Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Telemarketing Firms Love Cold Calling In A Recession

By Jillian Leigh

A recession is often considered the time when marketing and sales expenditures should be cut. During a time like this, it is important to understand how you can increase sales in a manner which is productive with your business expenditures. A prospecting firm can be one of the lowest and most productive ways to increase sales during a recession.

Prospecting firms offer advantages because their salespeople are comfortable on the phone. Many salespeople struggle on the telephone because they dread telemarketing. Using a prospecting firm will allow your salespeople to be productive doing other activities while the prospecting firm can build a list of prospective new clients for your business.

Using a prospecting company consistently will mean that you have a consistent sales pipeline. This frees you up to work on the more productive activities in the business which can generate more customers or prospects, leading to lower new customer costs.

The tough business climate means that you must respect the use of your advertising dollars even more. Using a prospecting company can allow you to track your return on investment so that you can increase sales but you know what it will cost to get to where you want to be.

Building a strong sales pipeline can take serious work and often can take a significant amount of time. If you maintain your marketing budget and allocate money to a prospecting company, you can pick up business since there are fewer competitors out there publicizing their services.

Outbound telemarketing is not a favorite activity of many salespeople and they will procrastinate on doing this activity. Using a company to do this will improve the productivity of your salespeople and lower your overall costs.

With the focus on new business, many customer oriented salespeople do not have time to meet with current clients. Using a prospecting company may free up your salespeople to sell more deeply into the current customer base so that you can lower cost per new client along with higher revenue per existing customer.

Most businesses do not have automation systems for their phones like an outbound telemarketing company. This system can dial automatically so the prospecting company can reach potentially five times more prospects than your salespeople can reach.

A McGraw-Hill Study showed that companies who maintain or increase marketing and sales expenditures enjoyed a revenue increase of 275% the first year after a recession versus a 19% increase for those who cut back. Using a prospecting company can allow you to track your new customer flow so that you have a good return on your investment and will show that it is costing less to reach new customers than before.

An outbound telemarketing company can be your new customer strategy so that you can reallocate your human capital within the business to what they do best. This improves the productivity of the company and lowers cost for new clients and current clients.

It is hard for any business to simply maintain its current state. In what other time can you pitch to people with less competitors than during a recession? - 15246

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