Know The Illegal Practices In Telemarketing To Avoid Being Penalized!

DISH Network, a nationally recognized satellite services provider, has recently been sued by the FTC for constantly calling consumers that have asked to be placed in their Do Not Call list. If you don’t want this to happen with your company, then make sure that you only deal with a professional telemarketing company for your cold calling campaigns.

Don’t be fooled; if you think that by outsourcing your telemarketing campaign to a third party you will be spared from any fines that that telemarketing campaign might accrue, then you’re very wrong. It’s your company’s name and services that they will be selling to your sales leads, so if they are reported for doing anything illegal, you will be included in that suit. To avoid being defamed by their illegal practices, conduct business only with professional telemarketing service providers. Here are a few questions you need to ask when outsourcing your telemarketing campaigns:

Do you do robocalls?

If your prospective telemarketing company state that they do, then turn around at once and head straight to the door, or immediately hang up the phone. One important thing you must know about telemarketing is that telemarketing robocalls are illegal, although it’s a common practice because it greatly decreases the need for actual human telemarketers and reduces operational costs. Never hire a telemarketing company who offers robocalls even if they offer the cheapest telemarketing campaign you can find.

Do you regularly update your Do Not Call lists?

Do Not Call lists are an important compliance of professional telemarketing companies. Different countries have their own do not call lists, which is why you must ask the company you’re about to hire if they have their own. If they say they don’t, then you’ll most likely have annoyed sales leads in the future, which could eventually bring you to where DISH Network finds itself now. There are telemarketing companies who say that they do have their own DNC list, but if this is not constantly updated, then it will still lead to annoyed sales leads.

Do you use spoofing tactics?

Spoofing is the practice of altering the caller ID that appears on the phone of your sales leads when a robo-caller makes a call. This is, of course, completely illegal.

What is the intro spiel used by your telemarketers?

It is important that the professional telemarketers you hire are trained to say their name and the company they represent within the first few seconds that the sales leads answer their call. Failure to do so is punishable by law. Just to be sure, you may want to give a trial business list to your prospective telemarketer filled with only dummy numbers. If they consistently fail to follow the best practices in telemarketing, then simply look for another service provider. Another way to make sure is to help create the telemarketing script to ensure that the first few seconds are dedicated to proper introduction.

All of the illegal telemarketing practices stated above are worth fines no lesser than $500, with some fines even reaching $30 million. To avoid this, be very careful with who you choose to represent your company during telemarketing campaigns.

Is Your B2B Telemarketer A Dolphin Or A Shark?

A great pastor/writer I know once told this story:

"A guy with a large black Bible clutched under his arm rode the bus I was on. At once, I noticed that peculiar glazed look on his eye and the friendly smile on his face—and I knew it wouldn’t be too long before he’d make his first move. In my next breath, bingo, he cornered his first victim—a college girl beside him—with the question asked in a typical preacher’s modulated voice, "Friend, are you saved?" When the woman turned away, undeterred, the zealous evangelist turned next to the fiftyish man in front of the woman and inquired, "Do you know Jesus Christ?" This man signaled the driver to stop and got off immediately. I shivered when I realized I was the only passenger in the bus left to talk to. We smiled at each other and I wondered what his opening line would be. "Friend, if you die right now," he asked with utter seriousness, "do you know where you would go?"

They conversed for a while but the writer eventually regretted allowing the conversation to happen. He then stepped off the bus. As he watched the vehicle roar away, the evangelist was now talking to the driver. He then told his readers: "I admire guys like him. Their zeal, their sincerity, their courage to talk to total strangers. But it’s the same type of admiration that one has for killer sharks. As long as you see them from a distance, or on TV, that’s fine—you admire their strength, their speed, their raw power. But my admiration never makes me want to swim with them in the same pool."

