What is Telemarketing?
Telemarketing is defined as an interactive medium for promotion and sales using the telephone.
As a response vehicle, telemarketing includes receiving orders for products or services, inquiries, donation pledges, customer inquiries, requests for additional information and complaints. In most instances, incoming callers are provided with an incoming WATS number, but may also call collect. Outbound telemarketing is used for following-up on inquiries, to sell products or services, to upgrade or clarify a previous order or to gather data about consumers to add to a research database for later analysis.
What’s the difference between inbound and outbound telemarketing?
Basically, inbound telemarketing is used for people to call-in to businesses to place orders and request additional information. Outbound telemarketing is used for business representatives to call homes and businesses for the primary purpose of selling a company’s products or services. Outbound telemarketing is utilized by businesses whose sales personnel traditionally made many outside sales calls. As a selling method, it reduces the cost-per-contact, allows many more contacts to be made per day any still keeps the important human element intact. The method has the ability to utilize computerized databases containing prospects and can use automated predictive dialers to further extend the reach of each telemarketer. Outbound calls can also be used for canvassing for new business, reselling former customers and developing entirely new leads. On the inbound side, this is a highly efficient marketing approach that also retains the aspect of personal interaction between salesperson and prospect. Incoming calls come from catalog mailings and from radio, TV and print advertising.
Telemarketing has a somewhat negative image to many people
Regrettably, telemarketing methods have also been employed by a significant number of illegal and unscrupulous businesses and also by those who initiate a large number of untimely and annoying calls. This has been responsible for a negative image in the mind of many consumers. Nevertheless, telemarketing has continually grown as a sales and market research technique and statistics indicate that as many as 5-million people were hired between 1995 and 2000.
Other applications of telemarketing
Telemarketing has been utilized for many things beside the sale of products and services. It is a favorite tool for soliciting charitable donations, performing market research and polling, for disseminating political information from candidates running for public office and for alumni associations who search for former students and communicate with their memberships.
Telemarketers are finding new jobs from outsource buyers
As with so many other fields, telemarketing personnel are finding that many new opportunities for employment can be located on the Internet. Today, many worldwide companies have begun to realize that they can gain the advantages of telemarketing expertise by outsourcing their needs through Internet websites that accept projects for posting and permit providers to bid on them. By doing this, the companies need not add extra operational overhead through increases in their permanent staff and more expenses for benefits, office space and equipment. All they need do is underwrite the cost of an 800 number to a non-resident independent contractor or telemarketing team that makes the best bid on their ongoing projects.
