Before we look at the six reasons to outsource telemarketing, we need to tackle the question of cost. Outbound telemarketing can cost hundreds of pounds a day.
How much will it cost to outsource and is it necessary?
Do you have as sales team?
Do you not have a sales team? If the answer to either of these questions is yes or no, then this article will be relevant to you.
Telemarketing for small companies is very popular for quickly generating results.
1/ Focus
If you have a sales team, are they 110% focused on lead generation? Chances are, they are not. The reason is because that staff in any company have duties across a spectrum of tasks. This is just the ebb and flow of business, you cannot change it. One of the main reasons to outsource telemarketing is focus.
A telemarketing agency will focus 100% on your lead generation campaign.
Who are you targeting? Are you targeting blue chip accounts? Are you targeting your bread and butter business? Any business needs a happy blend of them both. You need your bread and butter customers, but you also need to get the larger accounts in, accounts that are spending more. Existing sales people may be lazy in their approach, getting what they are given rather than hunting down what you need.
2/ A Structured Approach
The sales cycle above shows the typical sales cycle. Of course this may change from industry to industry and company to company, but generally this is what it is. Your lead generation campaign does need to be structured in the approach it has. This means that significant focus needs to be given to research, to qualifying, to nurturing and to closing.
3/ Managing Your Database
Do you use a CRM system (Custom Relationship Management)? You know having a good well managed database is the heart of a successful campaign. Imagine having to start from the beginning:
• No contact information (address, phone number, e-mail or website address)
• No contact names or job rolls
• No contact history
A cold start is the hardest, but if you have thousands of businesses with contacts and job rolls and history of previous discussions, this makes the calling process far easier. Obtaining the data is another task. Do you supply it or do the telemarketing agency. Is the data GDPR compliant? Turning the prospects into sales leads is the next task.
4/ Specialist Skills
Another reason to outsource it includes the skills a telemarketing agency brings to the table. Often, agencies ensure their staff go on sales training events at least once a year. When last did your sales team attend a training seminar? We have seen it time and time again. A business brings on a new sales person, and they have not been to a training event for years. They bring their bad habits; they may be a good sales person, but they have ‘their own way’.
Using a telemarketing expert, they follow the process in the image above ‘the sales cycle’.
5/ Reporting
Would it not be great that each month you get a report showing how effective your telemarketing campaign was going. A report showing what new ‘blue chip’ clients were being targeted and where they were in the sales process? What the ‘order pipeline’ looked like – how much value of business was pending each month.
Reporting gives you a great way to measure ROI, which brings us to the last and final important part of outsourcing telemarketing.
6/ Return On Investment
The only reason you use an agency is to generate new business. By using the reporting feature, you should be able to start getting a ROI by month 3 of your campaign. If you are spending £1,000 on telemarketing each month, you should be getting a return of £3,000 in order to cover costs, pay VAT and get a healthy profit on your investment.
Some advice during times of recession is to shop around and compare quotes.
Hopefully the above has given inspiration and pause for thought. If you would like to talk to experts about lead generation and telemarketing, just fill in the form opposite.
Telemarketing can be used across a wide range of industry sectors across the B2B and B2C sectors; here are a few:
The list goes on, practically any industry can use telemarketing, both to do outbound calling to generate new business, or handing incoming calls.
Many of the telecoms giants outsource telemarketing to handle large numbers of incoming calls.
This is to free up staff and also cost cutting, since outsourcing telemarketing alleviates the challenge’s of employing managing and training staff.
Staff sickness, maternity leave and handing disciplinary issues are all time consuming issues that have not been covered and certainly good reasons to outsource your telemarketing. Managing and training up staff is a full time job and can be very expensive.
Choosing a marketing company to outsource your telemarketing to can be a challenge, as there are so many to choose from.
We can help by getting you quotes to compare.