9 Tips for Telemarketing

From rebuttals to freebies, valuable insights into a marketing workhorse.

By Bill Mickey
Monday, March 2, 2009

A recent NTCFI luncheon yielded a lightening round of “50 Tips in 50 Minutes” presented by a panel of some of b-to-b publishing’s most accomplished audience developers. Jeff Hartford, audience development director, Red 7 Media (publisher of this magazine), Sherry Oommen, circulation manager, Haymarket Media, and Mark Rosen, audience development director, Advanstar, all offered some of their best insights into a variety of audience development tactics. Here, we’ve isolated their hard-won wisdom for telemarketing strategies and tips.

1 Add rebuttals to telemarketing scripts to see if you can change a non-qualifying answer.

2 Start your new business telemarketing early. You know you are going to have to do it, so you may as well get it out of the way sooner rather than later.  Take advantage of “off-peak rates.”

3 Telemarketing doesn’t have to be done during 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Your audience may be accessible beyond the normal days and times (e.g., medical professionals).

4 Monitor your telemarketing campaigns once every two weeks. You never know what you hear from your agents or your subscribers that may help your campaign.

5 Create a “work order” that you submit to your telemarketing vendor when you supply the lists. Include all the necessary information that will keep you and your vendor on the same page and avoid any unexpected “surprises” (e.g., when the campaign should start and end; the planned rate; when response files are due; what your budget is.)

6 Telemarketing firms now do email and fax blasts. Give them your two- and three-year-old names. They can do the email blasts, remove the responses and do a follow up, remove the responses, do a fax blast, remove the responses and then hit the phones. There’s no need to wait for the fulfillment house to update the file and produce a new file.

7 Some telemarketers will do the email blasts for free and fax blasts at cost, just to get your business.

8 Telemarket to directory names. If you have a directory or list that already has industry and title demographics that you are telemarketing for requests, use the “short form script” and prove the demographics back to the directory. Save money on the telemarketing side but realize there’s a bit of extra work at audit time to source the name back to the directory.

9 To help with lead generation for Webinars, events and other products, telemarketing firms will ask about them when making calls for requals or new requests and pass interested names back to you. Or, for no charge, they will send out follow-up email messages with more info about these events. That’s a good way to get email addresses as well.