There are many myths and misconceptions about telemarketing that are still widely believed and are often the reasons that some businesses disregard telemarketing as a viable method of generating new business opportunities.
Following on from a previous article, we’ve taken a look at five more myths and misconceptions about telemarketing and why they are wrong.
#1 – ‘Telemarketing Involves Endless Talking’
There are some people who believe telemarketing is all about endlessly talking to a prospect and repeating the same pitch over and over until they finally cave and agree to a follow-up phone call, meeting, or sale.
This may be an approach used by poorly run telemarketing companies that you have been on the receiving end of, but this is certainly not a true reflection of what effective telemarketing looks like.
Successful telemarketing is all about having a two-way conversation between yourself and your prospect. Experienced telemarketers know that endlessly talking at a prospect doesn’t capture their attention, but rather shows a disregard for their time and destroys rapport.
Real telemarketing is about listening to your prospects, understanding their needs, and answering their questions just as much as it is about delivering your pitch and call-to-action. Actively listening to your prospects and having a valuable two-way conversation helps to create a foundation for a potential long-term partnership and makes them more likely to remember the interaction.
Blindly pitching an irrelevant pitch without first learning about their specific business requirements will just destroy rapport, along with your chances of securing a qualified business opportunity.
#2 – ‘Telemarketing Means ‘Irrelevant Cold Calls’
When some people hear the word ‘Telemarketing’ their mind jumps straight to thinking of the irrelevant, often scam-related calls you receive personally asking about a recent accident that you have never even had. Even with telemarketing scam operations marring the reputation of telemarketing, in a B2B setting, it is still one of the most direct and valuable methods of generating new business opportunities. Quality focused telemarketing companies, like us at River, conduct in-depth market research prior to dialling and create a clear picture of who to target. Creating this picture then means they can acquire relevant data for the campaign that is targeted to achieve the best results. This data will be targeted to reach specific business types, of different sizes, within specific markets and geographical locations. This ensures that rather than being like those spammy, nuisance cold callers who pitch irrelevant offerings, you are pitching offerings that will be relevant and highly valuable to a specific, refined target market. The focus is then on developing a natural, engaging script that flows with the conversation. With the right script, you can have unique interactions on almost every call and drastically improve your telemarketing efficiency. For more on telemarketing scripts, take a look at the first instalment of this article, ‘5 Myths About Telemarketing That Just Aren’t True’.
#3 – ‘Anyone can Develop a Successful Telemarketing Campaign or Team’
While it is true that anyone can develop a telemarketing campaign, without the knowledge and experience of how to create a successful campaign, you will likely see disappointing results.
There are some people out there who believe that setting up a telemarketing campaign in-house is as simple as getting your mobile phone, writing out a basic script, and calling companies you have researched on Google.
The reality is, it’s not that simple.
When developing a telemarketing campaign, there are a wide variety of factors to consider, including:
Cost – do you have the budget for a campaign?
Time – do you have enough time to dedicate to the campaign?
Data – do you have a database already? Is it compliant with Data & Privacy laws?
Staff – do you have experienced telemarketers in-house that will run the campaign?
Quality – do you know what you are looking for in terms of lead quality?
Management – do you have a well-structured CRM system in place to manage your prospect interactions?
Legislation – do you fully understand the relevant Data Protection & Privacy legislation and your obligations?
Often when businesses try to set up a telemarketing campaign in-house, they will struggle to meet all of the necessary requirements, such as those listed above, to create a successful campaign, and even if they do reach these requirements, it can end up costing far more than outsourcing and there is still no guarantee of results.
This is why many so businesses, from SMEs to large international corporations choose to outsource their telemarketing to a professional agency.
Not only does this take the hassle of developing your campaign and hiring telemarketers yourself, but it also puts your campaign into the hands of telemarketing professionals who have experience in various international markets and industries – meaning your campaign won’t only be cheaper and easier than in-house, but it will have a much better yield and quality of results.
#4 – ‘Telemarketing is Just a Numbers Game’
There are a lot of people who think that telemarketing is just a numbers game and try to call as many people as they can, as quickly as they can in the hopes of generating more leads.
Although having a large database of prospects is useful, this doesn’t mean trying to get through all of them as quickly as possible and focusing on the quick wins is going to give you the best results.
Each prospect will have needs and organisational processes which means one may quickly decide that they want to move ahead with a deal, while another may need a bit more convincing and further follow-up calls. If you only go for the quick wins, you will be missing out on countless quality, long-term business opportunities and could mean you are unwittingly limiting your business growth potential.
You should treat every prospect with the same level of care, patience, and persistence and only cut your losses when you are sure that there is no chance of securing an opportunity or the potential prospect has expressed this.
Making the most out of each interaction is essential for achieving great results and telemarketing efficiency.
#5 – ‘Telemarketing is Only Useful for Low-Value Products and Services’
A common misconception is that telemarketing is only effective for low-value offerings, however, telemarketing is capable of helping to bring in multi-million-pound deals, so long as you are taking the correct approach.
With telemarketing, there is no set time for how long a deal will take to secure. The people who claim that telemarketing doesn’t work for high-value offerings have likely given up after a few attempts.
The key to bringing in those bigger deals using telemarketing is persistence. You need to maintain engagement with the prospect organisation, keep gauging where they are at, provide additional information and value where needed to encourage them, and above all don’t be too pushy.
Large organisations often have to go through various channels and push decisions up the chain of the command to get approval, especially of that decision involved seven-plus figures, so patience and persistence are essential for securing high-value deals through your telemarketing strategy.
Does your business need help generating fully-qualified sales leads or appointments?
If you would like to know more about our B2B Lead Generation and Appointment Setting services and how we can help your customer acquisition process back on track, then please get in touch to speak to a member of our team!