Image via Wikipedia

Looking back at our blog recently, we realised we’ve posted a whole host of hints and tips over the last couple of years, all of which stand the test of time.

With this in mind, here are 92 of our telemarketing hints and tips for you to browse and read, and hopefully learn from and action – why not add you favourite telemarketing tip in the comments?

• 5 Tips for Successful Telemarketing
• 5 Steps to Great Telemarketing
• 5 Ways to Bring in New Business
• 3 Uses for Telemarketing That Aren’t Selling

We recently received an email from Steve Mills offering a free download of his ebook The 10 Biggest Lead Generation Mistakes (click on the link to get yours for free) and the lovely @shaungisbourne agreed to review it for us, so here’s his review:

In this comprehensive yet far from exhaustive guide, and with some real examples backed up by cold hard numbers, Steve Mills brings into focus core sales and marketing truths, introducing concrete actions for future-proofing your business. Focusing on the measurable and repeatable actions of sales and marketing that any self-respecting organisation can and should put into practice, Mills pulls no punches as he delves into his own mistakes as well as drawing on the experience of others.

Image by TLC Fotografie via Flickr

Lead generation is a strategy that small businesses have to master. In order for a business to stay afloat, interaction with its target market is necessary. With the help of the internet, reaching out to potential customers has become a lot simpler. The most popular lead generation strategies include sending e-mails or making calls. But there are more techniques to consider.

We may sometimes think that the UK market is too saturated to generate new business, but at VSL we believe that 2011 is THE year to grow. So, to help you achieve this, we have come up with our top 5 ways to bring in new business.

1. Telemarketing - An integral part of any business, telemarketing isn't about ringing as many people as possible; it's about ringing the right people. By speaking to the decision makers from a carefully selected list of potential clients/customers etc, you can help to maximise new business potential. By offering enthusiastic and straight to the point information, you can ensure those at the other end of phone understand exactly who you are and what you’re offering.

The last post in our series of blogs about the reasons people give for not wanting to outsource their telemarketing campaigns.

You can find the others here: #1 / #2 / #3 / #4

We don't outsource our sales because:

We don’t need someone full-time

One of the main advantages of Outsourced Selling is its flexibility. 

You might start off needing as little as one day a week – but then you might want to launch a new project, and suddenly want a lot more resource. 

Continuing our series of reasons people give for not wanting to hire a telemarketing companyd, today we have:

I already have a sales team

It’s common for an SME to have a couple of sales people who are expected to do all the sales related work: they generate their own leads, have to go out of the office on calls and close the sales too.  This can be a moderately successful model, if you have found good people to work for you, but typically sales go through peaks and troughs. The sales person makes lots of calls and generates appointments and then as he/she is out on appointments they cannot be generating more leads!