Target your telemarketing carefully

Targeted telemarketing can hugely increase your lead generation and conversion rates. You can use the telephone systematically for any of the following, and more:

• Market research
• Building and maintaining your mailing list
• Lead generation
• Appointment making
• Direct selling
• Enquiry and order handling
• Customer service
• Cash collection

For some telephone-based activities you may be better “contracting out” to a specialist agency. This very much depends on the skills and people available from your own workforce, the volume of effort required, and the budget available.

You need to check out the agency thoroughly. Understand their strengths and weaknesses. Ask what they’ve done before that’s similar to your requirements. Speak to their existing clients. Make sure you understand their charging policy and rates. Use my guidelines for Choosing a Telemarketing Agency.

Alternatively, you can do your own telemarketing. Many people do, either for cost reasons, or because they don’t think anyone else could do it better. See my Guidelines for DIY Telemarketing and Daily Telemarketing Worksheet for more help.

A Low-cost Action Plan for Telemarketing

1. Determine which activities (from the above list) you could handle by telephone. Is this a permanent, or temporary requirement?

2. Which of these activities can you handle yourself? If you don’t have in-house sales skills, you may be better using specialists to handle your lead generation and appointment setting. Similarly, you should seriously consider handing high volumes of enquiries and orders to people who do it all the time. The image you communicate to your customers and prospects on the telephone is very important.

3. If you want to look at agencies, get a short-list from your local Direct Marketing Association. You can try the local Yellow Pages, but beware. Some of these companies may be very small. Some are “one-man bands”. On the other hand, they price accordingly. If your requirements are small, the bigger outfits’ pricing may be prohibitive.

4. Speak to your short-list on the ‘phone. How do they sound to you as an enquirer? Get a feel for their prices. Cut the list down to two or three to visit and take a look at in more detail.

5. Draw up a “brief” using the guidelines on Choosing an Agency.

6. Select your agency and closely monitor their performance.

7. If you go for the DIY approach, make sure you brief your people accordingly. Consider using a freelance telemarketer for occasional or one-off projects.