[S570]Small Business Administration Business Plan

Recommend telemarketing to many business owners and you are likely to see concern, doubt and confusion. Many owners confuse telemarketing with telesales. The latter is tainted by the cold-calling, pressure tactics used by some companies to sell everything from timeshare holidays to kitchens and valentine gifts.

The only similarity between telemarketing and telesales is that they both use the telephone as the communication medium.

Here's 6 powerful ways you can use telemarketing in your profit generation mix.

1. Appointment making - the prime role of marketing is to promote opportunities for your sales people. The best opportunities come from face to face meetings. Telemarketing is proven to deliver high quality appointments with specifically targeted decision makers.

In preparing your appointments a prime telemarketer will have had a number of contacts with your prospects? decision makers. They will have built up a rapport and set expectations so that your appointments are prepared for maximum outcome before you get to meet the client.

2. Lead generation - telemarketing for lead generation require less effort from the telemarketer than appointment finding. The objective is usually to contact a prospect, create interest in your services and capture contact details for you to pursue. You may follow up the contacts yourself or you may choose to commission a telemarketer to set appointments with the best prospects.

3. Database building and cleansing - many companies have built large prospect databases. Current data protection legislation means that you must keep this data up to date or delete it. Telemarketing is a quick, cost-effective way to keep your database up to date. The odds are you will gain a few leads and appointments along the way.

4. Follow up - following up on every lead is vital. In the normal course of business every one of your staff makes contacts and maybe receive enquiries about your company. Every such contact provides an opportunity for a sale. Following up every contact has been shown to improve sales in every company that diligently applies itself. Telemarketing is a cost-effective route to effective follow-up.

5. Customer Education - it's 6 to 12 times more profitable to market to existing customers than it is to win a new customer. Telemarketing to people who already buy and like your products is an excellent way to inform them of all your offerings.

6. Customer reactivation - do you know why old customers have stopped buying from you? You should. Often it is simply because they have not had any contact with you for some extended period. Sometimes it is because they didn't know that you supplied the particular service they needed. So they look elsewhere.

And eventually stop buying from you altogether.

Telemarketing is a great method to make contact with customers as soon as they stop being customers. Sometimes that is all that is needed to bring them back. At the very least you owe it to yourself to know why your customersare leaving. It is the start of ensuring they don't leave at all.

There you go. Six ways you can use telemarketing to boost your marketing. And don't let anyone persuade you it will cost you a fortune. Telemarketing is the ultimate modern cottage industry. All you need is a telephone and some confidence. You can instantly set up as a telemarketer. And if you are any good you can quickly use telemarketing to sell your own services.

Not surprisingly then, there are thousands of small telemarketing businesses - many of them absolutely excellent. There are, of course, others that are not so good. With that much competition you can get some outstanding telemarketing services for a very reasonable price.

Your challenge is to find the telemarketers that are right for you.

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