The same can be said for telemarketers who completely disregard their sales leads during a call. When using telemarketers for your b2b lead generation campaigns, did you hire dolphins or sharks to perform your b2b telemarketing campaigns? Who are the telemarketing sharks? These telemarketers start their sales pitch right at the beginning of the call and keep talking, without even asking if the prospective lead has the time to listen to (or even care about) his offer. The calls made by these sales representatives are usually monologues, and they often get into arguments with their prospects because they keep forcing their offer on to the business lead. There isn’t a prospect whoever wants to hear a telesales representative shove a telemarketing script down their throat, and that’s all that telemarketing sharks do. 20 years ago, this aggressive style of marketing would have worked. But now that business people have more options through the internet, aggressive marketing is generally frowned upon.

If you want to make your b2b telemarketing campaign successful, hire telemarketing dolphins to perform your cold calling to increase your chances of converting your prospective sales leads. The professional b2b telemarketers promote having conversations with the business leads they are calling. The prospects are free to ask questions which helps improve the telemarketing script of the telemarketer. Because it’s a dialogue, the b2b telemarketer also gets a lot of supplemental information about the b2b leads.


Have you listened to your cold calling campaigns lately? So, are you employing telemarketing sharks or dolphins?

Key Performance Indicators For Good B2B Telemarketers

Hiring the Right Telemarketers

Businesses who wish to do a telemarketing campaign often make the mistake of simply hiring an "experienced telemarketer" from a freelance site, send them a business list to cold call, and wait for their b2b sales leads to come pouring in. But there is an important portion missing here, can you guess what? It’s the assessment of KPI's that measure the effectiveness of telemarketing applicants. To have truly successful telemarketing campaign, you have to have above average professional telemarketers doing your cold calling.

You might think that this is not important because the telemarketer will only talk to your prospective clients until they get the appointments and then you’d step in, but when you hire b2b telemarketers, they become the voice that will represent your business to the world. If you don't do the necessary steps required to qualify your telemarketers, then your b2b sales leads will see the telemarketer as a reflection of your own business. Remember, your business leads don't know and don't care whether that b2b telemarketer was a regular employee or a contractual.

When you hire a truly qualified telemarketer (e.i. experiences PLUS skills), you not only ensure that you will get business leads, but the quality of the b2b leads you receive will also be affected. When you hire freelance agents, you have to make sure that your future b2b telemarketers are capable of doing the job effectively and successfully. Now, there certainly a lot of key performance indicators enumerated across the web, but here are a few important factors to gauge your telemarketers. While the process of qualifying your b2b telemarketers can be made easier by hiring an expert b2b telemarketing company, knowing these information will also be helpful.

• Reliability - asking your applicants why they are applying to be your telemarketers is important if you want to achieve good results. Applicants who are say that they see you as a good opportunity should be further asked: what happens when an even better opportunity presents itself?

• Drive - a goal-oriented employee will more actively seek out alternative solutions when faced with a problem instead of simply sulking. When you have telemarketers who are properly driven, they will be more thorough when qualifying leads so that you only get business appointments with high quality business sales leads that are more easily converted.

• Intellect and alertness - most job interview questions are practically the same in every industry and answers can be formulated beforehand; asking your applicants a completely random question will force them to think of an answer on the spot. This will help you gauge if they can handle b2b leads’ questions that were not covered by your telemarketing script.

• Tact - it is also important that you ask your potential b2b telemarketers how they would handle irate, disrespectful, and unwilling loud business leads. When they express strong antipathy towards a negative trait of your potential b2b leads (of which there would certainly be plenty), then they might just end up in an argument with one of your b2b leads.

• Outlook - a positive outlook is important in a job where they is a huge possibility of rejection and stress. When your telemarketer's glass is already half empty, they have have a greater risk of getting burned out, over-stressed and depressed. A telemarketer that is positive will be able to handle stress better.

Hiring telemarketers should never be rushed. Take the time to find the right b2b telemarketer for your business and your b2b telemarketing lead generation campaigns will truly be productive.