It’s time we approached telemarketing in a different way. For too long, it has been viewed as the poor relation of direct marketing: a boiler-room industry of banked telephones, automated dialling and repetitive scripted sales pitches. It also suffers from the perception that it is the best way to irritate potential customers, and turning off potential prospects.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that telemarketing is seen as a lo-tech approach, in an era where business decisions are increasingly informed by data and algorithms. In fact, telemarketing can deliver much more valuable data than any IP tracking or cookie-based system. These technologies, it is true, can gather a rich variety of structured data that helps to qualify prospective leads. But telemarketing is a fantastic way of gaining insight that is very difficult to gather through digital alone.
These include things such as a customers’ perception of your brand or product, their specific needs, who else in involved in the buying process, and where they stand in the decision-making process. Not only is this unstructured ‘human’ data invaluable to every marketer, it also brings a vital human element into what is becoming a very impersonal and machine-led process of marketing.
That’s another misconception about telemarketing: that it is simply about lead generation and appointment setting. That may have been the case when it was the only way of gathering data about prospects; today, however, there are many better ways of getting this information than cold calling. What telemarketing can do (and which few other methods can manage) is to build rapport and to nurture the buying cycle, rather than giving a hard sell on a cold call.
Sometimes we get so fixated on the capabilities of new technology that we ignore its limitations. In marketing, our ability to track, segment and target people means that we tend only to have conversations with highly-qualified leads. While it looks good on paper, it means that we are only talking to the converted, or to those who are likely to buy. As any marketer worth their salt knows, it’s just as important to find out why someone isn’t interested in your service, or why they think that your competitor is better. Only once you have this insight can you begin addressing problems or change the perceptions about your brand.
Similarly, if you use a digital-only approach to discover how your customer became your customer, you’ll miss out on how to catch those that don’t. Don’t dismiss digital, by any means, but understand when it works and when it doesn’t. For example, digital is generally the preferred gateway to better-qualified prospects and conversations; with telemarketing, however, you can find out why you lost a sale and what, if anything, you can do to correct it.
While the humble telephone might not get the same attention as other marketing technologies, it works. A study by the DMA found that 92% of businesses say it is effective, and it delivers an ROI of £11 for each pound spent. That’s a pretty powerful endorsement of the benefits of telemarketing; yet it still doesn’t tell the whole story. To start using the telephone to its full advantage, businesses must get out of the telemarketing mindset, and start thinking about “teleprospecting”.
Telemarketing has, deservedly or not, become a synonym for cold calling. As I hope I’ve made clear, this is a wasteful and ineffective way of using a powerful, if lo-tech marketing channel. Is there another way? Businesses that still talk about telemarketing should instead consider changing their approach to teleprospecting: calling people in order to qualify them as potential opportunities, and to determine if a company is the right fit for their services or products.
The data gathered from other digital channels gives teleprospectors a rich mass of information before they make a call. This means that conversations are more relevant and more rewarding. Even if a prospect turns down a sale, you’ll be able to gather valuable information on why it was refused. This data, which provides immense value to business departments from marketing to product design to sales, is difficult or impossible to gather without having direct, one-on-one contact with prospects.
Another important factor to remember is that first impressions are indelible, so it’s vital to get them right. Sales aren’t all made from a single phone call, and require multiple “touches” from marketers. Getting the first contact right and relevant will have positive repercussions throughout the demand waterfall.
So let’s recognise the value that telemarketing (or, rather, teleprospecting) can bring, and make sure that we do it right: not by spamming prospects with constant cold calls, but by complementing the digital data we gather elsewhere with insight that we can only gather through human interaction.
