Reasons Why Telemarketing is Still an Effective Sales Tool for Many Businesses Today |
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By: Jeffrey Meier Posted: 2006-08-27 22:44:15 |
| The use of telephone to carry out marketing campaigns is called telemarketing. Marketing has come a long way, from selling stuff door to door to using internet and telephones. Telemarketing is a huge success today where goods and services are marketed directly to the prospective customers. It is also the use of telephones to receive the orders and any inquiries relating to the advertisement and promotions carried.There are two types of telemarketing-Outbound and Inbound telemarketing. In outbound telemarketing the marketer calls up all the prospective or existing customers to campaign for the new products and services, generate and qualify leads, prompt them to visit stores and showrooms and set appointments and also provide information to existing buyers on hot and exciting deals. So the efforts here are proactive whereas in inbound marketing the efforts are reactive where the respective agent takes orders for the products and also processes inquiries and request made by the customers. Here you publish, display and mention your phone numbers in catalogs, direct mail, emails, faxes, print ads, on websites and radios and televisions to boost revenues.Categories of Telemarketing:Telemarketing can be classified into two main categories:1. Business-to-business2. Business-to-consumerBusiness-to-business telemarketing: This type of marketing depends on outbound telemarketing to get as many customers as they can, qualify prospects and pass hot leads to sales representatives and deal closers. It also relies on inbound telemarketing to make follow up by the selling agents, close sales and to process orders.Business-to-consumer telemarketing: The consumers depend on the outbound as well as the inbound telemarketing to purchase stuff and products launched. Inbound telemarketing helps them to know about the products and can clear up any queries they have about the products they want to purchase. Outbound marketing helps reach all the existing and prospective consumers to market about the products.There are two broad divisions within these two categories-Lead Generation and Sales. In Lead generation the main aim is to get information and in sales the aim is to sell something to someone. The supply of the products totally depends on the demands which are created by advertising for the products, publicity and the efforts of the sales group.Telemarketing can be carried from the company’s office or even from your own house if you want to sell your own product. Telemarketing usually involves a two call process to make it effective-Calls that are made to determine the needs of the prospective or existing customers and the calls that are made to motivate them to buy the products.Negative aspects:However despite of all the advantages, telemarketing also has been associated with number of scams like overpricing products or services fraudulently and also multilevel marketing. The identification and past buying history of prospective buyers are obtained by various means even from another company’s database or telephone directory. This is to find out those prospective buyers most likely to buy the products and persuade them to send money to the scheme. This way they make unsolicited calls using high-pressure sales techniques which can sometimes be very annoying, so telemarketing has got the bad name of unethical business practice.Now, consumers can indicate if they not want such calls being made by implementing "Do Not Call" listings. In case you get calls from any companies despite of that the company would have to pay heavy penalties. |
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