Hello, This is XX calling from XX (company), may I have a moment of your time please….?

Statistics shows that Telemarketing responses fetches 4 times more than mail-generated leads. And you would think that the cost could be exorbitant, since large corporations have spent millions of dollars prepping up their telemarketing centers. Well, it’s Yes and No. If you are running a large corporation and looking to expand sales exponentially at a faster pace, yes.

But if you run a small business, you too can have a piece of the telemarketing pie. There are approaches which from my past experience have proven workable and more importantly profitable to say the least.

The one of the critical issues is to examine suitability of your business for the telemarketing channel of distribution. There are industries which telemarketing has become the norm in generating escalating revenues & profits but there are those which do not leverage upon telemarketing, not due to budget constraints but that there are more appropriate distribution channels. Take for instance, the very familiar credit card call industry. You will see rows and rows of telemarketers calling round the clock to solicit card applications. Conversely, if you are in the fruits wholesale distribution business, it is highly unlikely that you would resort to telemarketing as a distribution channel.

You will also need to analyze the function of telemarketing as marketing tool in your business. You can activate telemarketing activities for expanding revenue, as a sales support tool as well as build rapport. Call supporting activities for the credit card businesses, the cell phone businesses for instance, would center around after-sales services. Calling clients on service evaluation after sales would be building rapport and generate feedback for product and service enhancements. These are very diverging objectives which separately achieve different purposes altogether. The pitch and script would be highly diverging as well.

The “recency” of your call list is critical as well. Lists from events and campaigns must be called within the month to ensure higher recall rate. The sooner you call your prospects, the higher the recall rate and the better the chances of closing the sale. The catch is of course the National Do Not Call List. So ensure that the potential clients you call are on this list.

Finally, your success largely depends on The Reward, essentially the effectiveness of your incentive scheme.

I shall share below an example of my past execution of telemarketing as a sales generating tool. In this instance, our discussion is centered on the small business, with tight operations and marketing budgets.

For effective telemarketing, you could consider training one or two existing staff to spend 30% to 50% of their time conducting telemarketing out of a potential client listing generated from your many events and campaigns as well as existing client lists. And Viola!! Leveraging on existing manpower resources, you have created a new channel of distribution!

Handpick staff who have tact and are able to take rejection, and practice, they will start converting the leads to sales, and start earning! Remember, Telemarketing is a prolong activity channel which yields results over time. Persistence and positivism is essence.

In terms of rewards, on top of their usual salary, you should incentivize your telemarketers with a generous percentage of telesales revenue generated by them. This is especially viable for business costs which run on incremental variable revenue model. For instance, if your business is leveraged upon total fixed cost, and any revenue above your fixed cost is variable revenue or profits. Hence, any amount generated by your telemarketers is essentially variable revenue on top and above your normal fixed costs and fixed revenue.

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