This dreaded word can get most people's skin crawling. A siege of annoyance overtakes the body when the phone rings in the middle of day from these pesky salesmen. Telemarketers are avoided at all costs when they call homes asking to sell unwanted services. They call at various hours with the same intent to gain more customers. They may be a nuisance to home owners, but they are an asset to many businesses. As with many things in this world, there are two sides to every story. Learn more about the good and the bad of telemarketing.
A form of a sales prospecting service, telemarketing is a system of direct marketing where a salesperson questions potential customers to buy services or products. Usually, they call over the phone or through face to face interactions. There are two main types of telemarketing: Business-to-Business and Business-to-consumer.
Businesses such as alumni associations, political parties and charities normally use telemarketing to gain donations. Many companies also use telemarketing to gain information, conduct surveys, deliver technical support, record and process orders and customer service. Other businesses also use it to stand out and as another method to gain more customers. Businesses choose between being inbound or outbound services.
Most companies use inbound telemarketing to process orders or provide customer service. Companies use outbound calling to place calls to potential sales leads. It's common for call centers to use outbound when they need to conduct a survey.
The pros to telemarketing include:
Fast Results
Businesses looking for clients can waste a lot of energy attempting to reach potential customers through regular phone calls. Yet, utilizing the services of call center telemarketers will get the job done in a much faster time.
Quantity Works
Any company aiming to reach many prospects can definitely benefit from telemarketers. They could hire around a hundred people to reach thousands of potential clients. Telemarketers are trained to talk to people in a customer friendly way that can guide them to making a purchase or becoming future customers.
Control
Telemarketing is resourceful in how a company can maintain the amount of business they get. The sales team can get many prospective clients when business is slow and can lessen the contact when business is busy.
Many people know the negatives to telemarketing with one of them being annoying phone calls at all hours of the day.
Some cons to telemarketing are:
Bad Telemarketing Salesmen
Most follow the script and try to provide the best in customer service. Yet, unfortunately some do no ethically follow the protocol to which they were hired. They may change the script and even try to sell the services for a much higher price than what's supposed to be advertised.
Negative Reputation
A few bad eggs have marked telemarketers in an immoral light. More people are placing themselves on the Do Not Call list to protect against shady telemarketers.
Quantity is Not Always a Good Thing
The more staff hired as telemarketers, the more expensive it becomes for a business to run this type of service. It can become quite costly - especially if the calls do not lead to potential customers for a few days.
As a consumer, it's easy to create an uninformed opinion about this service. But after going through the pros and cons of telemarketing, you can now understand those phone calls and maybe even use it for your own business.
About Author: This is a guest post written by Tiffany Richards.