Is a telemarketing service the right way for you to promote your business? I am as guilty as anyone of complaining endlessly about telemarketing services calling at the worst times. After all, telemarketing is probably the most controversial advertising technique ever. However, sometimes a good telemarketing service, believe it or not, can help your business. We know that telemarketing can be effective, but there are now many legal concerns about using it. With that in mind, there are some things you should do to ensure that a telemarketing service will be the right way for you to promote your business.
Any telemarketing service will know that there are many new laws in place. These laws regulate the use of phone calls as a means of marketing based on the time frames. One of the big complaints with regard to telemarketing is that they either call too late, too early, or during family time. The other concern is that your telemarketing service calls only individuals who have not said they don’t want to receive the phone calls. Make sure the company you decide to use is of high standards and pays close attention to detail.
There is good reason to select carefully when going with a telemarketing service. For one thing, you want to keep your company from a bad reputation. If customers are bothered by your phone calls, then the image hit is a hard one. It can terribly tarnish the name of the company you have worked so hard to build. However, there are good, smart, and effective telemarketing services that will allow you to promote your business effectively without killing your image.
What it comes down to, then, aside from finding the right telemarketing service whether or not you want to go that route. Some people are just fundamentally opposed to telemarketing in any form and thus would not use it no matter how effective it may be. That decision is one you will have to make for your business based on your personal feelings about such a controversial means of marketing a business. In addition, you should factor in the cost of using a telemarketing service versus how much money it can help you make as well as how efficiently the company works. The overall use of telemarketing can be effective, but you need to decide if it will be in your situation and under your feelings.
For many businesses, big and small, telemarketing services can be a necessity. They can be used with a lot of success as well. If you do think you might use a telemarketing service to advertise your company or your service, make sure you use a company that will screen employees as well has hire and train them effectively. If you keep those simple things in mind, a telemarketing service just might be the way for you to promote your business.
If would like to find more of my personal articles on telemarketing services, please feel free to visit my website on telemarketing!
Does this look familiar?
Your prospect contacts you and asks for information about Wonder
Widget. You email the information along with complete order
details. Response? Not a word.
Next day, undaunted, you hit the resend key so that your
prospect receives the information again. Response? Still nothing.
Next day, ditto. Response? Zip.
What’s going on here?
Welcome, folks, to the way marketing works in the early days of
the much storied New Millennium. People are underfunded and over
saturated with marketing; they’re slow to respond even to things
they like and have asked for more information about.
Thus, you’ve got to be more determined, more tenacious, and
focused on your objective — MAKING THE SALE JUST AS SOON AS
POSSIBLE.
The Worldprofit Sales Manager is an absolutely vital tool for
helping you achieve the objective.
The Sales Manager enables you to send out in any given 90 day
period up to 25 personalized messages automatically.
Thus, the minute a prospect says, “Says me information on Wonder
Widget,” in addition to a personal note with the necessary
details and order form (or directions to your website), you can
also subscribe the prospect to your Sales Manager, where he’ll
receive, day after day, just as many messages as you’ve added to
the system.
Okay, now say that you’ve sent your non-responding prospect one,
two or three personal messages of the kind which opened this
article and that you’ve had no response whatsoever. What then?
For these all-too-frequent cases, create one zinger of a message
that goes like this:
I’m puzzled.
You asked me for information about Wonder Widget. I’ve been
sending you this information over and over again and have tried
repeatedly to connect with you. But I haven’t heard a word back
from you. Maybe you’re out of town! Maybe funds are low right
now!
WHY DON’T YOU LET ME KNOW!
Here’s my phone number. (Add phone number here)
Here’s my email address. (Add email address here.)
Here’s my website address. (Add URL here.)
PLEASE CONTACT ME AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO DO!
Also, please take a minute and complete this short questionnaire
and let me know what else you are interested in. Just fill it
out, cut and paste and mailto:(your email address here.) I’m
standing by right now to hear from you and to help you!
Name
Company Name
Street Address
City
State/Province
ZIP/Postal Code
Day Telephone ( )
Evening Telephone ( )
What you are interested in (please check all that apply)
(Add list here, subjects like
“I want my own home-based business.”)
Budget you are working with:
/ / Under $250 / / Under $500 / / Under $1000 / / Under $2000
When you want to get started
/ / Now / / Next 30 Days / / Next 60 Days
Any helpful information you can provide which will enable me to
help you:
******
Once you’ve completed your questionnaire (and, remember, the
objective of the questionnaire is to get you the information you
need to build a relationship with this prospect and make the
fastest possible sale), enter this message into your Sales
Manager. Send it every 3 days for 75 days.
By continually hitting your prospect this way you increase the
likelihood that you WILL get a response. If the prospect wants
to stop the messages that’s easy to do. Equally, once she’s
ready to respond, all she has to do is either follow your
instructions on how you can be contacted OR just HIT REPLY to
snag your attention.
