Inbound Telemarketing

Most people think of inbound telemarketing as the same thing as customer support. Inbound telemarketing is slightly different than customer service in that it involves the telemarketer in the sales process. Customer service typically requires a representative to answer questions on behalf of an existing customer. In recent years, lenders have done a particularly good job outsourcing mortgage telemarketing services. Typically, the lender will generate leads online, and the telemarketer will handle inbound inquiries. The telemarketing representative will answer basic mortgage related questions, and set up an appointment with the prospect and the loan officer.

Outbound Telemarketing

Outbound telemarketing involves the telemarketer cold calling prospects who are not expecting a call. The first step to launching an outbound telemarketing campaign is to define your market. Once you have determined exactly who you are trying to reach, put together a telemarketing list for your telemarketer to call. If you don’t have a database of target prospects, you can buy a list from a third party. There are many companies who can provide a list of contacts based upon parameters you define. The next step would be to write a script. Customize a short script that will help your telemarketer effectively promote your products or services to your target market. Determine whether your campaign will be B2B or B2C. Business to business campaigns typically involve the telemarketer getting past a secretary, or gatekeeper. If your project is B2B, your script will have to incorporate a “getting past the gatekeeper” element. Send the script to your telemarketer and have him practice overcoming potential objections. Set up a phone call to role play the script with your telemarketer. This will give you your first idea of how the telemarketer will sound on the phone. If there are any stumbling points, refine your script to make it sound better. Once you have completed the script, have your telemarketer call prospects for a day or two, and see how it goes. Check back in with your telemarketer, and get some feedback. Find out what kind of objections they are hearing and continue to refine the script accordingly.

Telemarketers or Virtual Assistants?

Some entrepreneurs have hired virtual assistants through call centers overseas. This can be advantageous to companies that need a variety of services to performed in addition to telemarketing. Outsourced virtual assistants can handle appointment setting, data entry, inbound telemarketing (customer service), and outbound telemarketing. Determine what role you want your virtual assistant to play for your organization prior to launching your project. Your call center service provider may have different requirements for telemarketer than they do virtual assistants, so it is important to define their role in advance. Typically, a telemarketer will have superb voice skills, but may be lacking in written communication. Tell your service provider if your project will require a lot of data entry and email marketing so they hire the right employee for your company.

For many companies, there are three compelling reasons to outsource your telemarketing:

1) Focus

2) Capabilities

3) Cost

This article examines these three reasons and suggests why, in many cases, it makes more sense to use the services of an external telemarketing agency for business-to-business telemarketing campaigns.

1) Focus

Firstly, a strong reason for using an external telemarketing company is that they will focus on the task of generating leads for your business. Many companies, when using an internal resource, will hand this over to either an admin person or expect telemarketing to be done as an extension of their role.

But, let’s be honest about what really happens in most businesses: they find something else to do.

Unlike an external company, which employs people to make outbound telemarketing calls day-in, day-out, your employees have other duties to perform. And, believe me, they will find anything else to do rather than telemarketing. The same goes for if you choose to hire your own people “just to cold call”. After a few months, I guarantee, they will be doing something (anything) else rather than telemarketing.

Using a telemarketing agency means that you have a resource focused on telemarketing for your business and you ensure a continual effort to generate leads, not the reluctant, ad-hoc approach you will get form your own people.

2) Capabilities

Hand-in-hand with the issue of focus is that of capabilities. By outsourcing telemarketing you will access people who are far better at telemarketing that your own people. Even if you have dedicated sales people they often won’t match a seasoned telemarketer when it comes to making outbound calls.

External telemarketing agencies also bring capabilities around data acquisition, segmentation, key message and “pitch” development which your own people will lack.

Think about it; a good telemarketer will pitch around 100 prospects in a week. Given that the best telemarketers have been in the game for at least 10 years, that’s over 50,000 pitches. That’s a level of telemarketing experience you will never get it from an in-house employee.

3) Cost

Finally, another reason for many companies to consider using a telemarketing agency is cost.

When comparing using your people, or even yourself as the owner of a small business, against the cost of a telemarketing company, the costs are pretty compelling.

Telemarketing agencies charge, on average around £250 per day for a telemarketer. That’s attractive even when you compare it against the cost of your sales people. But when you consider the cost of them not being in front of prospects and actually closing, the cost justification stacks up in favour of outsourcing.

When comparing an external telemarketing company against an admin person making “a few cold calls” the costs need a little more study but they still make sense. Usually, the best approach is to consider two factors: a) the cost per lead and b) the opportunity cost.

When looking at the former, external telemarketing agencies, which are always more efficient, typically wins. In addition, when you think about the opportunity cost of not getting new leads into your pipeline and the resulting lost new business growth, it’s usually obvious that using a telemarketing company is the best investment.

So, in summary, when thinking about whether to use your own people or external telemarketers, consider the total picture of how much focused your own people will be, how good they will be, and what is the real return on their costs.

We believe that, taking all these elements into account, an outbound telemarketing agency