Telemarketing, like exotic dance, isn't something people exactly plan on getting into. But jobs in phone sales are fairly easy to find, and if you're good at it you can make pretty good money. Or so I learned during my junior year of college.
Now, I learned a lot during my stint as a telemarketer. Sales skills I never knew I possessed. Patience with the public I thought I was born without.
But I'd never do it again. Especially not in the here and now, in 2006, where buzz words like Web 2.0 and permission marketing run rampant and threaten to bring traditional marketing to its knees.
So I was surprised, recently, to see many sales and marketing blogs addressing the benefits of telemarketing. Most of these blogs were inspired by this B-to-B Marketing article from earlier last month.
The article details Xerox's use of telemarketing, and in conjunction with other marketing mediums, the company's efforts are paying off. And while the article deals with Xerox's B-to-B marketing success (as the source publication might suggest), I think it also opens up similar can of worms for B-to-C sales professionals: is telemarketing worth it?
Most sales professionals are aware that, done correctly, teleprospecting (a horrible new buzz word, in my opinion) can be a pretty viable tool. In fact, Brian Caroll of the B2B Lead Generation Blog says that the phone is a necessary lead generation tool when it comes to issues like initial prospecting and qualification, appending data and information, centralizing leads for profiling and scoring, validating direct marketing lists, and following up on direct mail campaigns—to name a few.
Now, I don't wish to negate the success that sales professionals have achieved through cold-calling and telemarketing—especially the old-schoolers who've been doing this longer than I've been alive. But I would make a few counterpoints.
1. Today, telemarketing probably works best for B-to-B businesses.
My boss, who is director of marketing, expects to receive phone calls during the day from people who want to pitch her a new lead generation software or print services. That's the nature of the beast. But Joe Homeowner won't be expecting to hear about your insurance or financial services at 9 AM while he's cooking eggs in his bathrobe.
2. Cold-calling is annoying.
To whom, you ask? To everybody. For you, there's the collecting of the data, gathering the intestinal fortitude to call people you don't know, and ask said strangers for their business. And to be sure, it's almost always annoying to the 'prospect'. There's a reason why people conjure up stories and shticks when they get a salesperson on the line. Once I had this woman on my contact list that I had to call back every day for a week. And every time I called, she put her little kid on the phone, who started reciting what he wanted on his pizza. Every. Time. Of course, they were being creative in telling me to get lost. Most people used shorter, more colorful words.
3. There are more cost-effective, less invasive, and greater ROI-bringing methods available.
Above, blogger Brian Caroll said telemarketing was a great way to follow up on direct mail campaigns. I can't lie to you; reading about telemarketing and direct mail in the same sentence sort of made me want to gnaw off the same fingers with which I'm now typing.
Why?
For starters, unless you've got a pretty innovative direct mail campaign, your flier is more likely to go out with the evening trash than generate a sales lead. And just think of all that wasted postage money.
Secondly, most traditional direct mail and telemarketing campaigns solicit people who've expressed little or no interest in what you have to offer. Talk about throwing a wad of money in the fire.
Of course, the alternatives are sitting right in front of you as you read: on the web.
Aside from letting lead aggregation services [plug: InsureMe] bring interested prospects to you, you can step away from traditional prospecting techniques and use the power of search engines to target people who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Web programs like Google Adwords enable you to target prospects based on their keyword search (and weed out negative search terms like 'pregnancy' and 'HIV') and geographic location.
Now we're talking about cost-effective prospecting that yields a great ROI and is well-aligned with permission-based marketing. Which means you're making money and not pissing people off. Cheers to that.
If you're interested in learning more about online marketing, you're in luck. My article, Online Marketing: Why The Insurance Industry Should Take Advantage, is currently featured in this month's TAAR Report.
Additionally, we have an incredibly talented in-house team here that specializes in online marketing. See what they're up to by visiting the InsureMe Affiliate Blog, and feel free to leave questions or comments there. Of course, we like talking to people too, so give us a call at 800 INSUREME to speak to a human.
We've also got a plethora of information on these topics in our comprehensive Agent Resource Center, so please do stop by and peruse the selection. You'll even find some articles about how to be successful in cold calls and direct mail campaigns.
Hey, just because I think it's a waste of resources doesn't mean that's true for everyone. :)