The decision to use telemarketing as a tool either internally or using a 3rd party vendor is a decision that should be well thought out. It is necessary to evaluate your current sales and marketing infrastructure, before making this investment.
Consider asking these five questions:
- Do you have a specific target market and/or what products or services can you promote via teleprospecting that will support your company overall sales goals
- Do you have strong communication processes in place between your sales and marketing staff to effectively utilize lead and sales information?
- Do you have a champion in the sales department for a telemarketing initiative?
- How will you determine your ROI for this initiative?
- Lastly, what will you do with the market intelligence that is discovered during your telemarketing campaign?
Asking these questions can help you maximize your investment by:
- Structuring your campaign in such a way that you have a clear and concise message and realistic goals to measure the success of the campaign.
- Ensuring that marketing is passing the lead information to the appropriate person in sales and there is a communication vehicle in place for sales to report their pipeline obtained from leads back to marketing. It is critical that sales reports any leads that result in a closed sale and attaches a value to that sale to effectively measure your ROI.
- Developing a plan for how you will evaluate the market intelligence captured and how you will integrate that information into your sales and marketing plan. Always have an end of campaign evaluation session with your internal team or your telemarketing vendor to discuss data trends, market trends, how prospects responded to questions and what initiatives companies are planning in the future. This is invaluable information to take into your sales efforts and your next telemarketing campaign.