The Biggest Mistakes And Misconceptions With Telemarketing

The three key aspects of any marketing campaign that a business needs to understand are its purpose, its audience and its medium. This is especially true in specialist markets such as biotech and life sciences, and doubly so when using telemarketing.

A form of direct marketing, telemarketing is used by many companies either with an in-house sales team or through the use of an agency, but neither the medium nor its true purpose is always readily understood.

This is a problem in more general marketing, but the wide sample size masks the poor conversion rates such a scattergun approach can often have.

The most important tool for any successful marketing campaign is knowledge, and with that in mind, here are some of the facts behind the mistakes and misconceptions some people have due to a lack of medium awareness.

Telemarketing Is Not Cold-Calling

Some businesses assume that telemarketing is primarily focused on cold calling, when in reality, that is at most a tiny fraction of what most sales and marketing representatives will do in a well-designed telemarketing campaign focused on meaningful results.

Part of the reason for this is that many individuals have had an experience with a more scattershot cold-calling-based sales campaign, involving rigid scripts, aggressive sales tactics and huge lists of contacts.

In business-to-business telemarketing, particularly in specialist industries, the opposite is typically true. Telemarketing is about building relationships, follow-ups, being empathetic, active listeners and participating in the wider discourse surrounding the sector.

Much like how marketing campaigns are not measured by how many people see them but by how many products are sold, effective telemarketing is driven by conversions, engagement and feedback.

These conversions are seldom achieved through cold-calling but through cultivating and researching leads, finding out from them what they want and what a life sciences company needs to offer before they will consider making an order.

Effective Telemarketing Is Friendly, Welcoming And Empathetic

There is an assumption at times, again based on previous experiences akin to the encyclopaedia salespeople of old, that telemarketing is inherently aggressive, built on transitioning a conversation as quickly as possible to a sales pitch.

This approach simply does not work and has never truly worked; it has a very low success rate, everyone hates it from caller to customer, and many people will end the call quickly if they feel like they are being spoken at rather than talked to.

The psychological theory of reactance highlights the reasons why people do not like to be aggressively sold to; people want information to form their own opinion rather than instruction.

Our proven approach takes this into account; our telemarketing operatives are knowledgeable about the sector, empathetic to the needs of the customer and interested in engaging in a dialogue on a customer’s terms.

Telemarketing Is About Quality Not Quantity

Telemarketing is data-driven, and we use advanced analytics in order to develop useful insights for clients and tailor our marketing approach, but this should not be confused with relying solely on statistics and a quantity-driven approach.

What matters in telemarketing, and why a lot of campaigns based simply on calling everyone on a telephone registry fail, is that people are more than numbers and conversion rates.

In life sciences, materials science and other specialist sectors, any successful marketing approach will need to focus on quality and personalisation, which is why many initial communications with potential customers will focus on pain points, discussions of research and potential needs rather than try to sell a product.

Through a friendly, engaging conversation, we will not only provide a company with a new contact for their sales pipeline but also gain invaluable insights on the market, any particular competition for specialist goods and services, and what improvements could be made to make everyone’s lives easier.

Few lasting relationships are built in just one call, and it is essential to take the time to create a trusting, understanding relationship and ensure that the business can meet the customer’s needs and that the customer is a good fit for the business’ services.

Telemarketing Is About Dialogue Not Scripts

The biggest sin a marketing campaign can commit is disrespecting the customer, and one of the fastest ways to make a customer feel disrespected is to give them the impression that a representative from your business is reading a script to them.

A better alternative is a framework of propositions that allows a caller to engage as themselves, listen, learn and develop a conversation and customer relationship.

Every customer has a different process when it comes to making a purchase, and tailoring a sales and marketing response to this will ensure a much higher rate of conversion than trying to force a sale.