Telemarketing Makes Dollars and Sense

Telemarketing used to be less than highly regarded both as a means of making sales and as an occupation.  In recent years however, telemarketing has become highly regarded by companies as a means of making a sale and it’s become at least officially recognized as a means of making sales.
 
In the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s most people were accustomed to getting late night phone calls from eager telemarketers selling everything from vacation timeshare packages to home heating system inspections.  Telemarketing had a bad image in the mind of most consumers.
 
As people became more accustomed to doing business online and by telephone, they also became more accustomed being solicited via the phone.  Today there are laws covering who can be called and who can’t in the US and telemarketing has become less of a problem
 
One area where telemarketing is booming however is with the dozens of companies in the Philippines, many of them located in Manila (the nation’s capital), who specialize in telemarketing.  These companies secure contracts from stateside vendors to telemarket a wide variety of products and services.  They give their agents a script and a computer hooked up to very sophisticated software that enables them to contact large numbers of people in a very short period of time
 
In the Philippines, these jobs are considered pretty good because they pay is well above the national average and frequently the agents can do very well with incentives and bonuses.  The working conditions are pretty nice too……even by US standards.
 
Telemarketing call center agents in the Philippines work at all hours of the day and night all during the week.  They get regular pay, decent employee benefits and most of thesw large offshore call centers that specialize in telemarketing even have extensive social activity programs for their agents.
 
Usually these agents don’t know exactly what they’ll be assigned to do when they join the company.  That’s because it actually might vary.  Some of these companies, AKA: Business Process Outsourcers(BPO), offer their clients a variety of other services.  Virtually anything that is done via the telephone or on a computer can be done by agents in these offshore call centers in the Philippines.
 
Outsourced Telemarketing makes more and more sense to the US companies that contract it out too.  The cost of keeping a salesperson ‘on the street’ in the US today is astronomical…..well over $250 a day.  When business owners compare that cost with the cost of a telemarketing approach (at 30-60% of the cost) and it’s no wonder that outsourcing their telemarketing to a lower cost, offshore services provider is the method of choice.
 
Telemarketing also makes a lot of sense when people frequently already know what the item looks like and how it works.  Often all they want is some critical information to help them make a final decision.
 
Once they get that information it’s easy to just order it over the phone or on the internet.  In fact, because people are so busy today, they often feel it’s a lot easier and more convenient to buy things over the phone. So….telemarketing is a lot more appreciated now than it used to be.