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Small Business Growth 6 Ways of Employing Telemarketing as Part of Your Business Growth Strategy

Talk of telemarketing to many business owners and managers and you are likely to see uncertainty, doubt and panic. Many owners confuse telemarketing with telesales. The latter is tarred with the same brush as the cold-calling, pressure tactics used by some companies to sell anything from insurance to bathrooms and valentine gifts.

The correspondence between telemarketing and telesales is that they both use the telephone as a communication medium.

Here are 6 reasons why you should be using telemarketing in your business marketing .

1. Appointment setting - the fundamental role of marketing is to promote opportunities for your sales team. The best opportunities stem from face to face meetings. Telemarketing delivers qualified appointments with specifically targeted decision makers.

In creating your meetings a prime telemarketer will have had many contacts with your prospects' decision makers. They will have built up a relationship and set expectations so that your appointments are prepared for optimum results before you get to meet the client.

2. Lead creation - telemarketing for lead generation require less effort from the telemarketer than appointment setting. The aim is normally to contact a prospect, create interest in your services and capture contact details for you to pursue. Following up on these leads is your responsibility.

3. Database building and cleansing - many companies have built large prospect databases. Current data protection legislation means that you must keep this data up to date or delete it. Telemarketing is an excellent way of reviewing, updating and building your contact database. The odds are you will gain a few leads and appointments along the way.

4. Follow up - following up on every lead is vital. In the normal course of business just about every one of your team makes contacts and maybe receive enquiries about your company. In a marketing sense, every such contact provides an opportunity for a sale. Following up every contact has been shown to improve sales in every company that diligently applies itself. Telemarketers can provide a truly professional service in contact follow-up further multiplying the benefits of following up.

5. Customer Information - Telemarketing to people who already buy and like your products is an excellent way to educate them of all your products and services.

6. Customer reactivation - reactivating old customers can often be as simple as asking them why they have left.

Telemarketing is a great method to make contact with customers as soon as they stop being customers. Often that is all that is required. Give it a try.

Telemarketing is the ultimate small business opportunity. All you need is some training, the right attitude and a telephone. You can instantly set up as a telemarketer. And if you are any good you can quickly use telemarketing to sell your own services.

Not surprisingly then, there are thousands of small telemarketing businesses - many of them absolutely excellent. There are, of course, others that are not so good. With that much competition you can get some outstanding telemarketing services for a very reasonable price.

Your challenge is to find the ones that are right for you.