Telemarketing Blog

Paraphrasing – Your Key To Engaging Dialog and Sales Success This is a supplementary post to this one on Active Listening. According to Wikipedia, paraphrasing is a “restatement of a text or passages, using other words.” To restate: keep the meaning intact but say it how you would say it. Incorporating this skill in to your repertoire requires constant practice. But the effort will pay dividends in spades. People you…

Managers of business-to-business telemarketing services are finding it harder than ever to realize positive ROIs. While those with business-to-consumer offerings have had recourse to outsourcing to far-shore providers for cost savings, B2B marketers have had mixed results- at best- with that strategy. For most companies with complex B2B offerings, it is not even a viable option. Unless you have a very high allowable cost per lead acquisition, the days of…

A new study found that using your voice all day while working in a stressful  telemarketing job (read boiler room) will lead to more frequent sick days (due to voice ailments). Chalk another one up to the “well, duh” category. The recommended solutions: Use warm-up vocal exercises Limit background noise Encourage staff to drink plenty of water

Today, MarketingSherpa published the results of the following business-to-business survey: What are the greatest challenges that B2B marketers are facing? From generating high-quality leads and a high volume of leads to generating public relations buzz, see which challenges topped the list. Here are the results:

A poll on LinkedIn asking just that question got 500+ responses. Here are the results (note, the amounts are in British Pounds): While revelatory in itself, segmentation always yields additional insight. Here we see the cost per business-to-business telemarketing lead broken down by company size:

A common issue of contention arises when a marketing campaign uses multiple marketing channels: who gets credit for the conversion? This question becomes significantly more urgent when commissioned telemarketing agents are involved in the campaign. For instance, say a client were to promote a training seminar by mail, advertising, fliers, as well as commissioned telemarketers.

I am struck by the many parallels between Internet marketing and telemarketing. For one, they both generate a lot of historical data allowing for “forensic” investigation. Here are some web site statistics and their equivalents in telemarketing:

Let’s face it; telemarketing has a bad name. Every time it makes inroads to respectability in the business-to-business world, another headline hits the wires about some shyster bilking consumers for millions of dollars with a business-to-consumer telemarketing scam. Whenever I explain to someone what I do, I always make sure to highlight the business-to-business aspect- differentiating myself from “those guys that call you at dinner time.” It’s as if I’m…

While I wonder whether the efficacy of email opt-in lists is being diluted by ever increasing ease of access, not just for third-party mediated broadcasts but actual purchase, the truth remains that you had better get while the getting is good. But, as it often happens, the suddenly fortunate usually overestimate the value of their gains over maintaining harmony within their tribe. They consider responses to blind broadcasts as “hot”…