All about Telemarketing

Telemarketing Definition (Source: wikipedia) - Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing where a salesperson uses the telephone to solicit prospective customers to sell products or services.

Telemarketing is classified as inbound and outbound marketing. The calls which are made within a specific/Domestic it is said to be inbound calling, Whereas sales calls which are made internationally are called as Outbound calling.

Here in Inbound/Domestic Telemarketing, the knowledge about the prevailing markets itself is enough and also can be easily targeted as the nationality, color, race , religion etc are same so people who pick up the call would show some interest, it is further more of our tele-caller of how he/she is convincing the person to sell our product, But in India, the case is totally different, this is because in each part of the country the culture differs. So it would be good to know two or more regional languages while concentrating on the domestic market.

Again in outbound/ International Telemarketing, the telemarketer should have a good market knowledge. Before proceeding to the call he needs to make a small market research to turn the customer into a prospective client. So here the telecaller shoule should have good use of English,as well as should concentrate on the pronounciation of the world, accent and the way he/she speaks. This is because the speech if made impressively would get an appointment. In the case of BPO's there is some thing more to be concentrated on the domain knowledge. So it is good to practise internal calls between two people on what they are going to speak.

For both Inbound/Outbound telecalling make a script ready and then speak, which would certainly add voice to your voice.

Here is a small article of mine which has been published in one of website on telemarketing.

Is tele-marketing a difficult task in BPO's?

Before making a call just go through the propects website, and see how you can contribute to their services to their services. Prepare a script of how you can help them out. And when the prospect picks the phone start speaking like this " Hello, I am I speaking with xxx, Hi, I am xxx calling from xxx company,(give a small brief about the company), I went through you website and and found that you are doing these services for which we can contribute our services, I would lilke to fix up an appointment for my process consultant to dicuss futher, Would this time to be okay (specify time) to call you" Surely 90% you would get an appointment. But the important thing here is you should explain how you are going to contribute to their services. when you say that you went through their site, that itself would turn their attention towards you. But don't forget that you are going to call the right person incharge of those operations in that company. This is small trick in tele-marketing, of how you are going divert the attention of the prospect towards you and your company.

This not only applies for tele-marketing, but also for e-mail sales, where you need explain why they need your services, and how would that help them etc. To make the marketing effective it is well and good to make a market research, collecting all the information about the company, i.e the company profile, Management biographies, Revenue analysis, competitors, and mainly a SWOT analysis (SWOT - Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) which would well describe of how and where you are going to pitch the prospects.

Also have a database ready with the prospects, which could be done by your web research team. It is very good to make a small table of the prospects with a small market research with some columns like Name of the company, Address, Phone, Fax, Key Contacts, Direct line of the key contacts, Business description , synergies ( This is sales pitch on our point of view) and finally a status column, which shows whether that is an appointment, call later, DNC, or others. This is a very easy task, in which you will gather almost all the information from the companies website. This could be maintained in a excel sheet.

Also before calling the tele-marketers need to focus and have a thorough understanding of the concepts , to make a successful sale.

Happy sale!