What is Telemarketing and How Should You Deploy it?

Telephone marketing (i.e., telemarketing) allows you to connect with customers over the phone. Contrary to popular belief, customers still prefer phone interactions, with over 60% favouring phone-based customer service.

Although businesses are prioritizing digital marketing, telemarketing is still a powerful channel for generating sales. It offers the humane appeal that automation tools often lack—and despite the technological advancements within customer service, consumers still want to talk to real people. 

As such, businesses that want to enhance their customer interactions should integrate telemarketing into their marketing communications. To better understand telemarketing, this article will discuss what it entails, outline its benefits, and provide you with ten tips to help you solidify a successful telemarketing strategy.

Defining Telemarketing 

Telemarketing is known as the act of selling products or services over the phone. However, telemarketing serves other business purposes as well, including lead generation, obtaining customer information, and nurturing customers through the customer journey. 

There are multiple ways to call customers, with call types varying depending on the purpose and industry you’re trying to serve. More specifically, there are distinct differences between B2B telemarketing and B2C telemarketing, as well as outbound telemarketing and inbound telemarketing.

B2B vs. B2C Telemarketing

Firstly, B2B telemarketing caters to other companies. It’s when a company tries to sell to another company. During these calls, there is a strong emphasis placed on clients’ needs and pain points. These conversations also tend to involve facts and figures, which businesses use to solidify their value proposition. 

On the other hand, B2C telemarketing focuses on individual customers. Given that B2C sales cycles aren’t as long as B2B, these calls focus on discussing features, driving conversions, and advancing sales.

Inbound vs Outbound Telemarketing

With inbound telemarketing, customers reach out to your business using phone calls. Customers may be prompted to do so for several reasons: they may want to call your company after visiting your website, viewing your social media CTAs, or reading your marketing emails. Essentially, these calls often have a motive behind them. As such, when handling inbound phone calls, telemarketers focus on customers’ reasons for calling them rather than proactively selling their products or services.

With outbound telemarketing, your company is the one initiating the calls. These calls require different approaches, as consumers aren’t always interested in your product or service. As such, businesses initiating outbound telemarketing have specific goals that drive the direction and flow of the conversation.

Benefits of Telemarketing 

Regardless of the type of telemarketing your business chooses to undertake, there are plenty of benefits that arise from integrating telemarketing into your daily marketing practices.

Gain Feedback 

Telemarketing can help you gain an abundance of customer feedback. Using this marketing method, you can instantly ask customers how they perceive your brand. This information allows you to depict the extent to which customers resonate with you. Telemarketing calls also enable insight into customers’ experience with your brand. Equipped with this information, you can better address customers’ needs and improve their customer experience.

Personalize Interactions

Customers love personalized interactions with brands as this makes them feel cared for. Telemarketing is an excellent way to delight customers, allowing you to deliver a highly tailored and engaging customer experience. For example, you can use telemarketing calls to reach out to individual customers and promptly respond to their questions and concerns. 

Low Cost 

Telemarketing is cheaper than other marketing ventures, proving more cost-friendly than website advertising, billboards, or flyers. With minimal equipment, it’s an easy and cost-effective way to carry out multiple business tasks, including promoting your products or services, distributing surveys, and keeping in touch with customers. 

Best Practices for Successful Telemarketing Calls 

Use Your Customer’s Name

A great way to connect with customers during a sales call is to use their names. Besides facilitating a more intimate conversation, using a customer’s name throughout telemarketing calls can foster more interest in your company. When addressing customers using their names, you build rapport with customers and make them feel more valued. However, overusing a customer’s name during phone conversations can make the call feel contrived. As such, you should focus on maintaining a natural flow throughout your discussion. 

Be an Active Listener

Some telemarketers may be so focused on achieving their sales goal that they forget to engage with their customers. This disengagement can create a divide between your brand and the customer. 

Often, the most successful telemarketing calls occur when the customer does more of the talking. While conveying the value and benefits of your product or service is essential, you must listen to customers’ concerns, thoughts, and questions. These reveal what points you need to address during your conversation in order to obtain more information or close a sale.

Maintain a Positive Attitude

Starting a conversation with a positive attitude can pave the way for a successful phone call. If your tone of voice denotes hesitation, negativity, or disinterest, your prospects will notice and may disengage. Yet, a positive and can-do attitude rarely goes unnoticed and often turns out to be infectious. This may result in customers being more receptive to your sales call.

Follow a Script or Phone Call Blueprint

Script and blueprints can effectively structure and guide your telemarketing calls. If you want a more solid outline for your calls, a script provides a good framework. These highlight specific questions or phrases you must use during telemarketing calls. If you find scripts to be too constricting, you can opt for a blueprint. Blueprints only provide a loose outline for the phone call, ensuring you communicate your offer freely. 

Whether you choose to implement a script or blueprint, make sure you adapt these to different customers. This provides you with enough leeway to ensure conversations still resonate with customers and their needs.

Empathize

Empathy is highly effective in building relationships with customers. To show compassion, keep an open mind to the worries and challenges your customers face. When you empathize with their troubles and show you care, customers are more likely to trust you. This trust can solidify your customer relationships, enhancing your profitability as a result. 

 Leverage Your Customer Data

The most successful telemarketing calls don’t leave their success to chance; they leverage analytics. You can use your customer data to improve the success rate of your telemarketing calls. Using a database of reliable and timely customer data, you can assess your prospects and segment your consumers, enabling you to address them adequately. As such, your data increases the effectiveness of your telemarketing efforts by improving the relevancy of your outreach.

Set Goals for Your Telemarketing Conversations

As mentioned earlier, not all telemarketing calls serve the same purpose. Choosing sales as a telemarketing goal means many of your phone calls will seem futile and unsuccessful. Yet, completing a deal takes time—particularly when it comes to B2B sales. As such, you should select other value-providing telemarketing goals. Examples of these can include making prospects aware of your product or service and obtaining more customer data.

Don’t Be Afraid of Silence

Silence is a powerful tool in sales calls. Allowing for silence during calls can allow your prospects to comprehend your offer, facilitate conversation, and reignite the interest of prospects that have checked out of the conversation. Given these benefits, you shouldn’t shy away from silent moments during telemarketing calls, as these can be highly fruitful.

Schedule Follow-up Calls

All worthwhile things take time, and telemarketing sales are no different. While 44% of telemarketers give up after one follow-up call, 80% of deals close after the 5th follow-up call. As such, telemarketers should be more persistent with scheduling multiple follow-up calls. These calls build trust and familiarity with prospects using repeated exposure.

Learn To Handle Objections

When trying to sell to customers over the phone, expect to encounter objections. Customers, decision-makers, and gatekeepers will be apprehensive when it comes to purchasing your product or service. To effectively handle objections, equip yourself with the most powerful and appealing features your product or service has to offer. This way, you can address complaints with solid arguments that settle concerns and opposition.

If you’re looking to integrate telemarketing into your omnichannel strategy, contact our team today to see how iwinBACK can help!