Ten Reasons NOT to Use Telephone Marketing
Although telephone marketing can be a very successful part of a sales campaign, there are sometimes reasons why you should not use telephone marketing, and they’re probably not the reasons you think. You shouldn’t bypass telephone marketing because you feel bad interrupting people’s days. The main reasons that you should not use telephone marketing have everything to do with professionalism and confidence.
There’s no question that telephone marketing requires the caller to be thick skinned. We all know that the targets of these calls can be rude and abusive, and sometimes it isn’t easy to dissociate yourself from a hostile reaction from someone you don’t know and will probably never meet. But beyond possessing (or outsourcing) the skills necessary for a successful telephone marketing campaign, there are a number of reasons why your company shouldn’t use telephone marketing. They might not be the reasons you think. Here are the top 10 in countdown form.
10. You think that you can hand over telephone marketing to existing staff or student interns. Successful telephone marketing requires a specific set of skills, and that’s why it’s often best to contract with an established telemarketing agency. You need to be able to concentrate on your product and overall sales rather than whether your summer intern is actually spending the summer calling his girlfriend.
9. You insist that telephone marketing professionals stick to your script no matter what. A seasoned telemarketing professional knows when and how to deviate from the script in order to bring a potential customer closer to “Yes.” 8. You decide to do cold calls yourself, while you crunch potato chips or chew gum. This is really, really unprofessional. 7. You have no responses ready to counter a potential customer’s objections. “Umm …” isn’t an effective counter-response. 6. You lack the confidence to actually close the sale. If you don’t actually say something along the lines of, “So you want four of them, in blue? Excellent. Let me get your billing information,” they’re probably not going to do it for you.
Telephone marketing can be very effective, but it can’t do everything. Your sales strategy should include other types of direct marketing and advertising. 5. If you’re doing your own telemarketing, you don’t have or plan to have contact management software. Post-it Notes are awesome for some things, but not for managing your contracts. You may think you’ll be able to decipher your own notes tomorrow, but you won’t. 4. You don’t plan to target your calls. The chances of finding people who would like to buy your retirement planning software are slim if you live in a college town where half the phone numbers are for student apartments. Targeted calls will save everyone time and money. 3. You plan to stake your entire sales strategy on telephone marketing. Telephone marketing can be very effective, but it can’t do everything. Your sales strategy should include other types of direct marketing and advertising. 2. You don’t plan to follow up with customers. If customers think that you actually care about their experience with your product or service, they’re more likely to become repeat customers. It is much easier to call a customer who has been buying from you regularly than it is to do a successful cold call. 1. You don’t believe it will work. That’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t believe strongly enough that your products or services are amazing enough to overcome the natural reticence of the potential customers you call, then all kinds of things will probably happen to prove you right. You’ll write a weak script. You’ll hire a call center based on price alone. You won’t be prepared if you suddenly do sell a bunch of your products and may handle the orders inefficiently.
Conducting effective telephone marketing requires professionalism, preparedness, and commitment to doing the work necessary to maximize your chances of success. If any of these aren’t present, your chances of success are much lower, and you may be better off concentrating your efforts elsewhere.
John Sinit
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