Telemarketing - Small Business Marketing - Six Techniques You Can Use Telemarketing To Supercharge Your Small Business Growth Mixsmall Business Marketing

Recommend telemarketing to many small business owners and you are likely to see worry, doubt and panic. Many managers can't separate telemarketing with telesales. Telesales is associated with the cold-calling, pressure tactics used by some companies to sell anything from timeshare holidays to bathrooms and lingerie.

The only similarity between telemarketing and telesales is that they both use the telephone to make contact with a prospect.

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

1. Appointment setting - the overriding role of marketing is to create opportunities for your sales people. The best opportunities stem from one-to-one meetings. Telemarketing is proven to deliver high quality appointments with specifically targeted decision makers.

In researching your appointments a good telemarketer will have had numerous contacts with your prospects' decision makers. They will have built up a relationship and set expectations so that your appointments are prepared for maximum results before you get to meet the client.

2. Lead generation - telemarketing for lead generation is a less in-depth process than appointment making. The aim is normally to contact a prospect, create interest in your services and capture contact details for you to pursue. You may follow up the contacts yourself or you may choose to commission a telemarketer to set appointments with the best prospects.

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 a quick, cost-effective way to keep your database up to date. 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 business every one of your people will make contacts and maybe receive enquiries about your company. Every such contact is manna from heaven. follow up has been shown to improve sales in every company that systematically applies itself. Telemarketing is a cost-effective route to effective follow-up.

5. Customer Information - Telemarketing to your existing customer base is an cost-effective route to inform them of all your offerings.

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

Telemarketing is a superb way to make contact with customers as soon as they stop being customers. Sometimes that is all that is needed to bring them back. At the very least you owe it to yourself to know why your customersare leaving. It is the start of ensuring they don't leave at all.

Telemarketing is the ultimate work at home business. 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 task is to identify the ones that are right for you.