Choosing a telemarketing company – A case study of triumph over adversity

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Many telemarketers have been on both sides of the fence and VSL is no exception. Many of our callers have been or are still running a business. That experience proves an invaluable asset to their telemarketing activities. Likewise many clients had often wished that they had some prior experience of telemarketing before taking the plunge to engage with a telemarketing agency. Below is an example of a client’s story on letting go.

Step 1. Letting go of in-house telesales – If you are a young SME are you too small to think about a professional telemarketing agency?

It is a strange psychology within businesses, especially young growing businesses, not to look at outsourcing as a form of defeat or a slight on your own capabilities as a sales and marketing professional. However if the business is growing or the period of development is completed, then at some stage you have to change your sales strategy, otherwise the company will stagnate, you will lose your key personnel and  eventually you will be forced to downsize. It is a familiar pattern. This B2B IT Company was a small growing profitable business, comprising of 19 staff of developers, designers and network engineers plus front desk support, which ensured the quality of delivery of their products and services. However they had a dedicated telesales force of 1½ persons and one was out on the road 70% of the time. The idea was to train someone in house to assist in the face to face sales or hire in a sales person. That left the issue of creating and maintaining the all-important sales pipeline.

Firstly they bought in some business data and tried using the front desk resources to deliver meetings and sales opportunities. The result was a very unhappy front desk. They then contemplated in recruiting their own telesales team, but the cost was prohibitive and a potential administrative nightmare. Yet they were not yet ready to take the full plunge.

They then settled for a halfway solution by hiring a freelance telemarketer, who worked out of their offices. Result, a mixed bag. It was good as it showed them the potential of what could be achieved with a dedicated and tenacious caller. Downside he really did not have sufficient market knowledge for their high end product and services, but great for selling the added value services (which the website and newsletters was doing effectively anyway) . But at least now they were starting to see the light.

Step 2. Taking the Plunge – Outsourcing to a telemarketing agency, blind faith or good business practice?

A very common and indeed understandable concern is that, “they’re just an agency they will never completely understand our product/services well enough.”

The client took on two approaches when looking at an agency. They rang round associates and colleagues asking for recommendations, and they researched on the internet. From what they found and from their own previous trials, was that there are three principal criteria they had to have in place before engaging with an agency: that their brief had to be clear and defined with a clear call to action/s, and lastly and as importantly the agency had to understand their offerings and market place.

In the end they met with 5 agencies, with each meeting they became more confident and clearer with what they wanted and how they wanted to proceed. I the end they had a shortlist of 2, both seemed very competent, gave very good insightful advice and more importantly understood their business. They also took the time to talk to the potential callers in each agency. This gave them benefit of understanding that they were not automatons working off a script and did indeed were impressed and reassured by their knowledge and understanding of the marketplace and offering. This reinforced the idea that they were entering a partnership as opposed to a contract of us and them.

Step 3. Did the telemarketing agency deliver?

In the end they chose the agency who gave them a more integrated sales and marketing approach to the campaign (using targeted pdf’s as well as emails and online tutorials), which in this case I am pleased to say was VSL.  They started with a 15 day pilot campaign. We strongly recommend this to any potential client looking at telesales for the first time, apart from giving time to analyse the results from the initial calling, it is also an invaluable learning curve to fine tune marketing collateral and any logistical issues within their own sales process. It also limits the companies’ expenditure, whereby if they need to take a break to re-structure or focus you can. In fact this is what they did, but when they were ready to go full steam ahead everything was in place. They also realised that to build a pipeline is one thing, to maintain it is another. Thus when the first full campaign was signed off, not only were they confident of getting  the results, they knew and accepted this was going to be an ongoing partnership, and indeed it proved to be. All expectations were met, yes there were a few hiccups and a few losses, but we managed to more than exceed the target set for new sales in the first 12 months, without the administrative and employment overheads, and allowed the client to recruit the talent to enable them to develop services further and us as their telesales partner allowed us to grow the business.

And that dear reader is really the morale of this tale, if you look upon a telemarketing agency as the enemy or overhead, it will fail. Choose wisely, learn from experience and others and it will result in a very rewarding partnership.

If you are considering outsourcing to a telemarketing company like Virtual Sales Ltd then please contact us either by email sales@virtual-sales.com or call us on +44 (0)1403 788480.

Tags: Telemarketing

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