Small business telemarketing

Make it work for you

Small business telemarketing can be a powerful instrument in your business generation toolbox. It is a form of direct marketing that involves contacting customers – current or potential – by telephone to achieve your marketing objectives. This can be to:

• Generate and qualify sales leads
• Sell directly to customers
• Carry out research
• Build databases
• Make appointments
• Undertake customer care

The great thing about telemarketing is that it allows the caller to get an immediate reaction. However, this type of approach can be seen as intrusive and a marketing call is often viewed an unwelcome interruption. It is typically more successful for business to business calls.

The golden rule, especially with small business telemarketing (as it is likely you are less known) is to “warm” your leads before calling them wherever possible. It delivers the best results when used as part of a wider communications campaign. For example, issuing a press release, using the resulting publicity as a basis for a targeted mailing and following this up with a telephone call is more likely to achieve results than straight cold calling.

Before embarking on a telemarketing campaign, make sure that this type of approach fits your company’s image and does not alienate potential customers. As with everything else – it needs good planning.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What do you hope to achieve by telemarketing This should be more than one thing. So if the ideal output is a sale, make sure that there is a secondary objective such as obtaining valuable information for your database and leaving the respondent with an idea of what your company is about.
• Does contacting a prospect by telephone fit the image of your company? The answer to this will depend on how you plan to do it and the tone of your campaign.
• Will it be a profitable exercise? Telemarketing has costs attached to it – database purchase, training, resource, the cost of the call, and not least the fact that you will undoubtedly have to make many, many calls before you achieve a sale! Make sure the profit on each sale will cover all these costs and still leave you with margin.
• Is this an exercise you can carry out in-house? Telemarketing is a skilled and often thankless task – do you have the resource internally to do this successfully?
• Would you be better to hire an outside agency to carry out the campaign? This is clearly the more expensive option but could be more cost effective than training up your own staff, and more realistic for larger campaigns.

If you are considering doing a small business telemarketing campaign in-house, you will find some valuable guidelines here - in-house telemarketing.

For advice on hiring an outside agency, look here - Telemarketing Agency.

As with all direct marketing you need to be aware of the legal issues. For example, it is illegal to communicate by telephone with anyone registered with the Telephone Preference Service if you do not have their permission first.

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