ou Selling Failure .)(. or Dialing for Success? A Preface for Today's Telemarketer

Man is a tool-using animal. --Carlyle

Give me a lever long enough and a prop strong enough; I can single-handed move the world. --Archimedes

Men have become the tools of their tools -- Henry David Thoreau

The whole time of recorded history, man has learned to use the tools at hand to their greatest possible value.

This was true when the tool was fire, a stone ax, an animal, a V-8 engine, or even a fragment as small as an atomic particle.

Today, learn to take the telephone, probably the most familiar and reliable business tool we have, and fine-tune its usage from one of basic utility for communication to a much more spectacular instrument for commerce.

A pioneer in the field of telecommunications, Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He moved to Ontario, and then to the United States, settling in Boston, before beginning his career as an inventor. Throughout his life, Bell had been interested in the education of deaf people. This interest lead him to invent the microphone and, in 1876, his "electrical speech machine," which we now call a telephone helped ignite the great revolution of technology that transformed our world into today's computerized, colorized, wired, networked, mass-communicative society.

With all modernization, we businessmen are challenged to develop new ways to advance, speed up, or expand markets, in cheaper and better ways. Develop new ways to stay one step ahead of our competition.

Men marry Women because they don't expect them to change, and Women always marry Men expecting they can change them.

Neither of them is disillusioned in their thoughts. Men change according to their pace and what they want, seek.

Women change according to their pace and what they want, and seek.

It's just a matter of finding the harmony in this change, or the path of the change, that if the pair is happy with it, Good, if not, trouble on the horizon. If you're not prone to change or if you believe telemarketing is only for the Ronco gadgets and grooming salespeople of this world, then break out your sales costs by the type of activity.

If your company is like most Fortune 500 companies, you'll find you can no longer afford to continue to physically cold-call for new business with field sales reps unless they have set appointments with prequalified prospects. It used to be if you were out of the office that meant you were selling. Today it invariably means you're stuck in traffic at 4 bucks a gallon.

When the cost of obtaining new business with belly-to-belly.)(. selling approaches or exceeds the list price of your product/service, then a new cost effective way of doing business must be found and implemented.

Well-executed and very sophisticated telemarketing campaigns have been known to actually increase sales yield far in excess of 200 percent, while examples of sales productivity increases ranging from 15% to 45% are in abundance.

IBM predicts that over 40 percent of its sales will be through telemarketing and catalog sales by 2007. Chrysler attributed a 37 percent increase in fleet sales in 2005 to telemarketing. ADT experienced a 60 percent increase in business from just one year of telemarketing use. Time/Life Books, which just celebrated the sale of its 600 millionth book, has 16 branches and a separate division established solely for telemarketing. The list goes on and on with success stories.

Belly-to-belly.)(. sales reps have found that efficient use of the telephone can increase their total field selling time significantly. When field sales reps use the telephone to qualify their prospects and set appointments in advance, it stands to reason that they waste less time calling on "non-prospects" and devote more time to making sales presentations to those prospects that are more likely to buy.

Effective use of the telephone truly helps the field sales rep to "broaden" the day by ever-increasing productivity, reducing the cost and need for additional field sales personnel.

Aggressive managers with national sales accounts are finding the telephone an effective tool in expanding both their prospects and their penetration of major accounts.

Field sales reps calling on major accounts all too often, get "locked in" to doing business with only one or two individuals or divisions of a large multi-faceted corporation, leaving many prime selling opportunities unchallenged.

Usually, all it takes to get an appointment with buyers in other divisions is a copy of a corporate telephone book and a phone call introducing you as a vendor who has already been approved by the buyers company.

The Predictive Dialer used alone or in combination with other supporting telemarketing programs, is the single most cost-effective and time-efficient marketing tool offered.

When company managers first begin pondering a telemarketing program, they ask such questions as, "Why the decision to do business over the telephone?" "Won't we begin to lose business?" "Won't our competition decimate our sales efforts?" What is the true cost (ROI) of doing business this new way with these "Predictive Dialers?" as opposed to doing nothing at all?

Sooner or later the question becomes "What can I do in person that I can't do over the telephone?" If they approach that last question with a totally open mind, in almost all cases they have to conclude, "Nothing!" especially when combined with web based interfaces for meeting and demonstrations.

"Corporate cowards" are those managers who are lacking in courage, content with the status quo, who accept their field reps continuing to pound the pavement, knocking on doors, as they have since their companies were initiated. They are satisfied with the results, usually not going out on a limb to protect what they have. Such untested managers should remember that their companies and attitudes were established in a long gone era.

Let him that would move the world first move himself. --Socrates

Quill pens have been replaced with computers, the outhouse has been replaced with modern-day plumbing, and the horse and buggy have been replaced with trucks and automobiles. The time has come for the door-to-door peddler to replace his or her sample pack with a telephone line. He is instantly inside someone's home, getting past the front door with little or no objection.

TMCnet.com has projected that over 6 million new jobs will be created in the telemarketing industry by the year 2007.

OPC-Marketing.com Manufacturers the SpitFire Predictive brand of Telemarketing equipment. Contact us at [email protected].


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About the Author

Michael Henochowicz is one of the people at the forefront of Technology and Technology Driven Sales. He's the founder of CompUSA "The Computer / Technology" SUPERSTORE. CompUSA is one of the nation's leading retailers of technology products and services. CompUSA currently operates 244 superstores in over 90 major metropolitan markets across the United States and Puerto Rico.