Telemarketing

Do you notice the customers that you do the most business with are the ones that you talk to the most? You feel comfortable and happy to pick up the telephone and ring them.

Do you also notice how often you get to the end of the day and find that you haven’t contacted people that you planned to contact at the beginning of the day?

Do you notice how quickly a week goes by these days, then a month, then suddenly half a year and there are still those people you intended to call to “keep in touch” with, but haven’t?

Making just 10 “marketing” calls can often take an hour or more. To fit that “extra” hour into a busy day can be done once or twice or maybe even three times in a week but to keep it up day in, day out, week after week is usually too great a burden. If an organisation can keep up their call or contact rates it is often in a cyclical way. When they are busy, which is what they want to be, they are also too busy to make those calls. When they find that things are getting quiet again, they quickly jump on the phone and have a mad ring round. This succeeds in reactivating some clients then they become too busy again to ring. The organisation goes through a busy-panic-busy scenario. Generally though, over time, they are able to reactivate less and less of these customers because they have drifted away to competitors.

Wendy Evans in her book “Choose & Grow your own Business in 90 Days” says that there is compelling evidence that companies ignore relationship marketing at their extreme peril. She talks about the 90-day rule, which identifies the fact that when you communicate with your clients within a 90-day period, the propensity for them to continue buying from you goes up. The more you go outside the 90 days, the propensity to buy rapidly deteriorates and the relationship cools.

Telephone marketing and research is a widely accepted means of customer contact used by New Zealand businesses. They recognise that this cost-effective means of live communication is both fast and effective. They also understand the significance of knowing more about their customers and prospects and appreciate the costs of establishing a new customer and the value of obtaining additional business from existing customers. Using a professional team of communicators who project an intelligent and well-spoken presentation, will ideally result in a call that the recipient will feel comes directly from the organisation itself. In this way, the telephone marketing team supports the organisations own marketing efforts. Pre-qualifying the information to be worked on by their marketing staff saves wasting a lot of time on detail. This allows more effective use of time on calls and they become more productive.

New customers can be obtained using the experience of the telephone marketing business to firstly obtain a new and targeted database, and then make contact to generate sales leads. A company’s database can be used for example, to update the name and title of the appropriate person prior to a personalised mail or email campaign. This person could then be followed-up with a telephone call to reinforce the mailing. The database could also be used for the rapid contact of customers in advance of a promotion or new product launch. Customer satisfaction surveys are a popular and effective management tool.

Have you ever held a function where you were disappointed with the numbers that eventually turned up? Invitation coordination can be undertaken by a telephone marketing company. The important part is a timely reminder call just prior to the event to confirm attendance, explain carparking options and double check the names of any substitute guests for issuing name tags. This will help make the occasion a success.

Where routine, standardized or innovative contact is required, it is worthwhile to look at the cost and benefits of using an organisation specializing in professional communication.

Costs are usually split into three areas. An establishment fee, which are the costs related to setting up the campaign, training and informing communicators on the company or organisation and the project to be undertaken. The cost of establishing or purchasing the database if this is required.

And finally the cost related to completing the call, and this is usually an hourly rate.