What is Telemarketing?
Telemarketing is a direct method of advertising where a sales representative contacts potential customers using technology to market a good or service. Further, salespeople might reach out to consumers over the phone, through email or via other methods over the internet.
However, it is a widely used method of contacting people to promote products or services, raise money for charity, gather information, generate leads, and carry out surveys.
What Does Telemarketing Do?
Telemarketers work for call center companies to perform direct marketing on behalf of a range of clients. Moreover, they often memorize conversation scripts to help build a rapport with sales leads, educate them about what they are offering and guide customers through the purchasing process. Telemarketers gather information from customers about their location and demographic to improve their lead generation strategies in the future.
The main responsibilities of a telemarketer include:
- Outbound Calling
Telemarketers reach out to prospective or existing customers via telemarketing phone calls. Further, this process is more commonly known as cold calling.
- Inbound Calling
Inbound calls are those calls based on inquiries regarding your business’ products or services. Typically, they are prompted by sales efforts or advertising.
They are considered as ‘warm’ calls as they’re generally received from people who’re already familiar with your business.
- Lead Generation
Here, telemarketers collect data regarding the profiles, demographics and interests of potential customers. This data can then be analyze and new lead generated accordingly.
- Sales
Perhaps one of the biggest responsibilities of telemarketers is actively selling. This is where telemarketers are trained and actively aim to close sales deals over the phone.
How to Start a Telemarketing Company?
Here is a complete guide to starting a telemarketing business with NO money and no experience. One of the surest ways of becoming financially stable and rich is to start your own business. No doubt it can be pretty tough to start a business from the scratch and see the business grow into a conglomerate, but you just have to do it if you want the reward, it brings.
There are some important steps to start telemarketing company:
- Understand the Industry
- Conduct Market Research and Feasibility Studies
- Decide Which Niche to Concentrate On
- Decide Whether to Buy a Franchise or Start from Scratch
- Know Your Major Competitors in the Industry
- Choose the Most Suitable Legal Entity (LLC, C Corp, S Corp)
- Know the Possible Threats and Challenges You Will Face
- Choose a Catchy Business Name
- Discuss with an Agent to Know the Best Insurance Policies for You
- Get the Necessary Professional Certification
- Raise the Needed Startup Capital
- Get the Necessary Legal Documents then you Need to Operate
- Choose a Suitable then start your Business
- Hire Employees for your Technical and Manpower Needs
- Develop Strategies to Boost Brand Awareness then create a Corporate Identity
Advantages and Disadvantages of Telemarketing?
There are some advantage and disadvantage of telemarketing:
Advantages:
- More personal communication: Compared with email marketing, telemarketing is a more personal approach that can facilitate the connection between the seller and the prospect.
- Get in touch with a large number of customers in a short time: Quickly understand who is interested in the brand and who isn’t.
- Low cost: Communicate with customers anywhere in the world easily and cheaply.
- Help clean databases: Check if the user still has the same telephone number and if he/she is interested in your products and services.
- Offer a large amount of information about the product or service: Adapt your product or service exactly to the potential customer’s needs.
Disadvantage:
- It is intrusive: You are interrupting the potential customer to offer him/her information not requested. This can be perceive as intrusive and negatively affect the company’s reputation.
- Restrictions and exclusion lists (telephone numbers that cannot be use for telemarketing)
- Investment to train agents: Ensure that the customer service reps are following the company’s script and best practices.
- Conversion rate is low: It is difficult to find the right person and the right time to offer your services, especially if you do not have a good database.
Telemarketing Skills?
There are essential skills that help telemarketing professionals succeed in their careers:
Product knowledge: Telemarketers use their extensive product knowledge to explain the benefits of a product and answer consumer questions.
Motivation: As a telemarketer, you may call several prospects before securing a sale. Motivation can help you remain positive and work toward your sales goals.
Empathy: A telemarketer relies on empathy to identify a prospect’s unique needs and listen to their concerns.
Persuasion: Telemarketers often contact prospects unfamiliar with the products they’re trying to sell and use their persuasion skills to maximize conversions.
Job in Telemarketing?
Telemarketing jobs usually involve an executive based in a telemarketing call center and handle sales totally over a telephonic conversation. Further, this job involves promoting a wide range of products or services by direct selling.
Job Description:
- Should be quite customer friendly and should be able to persuade the users.
- Must understand what the customer requires and accordingly act on implementing and provide a relevant solution to them in a short span of time.
- The main objective of a telemarketer is to promote the growth of the business by expanding the company’s customer network.
Responsibilities
- Contact individuals and businesses by telephone to promote products and services and should also request orders for good and products over a telephone.
- Adjust a well-tailored sales pitch and deliver it efficiently to the customers also keeping in mind that they fulfill each and every requirement of a customer.
- Candidate must be good in explaining the features of the goods or products/services which he/she is trying to sell.
- Should be very persuasive in order to convince the customers to buy the product by illustrating it in such a way that it meets their needs.
- Keep a record of each and every personal detail of the customer in their system and should also maintain all the conversations made over a telephone for future references.
- They need to handle all the issues by the customer and be vigilant enough to provide a solution to them.
- Schedule appointments so that the sales team gets in touch with the probable customers.
- Most importantly, a telemarketer needs to follow up with the customer on what they had discussed in the last phone call.