Outsourced Telemarketing Services – What They Do For You and How to Hire a Quality Service

Telemarketing calls are very often viewed with annoyance and treated as spam calls to say the least. With estimated US revenue of $15 Billion per year, the industry plays a key role in garnering customers for various companies by generating new buyers or persuading existing customers to make subsequent purchases. Hence, telemarketing calls provide immense opportunity for businesses to effectively market their product and push up sales and revenues.

mediaimage
Defining telemarketing

Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing wherein salespersons use phone calls to establish relationship with prospective customers,Outsourced Telemarketing Services – What They Do For You and How to Hire a Quality Service Articles informing them about new products and services and persuading them to make purchases. With the help of customer service agents and automated phone call systems in place, telemarketing companies indulge in making an optimum number of calls to customers aiming at closing a sales deal or fixing an appointment to take the discussion forward. While hiring telemarketing services it is important for businesses to be clear about the kind of image they want to propagate among the customers.

Customer acquisition and lead generation

Call center representatives are primarily responsible for generating leads and acquiring customers for businesses while relieving your company sales agents from these activities to concentrate on tasks that are more important. Because of advancement in technologies telemarketing calls can now be made either from offices or even from homes by agents who are efficiently trained by call centers. Outsourcing these processes proves to be very cost-efficient for companies, as they do not have to worry about recruiting and maintaining an entire army of agents to take care of their telemarketing needs. Telemarketing companies manage the entire operation under their own aegis with their own batch of trained professionals. The services that they offer include surveys and research, data collection, appointment setting, hiring and recruitment, cross-selling or follow-up mails and so on.

Acquiring the right telemarketing services

Setting up an in-house telemarketing facility can turn out to be an overwhelmingly costly affair for a business but hiring the wrong telemarketing company or services can end in an equally miserable failure. Telemarketing companies offer varying levels of services and it is indispensable for companies to clearly chalk out and put across their telemarketing needs before hiring the services.

Businesses should ensure, in the first place, that the telemarketing company being hired has a very good understanding of the industry they would be dealing with as every industry demands a specific set of targeting tactics. Secondly, the success rate of the telemarketing agency in various areas should be properly assessed. Again, pay proper attention to the way a given telemarketer manages to comply with regional and international rules and regulations, such as, keeping the Do Not Call lists at bay. It is mandatory for companies to avoid such dangerous waters.

Telemarketing companies should also have a very good record of customer services with low call abandonment rates. A proper study of the performance statistics of call centers can help assess the effectiveness of their campaigns and drives.

Making telemarketing calls is not for the faint hearted. Receiving cold responses from potential clients can be intimidating for representatives. The fear gets so ingrained that some agents may try to while away precious time going through the customer lists rather than making actual calls to clients. Reputed telemarketing companies with experienced representatives see to it that their callers are beyond any such calls jitters, making result-oriented calls to important clients and generating leads in the most effective manner.

Hence, a number of things have to be kept in mind while zeroing in on a telemarketing company and choosing the services. A right choice can give a real boost to business by expanding clientele and generating appropriate leads. Before you hire a vendor, compare multiple telemarketing firmsquotes at a Business Network. For further information, please read our telemarketing call centers advice.

Telemarketing – Top Reasons to Outsource Telesales to an Outbound Call Center Service Provider

The primary benefits that come with outsourcing are the expenditure spared in recruiting and maintaining an entire telemarketing staff and the costs saved in procuring the equipment. The payroll costs are in part passed on as charges for the telemarketing services but the added benefits depend on how expensive the locally available labor is. If very low-cost labor is locally available to a company,Telemarketing – Top Reasons to Outsource Telesales to an Outbound Call Center Service Provider Articles outsourcing may not help save much on this count. As regards the equipment, the seasonal telemarketers are more likely to find outsourcing more efficient rather than the ones who need telemarketing services throughout the year.

However, once the initial costs are taken care of, outsourcing does contribute to saving costs for the company in the long run. Here are a few important reasons why you should go in for outsourcing:

Hiring of personnel

Labor costs are only a small part of the entire expenses that come along with hiring staff for the telemarketing services. The hiring and recruitment of the personnel can prove to be an expensive and cumbersome affair for the management. The money spent on the recruitment agencies and the time spent by management in interviewing the candidates is hardly worth the effort.

At times, the company may be forced to manage with a leaner staff than is actually required and compromise on the opportunity costs in not being able to make enough telemarketing calls due to shortage of staff. Outsourcing the services will not only ensure a well-staffed team to make the required number of telemarketing calls but also help tackle all the problems related to the recruitment of the personnel.

Professional training

Providing appropriate training to the personnel is perhaps, more important than hiring them because it is the kind of training that will determine the quality and success rate of telemarketing calls. Here again, businesses cannot afford to cut costs by compromising with a less professionally trained staff. The company and its products have to be represented by well-trained professionals.

But it is not at all an easy job to design and implement a high-level training program for telemarketing staff with up-to-date techniques by a company whose primary focus lies elsewhere. Professional telemarketing companies, on the other hand, can distribute their cost of training between various clients it offers services. As they specialize in telemarketing services, they can afford to spend time and money on providing intensive professional training to the telemarketing callers.

Compliance to telemarketing rules

With rapidly tightening rules and regulations, telemarketing calls have to comply with the updated restrictions put on these calls by various regional and federal governments. As the rules of various states keep changing from time to time, it gets very confusing for organizations to keep track of them.

In such a situation, it becomes tough for businesses to deal with these legal issues. For specialized telemarketing companies, however, it is a crucial part of their job to ascertain adherence to these rules.

Space for operation

The establishment of an in-house telemarketing facility would mean that the telemarketing staff and equipment would use up good part of the office space while in case of a telemarketing company the cost of space can again be spread among the various clients. A business might be compelled to go in for unnecessary space expansion to accommodate the telemarketing paraphernalia. Outsourcing can help avoid such extra expenditure.

Thus, outsourcing telemarketing services can save costs on a number of fronts and result in net savings for businesses after the initial costs are incurred in buying the services.

Before you hire a vendor, compare multiple outbound telemarketing services quotes at a Business Network. For further information, please read our telemarketer advice.