Telemarketing And Telesales Have Many Differences And Similarities
How often have you received a phone call offering you telemarketing services or telesales services? Has it left you wondering on their differences? Or are they similar and just a fancy way of marketing them differently? Well, the answer is quite simple. The art of creating an interest over the phone in a customer’s mind thereby generating a sales lead or appointment is called Telemarketing and the service of pitching and closing an actual sale over the phone is called Telesales. In both these cases it is possible to have outbound inquiries or inbound enquiries. In the case of Outbound Telemarketing a call center would actively reach out to various prospects by making calls and evoking an interest. But the line between offering two is so thin that they are often mistaken to be the same. However they are quite different even though both of them have plenty of overlapping similarities. Knowing the difference and evaluating their applicability to your business could make a whole world of difference to the marketing trajectory of your company.
The confusion begins from the fact that the market in general believes that Telemarketing defines the whole chain of marketing and sales starting from finding a prospect, introducing your company, informing them about your offering, selling the offering, getting feedback and finally getting an insight into customer satisfaction. I has somehow become a term that comes to define the whole world of telephone based marketing and thereby consumed the service of B2B Telesales within it.
Let us try to clear some myths
The service that imparts information, evokes interest, creates leads and generates appointments is called Telemarketing services and the service that has the singular aim of selling the offering and closing the deal over the phone itself with no further interaction is called Telesales services.
Outbound Telemarketing is right for you if you have an inherent need to spread the word about your offerings to all possible prospects. Reaching out is something that attracts a lot of interested people who may otherwise have not contacted you on their own accord. This helps you set your marketing team free to concentrate on other important aspects of the business. The team ensures that the leads pipeline is flowing at all times. The result is that there is a constant inflow of appointments for your sales team that would keep them fully focused on the singular job of closing sales. They also assist in keeping the existing customers engaged and constantly generate market insights that are invaluable. This helps you understand their concerns and convey a high standard of service. Therefore Telemarketing is the best medium to reach out to your prospects directly and educate them about your company in a one to one interaction.
Telesales is ideal for you if you are looking out for cost effective ways to increase sales without investing into alternates forms of marketing which are heavy on the pocket. This one of one interaction allows you to gauge an interest and address concerns on the spot rather than having prospects with lingering feelings who may never end up getting in touch with you. The telesales staff is trained to have the right balance between mild persuasion to outright aggression depending on the nature and aptitude of the prospect at the other end of the line. Telesales helps you greatly reduce the burden of incurring high expenditure involved in hiring experienced sales teams as the marketer is able to keep the sales coming at a much lower cost. When you add up the peripheral costs like incentives and travel allowances the cost effectiveness increases by a higher degree. The biggest advantage is that you can easily alter the size of the team based on various factors like season, demand, etc… which is not possible when hiring in-house sales teams. It also helps you keep a tight grip on the budgets for marketing and helps you operate within desired limits.
There is no dearth of companies offering Telemarketing and Telesales services in the UK and choosing the right one is another key factor that goes a long way in helping you keep your marketing in the right direction.
The team needs to be imparted with the right kind of training to hone their skills. They should be diligent in their performance. The company also needs to have highly skilled team leaders who can give direction to the campaign. Communication skills play a very effective role in ensuring that the message gets across clearly. The team also needs to understand the importance of reporting and should have the right raining to ensure that they register the calls properly. The agents needs to have a knack to be able to perform multiple tasks during a call like pitching and data input at the same time. This increases their productively and allows them to make more calls. They also need to be fast thinkers. Prospects may throw unexpected queries at them and their training should ensure that they are able to address them with clarity of direction. Patience is also an important virtue to have. Listening to prospects is more important than constantly cutting them and trying to get your word across. When they are able to gather the needs to the prospect they are in a much better position to tailor the pitch accordingly. The agent also needs to be courteous at all times even when faced with a prospect who is difficult.
To sum it up, if you are in the process of getting the word out there and attracting prospect who are willing to engage with you then you need to opt for a good Outbound Telemarketing service provider.
If you already have a large list of prospects who need to be contacted and enticed to make a purchase then you need to employ a good B2B Telesales service provider.
These two are very different but also very similar at the same time. You would also be able to find companies that offer both the services and therefore in a better position to synergize between the two.
