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How to include telemarketing as a powerful tool in your small business marketing mix

A guest post from Maxine Welford, expert in telemarketing that increases sales for small businesses. With so much attention on digital marketing, we thought it was time for a reminder on making best use of more traditional techniques. We asked Maxine how she uses the telephone as a powerful marketing tool.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the concept of “Taps, Funnels and Buckets.”

Telemarketing and Telesales fits into this concept at various stages, as shown in Bryony’s 10 minute tips on the subject – Awareness, Generating and Converting Interest and also Retention. You can have various types of Telemarketing Taps (campaigns) running at the same time or various times. A funnel can be worked with Telemarketing to either qualify leads into or out of your funnel and by this we mean establishing and attracting levels of interest, desire and action.

The difference between Telemarketing and Telesales

Over recent years the difference has become a bit blurred. Telesales is closing an interest through to a sale. Whereas Telemarketing supports various parts of a marketing plan by use of the telephone but not usually to the point of closing a sale.

Telemarketing activities typically include:

• Data cleansing – getting accurate details of the prospect record including names, job titles, phone numbers and email addresses for decision makers and key influencers. Can also mean getting information on the actual business in terms of number of employees, turnover, details of current supplier arrangement, data research on decision making.
• Opted in email permissions – people give their email addresses and verbally ‘opt in’ to receive email marketing messages.
• Market Research – data gathering either to prepare for or evaluate other marketing activity.
• Cold Calling – Introduce services and products with an outline of the benefits with the aim of qualifying a lead to the next step in the marketing or sales process. This is probably the most well known area of Telemarketing and because this task is also performed by Telesales, people often assume that Cold Calling only focuses on selling to cold prospects. There are many other objectives though such as: qualifying leads, gathering information for personalised communications, email opt in permissions, invitations to delegate events, appointment setting, call backs to quote for specific requirements.
• Lead generation – This is where prospects are identified and qualified. It usually involves skill to articulate the product or service in an attractive way that clearly explains benefits relevant to the person being called. The skills are the same as telesales although telemarketing tends to stop short of actually closing the sale over the phone.
• Appointment setting – The objective of the call is to make appointments and the qualification criteria can vary on what is required before an appointment is made. Some people just want to get a foot in the door, whereas others want to be more careful with their time and costs before attending appointments.
• Delegate calling – Inviting people along to events, meetings, workshops, training courses, either as paid events or free as a way of demonstrating knowledge, experience, skill etc.
• Follow Up Calls – Calls that are deemed to be less cold as they have had a piece of direct marketing literature either by email, post or fax and they are being followed up as a telemarketing call with the same objectives of either generating qualified leads, setting appointments, obtaining call backs for quotes for services and products, or email permissions.

All of these are at the awareness and converting from interest stage of the Tap and Funnel. You may have also heard the term ‘Pipeline’ and this can be interpreted as prospects that are working their way through the funnel.

Essentially, telemarketing helps to ‘work the funnel’. Telemarketers talk with cold leads, building up awareness, finding out information, establishing interest, creating desire by being able to explain the benefits of a service or product, and agree actions with prospects in line with marketing and sales processes.

Why Telemarketing is popular:

• It’s fast and can bring in revenue extremely quickly, almost instantly!
• It can be very cost effective.
• It can generate profit for reinvestment in marketing.

Why it’s sometimes unpopular:

• It has a bad image from poor and unprofessional telemarketing practices.
• It can be a complete waste of money if not done well, or if the marketing plan is weak, or if the product or service isn’t perceived as attractive enough in line with targets and expectations.
• It takes the right kind of person to do it, enjoy it, and be good at it!

My 12 biggest and best telemarketing tips

1. Invest in a good marketing plan before starting telemarketing campaigns so that messages are well targeted, structured, and organised.

2. Weigh up the costs of purchasing good quality data from a list broker versus cleansing in-house and go with what is the best option on a fit-for-purpose basis.

3. Have clear objectives for the telemarketing campaign in terms of what information you want to find out at what cost and in what timescale, and what the various stages are in the marketing and sales processes that you want to move prospects on to (and again and what cost and timescale).

4. Be realistic with expectations and if this is an unknown area then forecasts can be calculated from short telemarketing trials.

5. Split test – use different approaches to different audiences and measure individual segments of calling in line with KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to identify areas for ongoing improvement. KPI’s can be either quantity or quality orientated and popular measures are Number of calls made, number of successful contacts, number of qualified leads, number of appointments, number of not interested, number of requests for further information, number of diary date actions. These can then be evaluated in percentage terms ie; number of not interested as a percentage of successful contacts, or number of qualified leads as a percentage of call attempts.

6. Guide but don’t script – Scripts are likely to drive the wrong behaviour of both the telemarketer and the person being called. Nobody likes to talk with a robot and it is difficult to listen properly when following a script. Calling guides can be good however to streamline important parts of a call such as the opening and can allow for split tests to take place.

7. Be ready – If you plan to send marketing literature as part of the telemarketing campaign then get this ready in advance as either brochures, letters, emails, faxes, postcards, invitations etc. If you plan to attend appointments then have resource and time slots available.

8. Be organised – Using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to capture data efficiently and effectively can be crucial to success so that telemarketers don’t waste time recording information in a cumbersome way and so management don’t waste time trying desperately to put into reporting formats. The information gathered is extremely useful for influencing future marketing plans.

9. Do something with the feedback – In addition to generating leads and appointments there can be an enormous opportunity to evaluate feedback from the Telemarketers notes recorded on each call. Look for trends and analyse data to see how services and products can be marketed or offered differently in line with messages received from potential clients. Seek to overcome barriers that may exist ie; pricing, contractual, technology, etc.

10. Adhere to rules for TPS and CTPS (Telephone Preference Service and Corporate Telephone Preference Service) as is a legal requirement not to call people who have registered in the last 28 days.

11. Don’t forget to add Social Media Telemarketing into the mix if relevant to your business as this can be an effective way of responding to needs communicated via social platforms.

12. Don’t think that telemarketing stops at the Awareness and Interest stage of the funnel. Remember the Bucket?

Using telemarketing with existing customers

To use Bryony’s language, this is making sure you have a watertight bucket – customers that stay with you and buy more.

• Cross selling a different product or service to an existing customer.
• Up-selling where an existing customer may consider purchasing more in greater quantities, higher priced items, upgrades or premium products or services.
• Asking for referrals.
• Asking for testimonials, case studies, endorsements for use in other marketing and promotional activities.
• Regular data cleansing to ensure you keep up with changes of staff and people responsible for purchasing your product or service.
• Client satisfaction surveys to safeguard against competition and other threats and retain happy customers.
• Surveys for testing responses to new products and services.

I hope this article shows you that there are Telemarketing companies out there who are professional enough to support and assist professional marketing plans. Do use the comments below to share your own experiences of telemarketing, good and bad, and to ask any questions you may have.

Maxine Welford runs Maxxy, a team of telemarketing experts who specialise in working with accountants and busy professionals. Her passion is more telemarketing that supports the overall marketing effort and is tailored to suit the needs, style, audience and budget of her small business clients. You can find out more about their services at www.maxxy.co.uk

Published on 22 March 2011