Very often when I’m asked to visit a company they are debating whether to use an outsourced agency like Newton Fox or to invest in alternative strategies.
My role at this stage is consultative. You might be forgiven for thinking that I’m surely bound to try to persuade said company to spend their money with me but you’d be wrong. Of course I’d like a new client, who wouldn’t? But not at any price.
Reputation
Newton Fox has a great reputation for delivering results that make sense of the whole process and the reason for this is because we’re super careful who we engage with. A failed campaign results in ill feeling, acrimony and the opposite of a good reputation. Let’s face it, bad news travels ten times quicker than good.
So, how do we determine whether our prospective clients’ goods or services will be successfully marketed on the phone? It’s not easy, but we start by asking two questions:
- Why should the target prospect consider changing their current arrangements?
- Why should they seriously consider our clients’ offering?
In other words, how compelling is the offering? In a crowded market place the products or services simply have to have very strong and convincing USP’s that bring real value and difference.
Other considerations include basic maths whereby we’re looking at what a ‘win’ would mean financially for our potential client and how long it’s likely to take to get to that win. We’ve recently had word from one FM client that they’ve just won a contract with a large food manufacturer worth £5.2m with expected returns of c18%. Compare this with a prospective client who provides UV films for windows who stands to profit circa £20 per sale and you can see how important this is.
Alternatives To Telemarketing
Look; we of all people know that there are alternative routes to market other than telemarketing and sometimes trade specific advertising, PPC and web based marketing will far out-perform anything anyone can do on a phone. Telemarketing has it’s place (or I would have starved to death years ago!) and it’s especially good when a company needs feedback on the market, it’s products and services and it’s competitors.
It’s the only two way marketing medium providing instant, real time feedback and where that’s crucial it’s untouchable. However, all marketing is expensive and the most expensive is that which yields nothing so real care has be taken before embarking on it.
Very often we’ll do a ‘test and measure’ just to gauge the likely outcome of a full blown campaign. If this indicates that telemarketing will not yield the hoped for results then we can either re-calibrate or abandon altogether if necessary before any real investment has been made.
As is the trend in our modern business world; genuine, consultative appraisals of any prospective clients’ situation is the very best way to see if a fit exists and a professional relationship should be formed.
It’s for this reason that we partner with lots of other marketing businesses including the obvious like web designers and social media specialists and the not so obvious such as copywriters, sign writers and PR agencies.
There’s so many ways to promote a modern business that relying on one medium in nonsensical so we would never advocate this as a strategy. By far the most potent is a clever mix of mediums set up to compliment each other to bring optimum results.
Happy Selling!
