Outsourcing and telemarketing – two words that have been demonized in the media and with the public at-large, but in the business-to-business world, outsourcing the telemarketing function of a company overall marketing function is not only an accepted practice, it is good business. We work with many companies that have decided to partner with us for their lead generation and market nurturing efforts, in the end, we have found several consistent business reasons that they decided to outsource:
Focus on Your Core Business: Companies tend to invest heavily in creating an in house lead generation team and/or call center and ignore the fact that some vendors already operate state-of-the-art call centers. Rather than investing a lot of time and money in the creation of a call center or internal team, you should be focusing on the core competency of your business, and employ a vendor that is an expert in providing superior service to your customers. Rather than having your top sales people cold calling for hours, work with a qualified and experienced vendor that can provide quality lead opportunities for your sales team to work to closure.
Availability of Resources: An outsourcing company can facilitate a smooth transition to add or reduce additional resources on an as needed basis. If you’ve correctly chosen a vendor, the agency can react quickly to capacity demands. Many times the reason marketing programs are unsuccessful is due to lack of available and experienced resources. Having another organization concern itself with recruitment, screening, and continual training is appealing to many managers.
Collection of Market Intelligence: The outsourcing company must collect accurate data from calls and provide it to you for a better understanding of the marketplace as well as identify trends and information regarding your competition. The data collected can provide important information on customer behavior and product improvements which may assist your company to become proactive. When you partner with a telemarketing vendor, you not only are getting their services, you are buying their expertise, so use it. Just as any marketing function, there is an art to telemarketing and your vendor should be able to filter the chaff to find the quality data underneath.
Availability of State-of-the-Art Technology and Telecommunications: Keeping up with technology is a challenge for many companies. By outsourcing your lead generation efforts you can utilize vendor’s state-of-the-art technology at a little cost and still gain competitive advantage through productivity improvement and to support growth. Quality vendors should utilize state-of-the art technology, provide recommendations and be able to offer useful reporting analysis. For example, an experienced vendor can easily test new markets and introduce alternative value propositions and messaging while analyzing effectiveness.