Telemarketing – Develop Proficiency In-House or Outsource Call Center?

Telemarketing is one of the most influential tools in the hands of business executives. Selecting the most productive approach in taking it from planning to execution makes all the difference to its meeting expectations. Telesales improves visibility of a brand and has a very positive impact on the growth of new businesses in particular. It also leads to more sale conversions and supports market surveys that gather data to help businesses improve customers’ experience and relationship with them.

Businesses can take advantage of telemarketing by cutting out associated aspects that take away from its overall performance. To do that, executives should weigh the pros and cons of putting together an in-house telemarketing call center versus hiring an external service provider. Studies indicate that outsourcing telesales saves more time and money than the effort of building know-how within the business.

Internal or third party telemarketing – what works?

Every corporation that is looking to add a new capability to its business is faced with the option of developing skills within the company or hiring out. For telemarketing, the answer can be gleaned from this question – Will it help you achieve your business goals by supporting your core competencies or not? If yes, you should create an internal team. For any other reason, outsourcing will work best.

Starting a telemarketing service should not be undertaken lightly. It demands time and money, recruiting and training personnel, installing tools, and keeping current with laws and news. Instead of investing valuable time, money and effort on areas that are not part of your core business goals you can use made-to-order solutions from external telesales companies. They work as well as in-house services (or better) and promise faster returns on investment.

Telemarketing services – outsourcing boosts growth

Telemarketing services can quicken the growth of businesses and the adoption of products by:

• Slashing the time to market: The time to market is a vital element that enables businesses to benefit from up-and-coming market opportunities. Be it a new business or product, outsourced telemarketing services gets the message to the market without incurring the delays due to hiring and preparing personnel. Shrinking time to market leads to additional sales and more customers for the business.
• Flexible staffing to meet demand: A lot of businesses see a rise and fall in sales and demand. Instead of constantly having to expanding and cutting down internal telesales personnel to meet requirements, you can contract out telemarketing services. As outsourced services cater to more than one customer, surplus staff is moved to other projects till required again.
• Allowing organization to focus on core business goals: Product launches involve issues that need management’s immediate consideration. By delegating telemarketing to an external agency, management can focus on resolving these issues without distractions.
• Providing know-how and hardware support: Outsourced telemarketing services are specialized organizations. They employ expert staff and use latest technology and equipment to deliver results for your business. Leveraging their resources is a cheaper alternative to taking on the expenses of acquiring tools and training staff on processes and skills.
• Maximizing return on investment: With outsourced telemarketing services, businesses can control fixed expenses and see returns quickly.
• Limiting legal liability: The telemarketing industry is governed by state and federal rules that are frequently updated and vary across states. Service companies keep staff in sync with relevant changes in rules and save your business from potential litigation. For an in-house service, this is a challenging job that not only takes away from an employee’s billable time but is also unrelated to the core competencies of the business.

There are many occasions when a business owner has to consider outsourcing decision that confronts business executives many times for a lot of reasons – reducing expenses, rapid business development, expansion, etc. Outsourcing telemarketing brings many benefits to the table, making it an option worth considering. Daljeet Sidhu is the author of this article.

Category: From the Editor