Telemarketing or Telesales: Do you know which one you need?

Let’s face it; most people don’t know the difference between Telemarketing and Telesales.  This suggests that they don’t understand the important distinct values that can be gleaned from each service.  The words ‘Telemarketing’ and ‘Telesales’ are still often used interchangeably and then, they can be used to describe activities that often cross over.  However, if you wish to get the most from your telephone campaign, knowledge of the differences and how they can be best employed to help your business is vital.

“Outsourced selling may be alright for some, but it’s not the right for model for me because……”

Rapidly increasing in popularity amongst SMEs and corporates, Outsourced Selling is all the rage, but there are still a lot of commonly held misconceptions about it and how it works.  Andy Dickens, Managing Director of Virtual Sales Limited, explains how the business works.

In theory, Outsourced Selling can work with any kind of a business from smallest start-ups, to established SMEs through to some of the biggest international organisations.  However, people often misunderstand what it is and how it works, and think that it won’t work for them.  Here are some of the objections that I hear to a company outsourcing its sales operations, and why they are wrong!

Many small companies start off their life with a pool of regular customers who recommend and refer them onto others. This is a very good way of growing a business organically and often leads to a sound base of quality clients. The problem with this method of growing a business though is that you have no control over the speed of the growth and sometimes you need extra help to take you to a higher level of activity.

The outsourced sales team is the ideal solution for many business organisations. Here are the Top Ten reasons for using ‘virtual’ sales people.

Most business owners / marketing managers / new sales people go cold at the thought of cold calling and picking up the telephone.

Here, Andy Dickens of Sussex based telemarketing agency Virtual Sales Limited, gives a few handy tips to take away the fear:

1. Articulate your value proposition:

What are you selling?

• Develop key features and benefits of your product/service
• Prepare a price list

Who should buy?

• Are you targeting large companies, SME’s or both?

Why should they buy from you?

• Develop a list of reasons why a customer should buy from you