I am surprised why most organizations treat their telemarketing campaigns very casually. Many of them, including MNCs (from whom one could have expected greater awareness) recruit convent educated telemarketing executives (preferably girls, whom they consider glorified telephone operators), give them a list of clients and their phone numbers and ask them to start telephoning, from day one. If some sales-leads get generated, the TM executive is patted on the back; if they don’t – well the client base of the town is branded as unsophisticated.

Telemarketing has attracted the attention of marketers because of its extreme cost-effectiveness. When one advertises in a newspaper for example, one is never sure if the target segment will really read the message meant for it. It is difficult to assess the “cost per customer reached” in the case of a newspaper campaign. Telemarketing offers a medium that not only permits fairly accurate measurement of the responses to a particular campaign but also allows a seller to reach a specific customer-segment at a low cost.

In an interesting survey that was carried out in Bombay, it was found that a person was bombarded with about 568 different “advertisement” messages every day (during the hours that he was awake). These included the ones he saw on bill-boards while he travelled to and from work, heard and saw on the radio and TV & read in magazines, newspapers and other documents. Out of these, it was found that only 76 registered on his brain. To the astonishment of marketers, this “average” customer remembered only 12 out of these 76. All of them were aghast at the poor “reach” of marketing messages that were being so expensively and creatively “thrown” at the customer.

Direct mailing and telemarketing campaigns, apart from their low cost of reach allow the marketer to try out new ideas over specific “customer segments” – something which cannot be achieved by the traditional methods. A telemarketing campaign needs to be however planned as meticulously as any other serious marketing campaign.

Decide what you want to achieve through the TM campaign.
If you don’t know the objectives, how will you ever reach there? Be clear in your mind how you plan to generate leads (for subsequent follow up)! TM campaigns are not effective to build up a corporate image and don’t deliver the goods when you are just informing the customer about something.

Decide the special benefits that your TM campaign will offer to the customer.
A golden rule of TM campaigns is that unless you have something special to offer, the activity should never be undertaken. Why would the customer otherwise “give you his ear”? It is the special offer that TM executives should be trained to deliver.

Train the TM executives that you employ.
It is found that TM executives, to increase their effectiveness, must themselves be convinced of the offer that the company is making. They should also be trained to answer many other queries that customers are likely to ask. The customer is assessing your organization from what the TM executives say or don’t. It is important for these TM executives to know vital features of the product that they are trying to sell. Moreover, a TM executive has to be a good listener to assess if the person on the other end of the telephone line is in fact “favourable” to the sales pitch that is being made. Everything that has to be conveyed, needs to be said in the first 45 seconds of the telephone call! The opening lines of the message need to be practiced repeatedly on “mock-customers” until the most effective combination emerges.

Keep the message as short as you can.
Verbal communication is corruption –prone and research says that no more than six data-points (pieces of information) should ever be included in a single message. The sales pitch of the TM executives needs to be therefore carefully finalized.

Remember! It is the voice that sells.
Gurus recommend that the TM executives should smile while they talk on phone, because the “happiness” transmits itself subconsciously, over the telephone line. All possible customer responses should be identified and these TM executives should be trained to handle each one of these effectively, in a pleasant manner. People with aggressive voices are unlikely to succeed.

TM campaigns should assist direct mailing (DM) campaigns conducted earlier.
Instead of being an independent exercise, a TM campaign should be ideally used to reinforce a DM campaign. Repetition, it is said, builds reputation and it is truer in the field of marketing.

The one reason that TM is a marketer’s delight is the low cost of reaching the customer and the low cost of failure. If due to scientific planning, it also yields excellent results in terms of increased sales, it is what the Americans would call a double whammy. Who would not want this to happen?

"Mr. Prakash Shesh, the author, has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad after his Masters in Physics from I.I.T. New Delhi. You may send your feedback to him by choosing an option at the top right corner of this page." He can be reached at creative_ngp@sancharnet.in