Businesses outsource their telemarketing needs to a professional company because the establishment and maintenance of an in-house telemarketing facility is in itself a challenge. The installation of the required telemarketing equipment and training of an effective telemarketing staff demands the expenditure of a considerable amount of resources. It might not be impossible for companies to make the entire arrangement themselves but it is indispensable for them to have a certain level of maturity and preparedness to face the challenge of training an entirely new team.
While chalking out the blueprint and implementing the process, businesses should consider the following factors to ensure a successful telemarketing operation within the company:
1. Proficiency in conversation: The telemarketing callers being hired and trained should attain a high level of proficiency in the way they conduct telephone calls with clients. They should speak with clarity and correctness in language and should be well aware of the comments appropriate for business calls. Proper care should be taken to inculcate refinement in their speech that befits any business call. Such professionalism in speech and mannerism are the starting point of successful telemarketing call.
2. Compliance to rules and regulations: The noose of telemarketing rules and regulations are always being tightened by regional and national governments. It is important that you comply with the rules all the time. To ensure this, the management of the company has to keep abreast with the changing rules and communicate them in a timely manner to all the in-house telemarketing staff. This may pose a challenge to any in-house telemarketing facility.
3. Familiarity with product: Any telemarketing caller should have good knowledge about the product or service he is trying to sell over the phone. In-house callers have a definite advantage here as they are already well acquainted with the product or service in question. But it is also important that they are kept abreast with any new development happening or product being launched so that they are able to speak to the clients as true representatives of the company.
4. Scripted conversation: Telemarketing callers are provided with a guideline they have to adhere to in form of a scripted conversation with a customer. The script is carefully designed and framed to evoke a positive response from a client. The mark of a good caller is that she roughly keeps track of the script but sounds natural at the same time. In-house callers need to be trained well to follow the guideline as far as possible.
5. Incremental approach: The success of a call depends largely on the way a client is engaged in conversation. From arousing the customer’s interest in the product to extracting information and persuading the client to make the purchase, the conversation should be carried out in a progressive manner. Abrupt attempt at trying to close a deal in the first few seconds of the call will only annoy the client and abort the call.
6. Taking rejection in stride: It is a part of a telemarketing caller’s job to be able to accept rejection from clients. Every call need not result in closing a deal. The attempt should be to try and improve the ratio of successful calls which is what telemarketing is all about. A telemarketing professional should possess the perseverance to keep calling despite facing repeated rejection. This quality may not come through training alone but is an important part of any telemarketing training.
7. Client-based approach: Telemarketers have to deal with a wide variety of audience through their calls and it is a part of their job description to adjust their approach according to the customers they are dealing with. Business-to-consumer calls, for example, need an entirely different kind of approach than the business-to-business calls. Callers have to factor in these complexities on a day-to-day and call-to-call basis.
Thus, in trying to choose between setting up an in-house telemarketing facility and outsourcing the entire process to a professional telemarketing company the challenges and costs involved in training the entire staff has to be taken into consideration.
