Why Telemarketing is Vital to the Economy

Telemarketing is a huge industry that employs millions of people and generates billions in commerce annually. Telemarketing is an estimated $250 billion industry with about 4.6 million employed in the United States alone. Spending on telemarketing exceeds $60 billion annually, with millions more in dedicated support industries like computer hardware and software. So despite the bad rap telemarketing often gets, it's actually very vital to economies both domestically and internationally.

True, telemarketing is a legal business, but many telemarketing firms still do make illegal calls and are able to get away with it based on the knowing the cost prohibitive constraints of law enforcement. Yes, there are the DNC lists in play, but because lack of resources to enforce those edicts, many offenders will simply not get caught- ever. Legal action mainly (cost effectively) focuses on the largest and most egregious abusers.

The less professional telemarketing companies often operate on the mistaken assumption that anybody and everybody is a likely prospect for their product or service. Wrong! Even though this is a fact that is repeatedly proven by the negative reactions of prospects and low close ratios, they continue to proceed down the path of limited profits. And regarding the practice of simply cold-calling to sell things, industry insiders already know that untargeted cold calling is largely a waste of time.

The rap against telemarketers may arise not strictly based on prospecting efforts, but simply because it's often not done correctly. Telemarketing is a powerful person-to-person marketing medium. With effective telemarketing, a firm can make 5-6 times more customer contacts daily versus face-to-face selling. But when driven solely by the need to contact as many people in as sort a time period as possible, the calls are often intrusive and unwelcome by recipients.

Simply by changing the purely volume-model from which many work, corporations can ultimately make a heck of a lot more profits-which is why they are engaged in making the calls to begin with. Unbelievable as it may seems most companies doing business by telemarketing are not intentionally in the business of being a sore spot in the lives of intended customers.

When correctly done, telemarketing is a great complement to other marketing efforts. For example, a telemarketing project is a perfect prong to survey potential clients and understand them better. And though some businesses operate exclusively by telephone, telemarketing should most often used as an adjunct to an overarching marketing program that ties together advertising and personal sales.

By systematically researching, pre-planning and applying the often readily available technologies and abundant demographics and psychographic data, bottom line profits can be greatly enhanced. Thank goodness for the internet and the advent of social networks. Now, it's much easier to intelligently survey and to actively become part of the conversation of prospects and clients. This all equates to higher quality exchanges for all parties.