Posted by Matthew Maven on 23rd Dec 2014
When it comes to achieving growth, businesses can take either one of two approaches. They could either enrich the current relationships they have with their existing clients to get them to use their services more. By doing so, these existing customers end up referring their friends or act as unpaid-advertisements that spread the brand to other target populations.
The second approach would be to go out and reach customers through the direct efforts of the company itself. This entails hiring personnel to come up with marketing and advertising strategies to reach out to more potential customers.
Under this branch, the option to outsource to a 3rd party telemarketing company stands firm. These companies hire large numbers of employees solely for the purpose of cold-calling.
Cold calling refers to the actual task of dialing up the contact number of a specific lead and offering them the services that the company renders. Most telemarketing companies even have their own lead generation systems that make them semi-autonomous. All they require are products and services to market to a particular target audience.
Numerous companies within Australia are now choosing to let another company do the marketing for several benefits:
1. Cheaper Labor – It goes without saying that the outsourcing industry takes advantage of more affordable forms of labor from other countries. This alone makes them very competitive when it comes to pricing. These companies eliminate the need for businesses to spend excessive amounts on a competent sales force that will generate sales conversions for the company.
2. Decreased Training Costs – Since an outsourced telemarketing company hires its own personnel, the company does not have to waste time training and retraining new hires every turn over. They simply have to calibrate their standards with their telemarketing firm. Once calibration is achieved, the telemarketing company simply has to meet the demands of the clients in terms of conversion rates and sales.
3. Guaranteed Quality – The science of persuasion and selling may not be the forte of some companies. Other establishments hire an expert to deliver training to their internal sales forces to empower them. With an outsourced telemarketing firm, clients are promised top-notch training in terms of sales skills and rejection handling.
4. Outside Expertise – The notion of an outsider’s perspective has garnered a lot of value lately. Knowledge of the market, buying attitudes, rejection patterns, customer trends and other factors are some things that businesses do not have the time and the resources to worry about. Telemarketing firms take care of this issue by doing the independent research themselves so that their clients do not have to. With this, companies can now channel their focus unto other more important issues and plans. On top of the cheaper labor, companies hire telemarketers because of their separated focus from the perspective of the company. Telemarketers are solely focused on closing deals for their clients while the clients are solely focused on internal growth.
5, Customer Care – Because of the above-mentioned advantages, businesses are also given the opportunity to enrich the relationships of the customers they already have. By using both internal and external approaches to growing a business, success comes at a higher probability. Businesses can invest in developing better products and services because they no longer need to worry about acquiring new business. With a happy customer base and an expanding reach, more revenue can be expected in a shorter amount of time.
There is a distinct disadvantage that comes along with choosing to go with an outsourced telemarketer. This problem manifests itself in the image that the telemarketer creates for the company.
Because of the involvement of another company within the business process, there will be two sets of core values at work: the set of the telemarketing firm and that of the business. This presents the possibility of a misrepresentation between the business and the customer because of the middle man: the telemarketer. This usually happens when calibration is not done properly or when there is not enough communication between the business and the outsourced telemarketer.
This will also cause a difference in branding. Depending on the practices of the telemarketer, the chances of branding customers with the service of the company may or may not be as successful as the business hopes it to be. While the business is focused on its core values and goals, the business partner is solely focused on making quotas and sales. This discrepancy will certainly show somewhere along the length of the business relationship between the two.
Despite this, businesses seem to still embrace the services of these firms with the hopes of gaining more revenue for their growth. They try to overcome the difficulties of such a business relationship by communication with the telemarketing firm on a regular basis. Monthly meetings and calibrations and audits are made so that the goals of both parties stay aligned and the desired results are achieved on both ends.
Although not every company can afford to hire an outsourced telemarketing firm, the advantages remain very tempting for most businesses that wish to increase their size and income. With the large number of firms out there in the industry, picking the right firm to partner up with can mostly spell the difference between an accelerated growth and a monumental set-back. The cost and time required to calibrate and set expectations with a firm is something a company simply cannot afford to do twice just for the same occasion. Companies should do their own share of diligence and conduct proper research and screening when choosing a telemarketing firm.