For many small to medium business owners and managers the challenge is always… How do I get more business?
Long gone are the days where you can set up a shop or office and expect people to find you. If you want to be a successful business, then you need to actively market to and search for your clients.
Telemarketing can play a vital part in that marketing strategy.
The biggest mistake I see in regard to Telemarketing in small business is this… Often a business will implement Telemarketing as their whole marketing strategy. What I mean by this is that they make cold calls where they try to sell their product. The reason this often doesn’t work or at best gets poor results, is that to your client it sounds like nothing but a sales pitch and a hard sell one at that!
You need to remember that the current marketplace has people being pitched at and targeted with marketing campaigns from everywhere. Your client really doesn’t care what you have to sell and why you think your product or service is so great. But there is something they care about a great deal….. them.
Your potential customers want you to know them, their challenges, problems, needs and desires. Once you know them and have built at least a little rapport with them, then and only then have you earned the right to tell your client about your product and how it fills their needs.
As business owners and managers you need to know… Using telemarketing as part of a well planned strategy makes sense, just don’t expect it to be magic! A good telemarketing strategy needs to be well thought out and planned.
A good start is to read some of our Small Business ideas, to help you decide which part of your marketing strategy is best served by telemarketing.
You need a good telemarketing script as well as an understanding of consumer behavior and of how and why people buy.
You may need some telemarketing tips to make sure you approach each call the right way and maybe some help with telephone techniques to overcome any call reluctance and get you well on the way to Small Business Telemarketing success!
