketing a viable and productive option. In fact, many call center executives work from home. They are formally trained by the telemarketing call center and have the necessary set up to handle calls from home.

Outsourcing telemarketing alleviates small and mid sized businesses from the effort and expense of hiring in-house telemarketing staff. In addition, outsourced telemarketing companies offer other services that help businesses run more smoothly, such as:

1. recruitment
2. scaling staff up or down as per need
3. training
4. script creation
5. market surveys and research
6. setting appointments
7. up-selling and cross-selling
8. supporting marketing campaigns
9. direct mail follow ups
10. customer service process improvements

What to look for in a professional telemarketing service?

A few key points that you must verify when evaluating prospective telemarketing services are:

1. How well does the agency understand your industry?
2. Has the staff worked with the type of customers your business deals with?
3. How does the agency check leads?
4. How does the agency ensure members of the Do-Not-Call registry or privacy lists are not called?
5. How well does the agency observe state and federal regulations surrounding telemarketing?
6. Does the agency have low call abandonment rates – the time customers are placed on hold before being attended by a telemarketer?
7. What is the conversion rate of telemarketing calls?
8. Does the agency provide detailed reports and statistics that work to increase effectiveness of marketing campaigns?
9. How comfortable and skilled are the telemarketers in cold calling new customers?
10. How does the telemarketing agency train its staff in contacting leads, engaging customers and closing deals?
11. Do the telemarketers have the ability to engage key decision makers at the firm being called?
12. What is the turnover rate?

Clearly, the selection of outbound telemarketing services should be based on professionalism and phone skills rather than cost savings. As the telemarketers will be communicating with your customers every day, their performance and professionalism will affect your business reputation and brand. It is critical that you work with professional telemarketing companies that staff skilled personnel to build strong customer relationships resulting in increased revenue and profit streams.

Tags: Telemarketing

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