In an age when people have way too little time and money to take
advantage of all the offers that assail them daily, you’ve got
to be smarter, more determined, and more tenacious than
everybody else.
Cutting prices can lose business “If you can do it for $12, you
can have the business.” With his next three words, Bill lost
thousands of dollars of business. He said, “I’ll take it!”
Too many sales people focus on price and forget about value.
Price is simply what you charge. Value is the sum total of all
of the positive effects that the product or service has on the
buyer’s business. In most cases, your offering has many benefits
for the customer. Each of those has a corresponding value that
adds to the equation. Business customers buy because they
believe that they will get value that is significantly larger
than the cost. In fact, most buyers are unaware of many of the
benefits of their purchases and therefore underestimate the
value they receive.
Every price is too high without an appreciation of value.
If that is true, so is this:
Every price the customer offers, before they understand the
value, is too low!
Could that be why you lose proposals that simply respond to
RFP’s? Maybe the customer can’t find your value in that
sterilized document?
Could that be why you lose when you respond to the caller who
says, “I just need a price?” Maybe they think you are just like
everyone else. After all, you did not bother to tell them any
differently.
Hey, we all reject stuff we don’t understand.
How many times have you seen someone handing out free stuff on
the street or in the mall and simply passed them buy. It’s FREE
and you won’t take it! You don’t see the value.
To increase our chances of making the sale, we must do three
things to ensure that we have maximized value in the customer’s
mind:
1. Understand their business
You must understand your customer’s business well enough to
explain to them how your offering will improve their bottom
line. This means asking more questions and doing more research
before making your proposal. The good news is that once you
understand one company in a given industry, most of the others
will have similar circumstances.
Example:
A distributor of Swiss watches was trying to get a container
load to their US jewelers in time for the critical pre-Christmas
buying season. She was shopping for shippers and two responded.
One offered a price that was $9,000 and assured the shipper that
they could get them there on time. They had years of experience
and many testimonials that showed that they had done it before.
The second shipper cut the price in half and guaranteed that if
the shipment was late, they would rebate 100% of the fee.
Which shipper won the business?
The first one.
They knew that a container of Swiss watches holds 5,000 watches
with a retail price of $3,000 each or 15 million dollars. If the
container arrive late, the watches will have to be sold at an
after Christmas discount. That’s a loss of $1.5 million! Clearly
the distributor would care more about the reliability of company
A than the potential $4,500 rebate from company B.
2. Maximize your value
If is often true that different people in the buying
organization will see different value in your offering. In the
example above, the person on the loading dock might like the
lower price. But the product manager, the CEO and others will
appreciate the value of reliable service.
Identify all those departments in the buying company who might
see value in your offering. Make sure they know what you are
proposing and get them to be internal advocates for your
solution. When you get a large enough cheering section, it’s
like having a “home team” advantage.
3. Include your value in your proposal and quote.
Too often, we make our value propositions in a face to face
discussion with the buyer. Then, when we believe the sale has
been made, we formalize the number in a quotation or proposal.
In many cases, one or more people may review this before it is
signed off. Even the best sales people get blindsided by a
last-minute influencer that was not disclosed earlier. When that
person sees the numbers with no sense of the value, they may
reject the proposal as over priced. Head this off by adding to
the proposal, a summary of the value that you and the buyer
agreed on.
This is the subject of chapter 12 of my new book, The Team
Selling Solution: Creating and Managing Teams that Win the
Complex Sales. Click on the link to learn more about it and to
hear a sample of the book on CD.
So what about Bill and that $12 deal?
The customer had called Bill because he wanted a supplier who
was open longer hours than his current supplier. Bill’s company
is open 24-7-365. He told Bill why he wanted to switch and that
he was currently paying $13 and bought thousands each year.
That’s when he offered Bill the business at $12.
Bill’s mistake?
He failed to see that the customer was currently paying $13 for
less service and wanted more. The customer saw value in Bill’s
hours of operation. If Bill had asked why the extended hours
were so important, he would have learned that the customer was
paying overtime to work with the other company’s shorter hours.
This move would save them many times the cost of the service.
Bill could easily have justified an increase to $15 and still
won the contract! His failure to see his value cost his company
thousands of dollars and cost him some nice commissions.
Remember: Think Value and Win More Sales
For a free copy of “20 Questions That Uncover Your Value”,
please email article18@waterhousegroup.com and ask for article
#18.
Stephen Waterhouse is Principal and Founder of Waterhouse Group
(www.waterhousegroup.com). They specialize in helping companies
increase their sales and profits. He can be reached at
1-800-57-LEARN or steve@waterhousegroup.com.
Re-Print Permission This article may be reprinted in it’s
entirety if the following conditions are met:
The complete tag with the author’s name and contact information
is included immediately after the article. A copy of the printed
article is mailed to the author at 1467 Walnut Creek Drive,
Orange Park, FL 32003 within 30 days of publication. The article
is presented in a positive light as part of an appropriate
business related publication.