Telemarketing
Telemarketing is a form of direct marketing in which a consultant uses the telephone or any other means of communication to contact potential clients and market the products and services. Potential customers are identified and classified by various means such as their purchase history, previous surveys, participation in contests, or job applications.
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Names may also be purchased from another company's database or obtained from the phone book or other public or private list. The classification process serves to find those potential customers who are most likely to buy the products or services that the company in question offers.
Telemarketing techniques are often used by market research companies to seek potential or past customers for a client's business or to gauge the acceptance or rejection of a particular product, brand, or company. Opinion polls are conducted similarly.
Telemarketing techniques can also be applied to other forms of marketing using Internet messages or faxes.
Origins
The telephone was patented as an invention and began to enter human life at the end of the 19th century. But less than a hundred years later, telephone communication experienced a rebirth - it was discovered by manufacturers of consumer goods and services.
According to Time magazine in 1976, this company became the largest provider of telemarketing services for magazine publishers.
The term "telemarketing" was first used by Bell Systems to describe their services in the 1970s.
Types of Telemarketing
Telemarketing can be divided into inbound and outbound.
The goal of inbound telemarketing is to analyze and process available information to maintain and increase sales. An example of inbound telemarketing is a hotline service that provides referral and advisory services to potential and existing customers. With inbound telemarketing, the buyer contacts the seller himself.
The purpose of outbound telemarketing is to increase sales and obtain new information that is used to increase sales through direct contact with potential customers. In outbound telemarketing, the seller is looking for a buyer. In this case, the database of contacts is of particular importance: its relevance, quality, and how targeted contacts are contained there.
Features
The process of outsourcing telemarketing campaigns to other cities in the same country is known as nearshore and the process of outsourcing the service to other countries is known as offshoring or offshore.
In the past, it was customary that telemarketers were sellers who offered products and services without caring about the needs of consumers but only for their economic benefit, today the telemarketer is no longer considered a seller but an advisor depending on the area he is working (commercial, financial, advertising, video, etc).
The work of an advisor is no longer limited only to doing the sales work as in the past, but rather must understand and adjust to the real needs of its clients, advise them and take them by the hand, suggesting the corresponding solutions.
Advantages
Telemarketing Benefits:
- Direct contact with the client
- The ability to clearly define the target audience as a result which you get more interested customers which dramatically increases the effectiveness of marketing activities
- Save time when working with a large number of potential customers
- Rapid expansion of the customer base
- Sales process control
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of telemarketing are related to the lack of motivation of operators involved in surveys as well as their lack of professionalism. Careful selection of potential customers is necessary: you should call only those who are most likely to be interested in your offer.
Refuse Telemarketing
To no longer receive advertising offers by telephone in some countries there is a register of numbers that oppose this:
France: Anti-prospecting list containing the telephone numbers of people who do not wish to be canvassed by telephone. In addition, Bloctel is an opposition list to canvassing.
Canada: National Do Not Call List maintained by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Switzerland: It is possible to request that an asterisk be printed with one's telephone number in the directory, which means that one does not wish to receive telemarketing calls. In case of violation of the asterisk, it is possible to file a complaint on the website of the State Secretariat for the Economy ( SECO ).
Belgium: The Do not call me anymore list is managed d by the Belgian Direct Marketing Association (BDMA). If the calls continue the citizen can contact the economic inspectorate of the FPS Economy.
Telemarketing Jobs
The different selector profiles (TA generic term designating someone who does things by telephone) are as follows:
- the tele-advisor provides remote advice, for example on a product or a course of action to adopt (health policy, etc.),
- the tele-salesperson or sedentary salesperson is a salesperson who sells via contact and/or a telephone relationship.
- the remote surveyor investigates and collects information on the accessibility and maturity of a market.
- the tele-prospector is a particular tele-investigator in the sense that his primary objective is to make the first contact to clear up and prepare - when this proves to be appropriate - the process of starting the commercial activity: the tele- prospector passes the baton to a salesman (classic or tele-salesman) who will use the information collected to conclude an effective sale.
Telemarketing in the world
The number of companies offering telemarketing services in the world is increasing every year. According to various marketing researches, the leading country in the field of telemarketing is the United States of America. According to Teleperformance analysts, this market has been growing by 10% annually over the past few years. Contact centers employ about 4% of the country's able-bodied population.
Telemarketing is a little less popular in European countries since the active growth of this market began there relatively recently. Despite this, in the UK, the telemarketing market is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy.
Information systems for Telemarketing
This market is dominated by foreign companies such as Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nortel.
Along with foreign developers of telemarketing solutions, Russian manufacturers are also actively fighting for the market. Russian developers offer various products to corporate customers: from those distributed under the SaaS business model to entire software and hardware systems. They differ both in the way they are provided and in their functionality.
The main functionality of information systems for telemarketing:
- Ability to make outgoing calls
- Reception of incoming calls, their automatic processing, and distribution by operators
- Visualization on the operator's work computer of information about an incoming or outgoing call
- Ability to automate the dialing
- Statement reflection of operators
- Formation of reports on made and received calls, quality control of the work of operators
- Operator shift scheduling
- Call Recording
Area of uses
The goals of telemarketing can be:
- Sales by phone
- Identification of customer needs
- Informing potential customers
- Collecting and updating customer data
- Conducting surveys,
- Organization of business meetings between company managers and potential clients
- Continuation of work after carrying out other promotional activities as part of direct marketing
- Pre-sales and after-sales service
Arguments in the favor of telemarketing
The option of hiring telemarketing as a viable and profitable means of marketing products or services is always present as an economic alternative for companies and companies that make decisions.
Its advantage is that it has a sales force that contacts the client directly and works to convince them, increasing business profits, as well as being a cheap advertising medium compared to other media such as radio or television.
An advantage for the customer could be that they can purchase these products or services from their home or office without having to go directly to the company that sells them, so in this, case it would be a saving in time and resources (such as transportation).
Another advantage is that when the advisor contacts the client directly, he or she solves all their doubts or explains the special characteristics of the product or service in-depth, something that would be impossible to do within a limited space of a few seconds in a radio commercial. or television.
Arguments against telemarketing
Telemarketing is often criticized, those who are against this practice argue that it is an unethical practice by making many companies unwanted calls and using aggressive sales techniques.
Such practices may be subject to legislative controls related to consumer protection and privacy. In particular, telemarketing in the United States is restricted by the Telephone User Protection Act of 1991. Many professional telemarketing associations have ethical codes and standards that workers must follow.
Some jurisdictions have implemented "Do Not Call" lists either through legislation or industry organizations where consumers can indicate that they do not want to be contacted by telemarketers. Some legislation includes harsh penalties for companies that call individuals included in such lists.
There are several methods for people to avoid telemarketing calls. Using ID and Caller ID, a person can identify the caller before going off-hook and making the decision not to answer the phone. Answering machines can also be used to screen calls since telemarketing companies do not usually leave messages.
