Telemarketing is NOT Waste of Time

There is a lot of buzz in the market about the effectiveness and viability of telemarketing lead generation methods and techniques such as outbound telemarketing, cold calling, business networking and door to door. There are many so called ” experts” stating that ” telemarketing is a waste of time” and ” outbound sales is dead” and ” sales profession will instinct by the  2020″.

All these messages are very confusing for business owners, marketers and sales professionals. Living in the age of instant gratification and high expectations, minimizing expenses,  and shrinking marketing budgets, we are often not willing to accept that business and relationship development takes time and a lot of effort.

Numbers Game is Still On

The old mentality that sales are ” numbers game” is still alive and active. I recently had a client who stated that his product is such in demand that prospects are waiting for him to call. I was skeptical first, but when we launched the campaign and got 6 appointments in a first week of the project, I realized that he is right! His product is in high demand! But I was amazed then the same guy wanted to close the project after the first month, because ” the results are not enough”. He simply didn’t want to continue unless marketing is 200 % ROI and profitability.

These situations are not uncommon.

It is rare that our clients’ products, or services are in such a demand when “people are waiting for them to call”. The reason that we have high standards of lives and access to quality of products and services is that the supply exceeds demand. We have to work hard to win over competition and prove their value to our prospects and customers.

Telemarketing Alone Is Not Enough

To prospect effectively, we need to engage multiple marketing channels in order to build qualified telemarketing lead generation lists, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, business networking and online advertising.

In order to achieve high ROI on telemarketing lead generation efforts, we need to apply well though and well executed strategies. We need to train our telemarketers so they communicate with friendly and informal human style and language, rather than pitching scripts. It is not how many calls and conversation they make, it is about the quality of these conversations and the value of information which is communicated.

I totally agree that it is time to return ” human” to business telephone communication, ” social” to social media and ” public” to Public Relationships.

So, to answer a question if cold calling, telemarketing and sales’ dead, I will say No. It is not dead, it will never be dead, as will never be dead human interaction and human factor in business. It is total nonsense! Telemarketing is one of the most effective ways to connect with a prospect BUT it needs to be an authentic reason to connect to make this effort successful.