Telesales is alive and well in 2008. If you have never considered telesales, or viewed it as a low-class method of doing business, you might be missing out on a great deal of sales for your business. You could be generating 25-50% or more business by using this method effectively.

Is it legal?

Yes. If you are calling businesses during normal business hours, there are no laws in place forbidding you to call. The "Do Not Call List applies to residential phone numbers only.

(2) Ideas To Get You Started Fast and Get Results
First, you need to see how telesales can fit into your existing marketing efforts. Do you have a list of clients or customers with phone numbers? If so, this is a great start, since you might develop a simple script to target these people, and do a simple follow-up call. Nothing high-pressure, but just a low-key call to keep your business fresh in their mind. You could develop a script in an afternoon and have someone in your business make the calls or do-it-yourself. Either way, you will build good-will with your existing clients or customers and more than likely generate some new business. Perhaps you make a special offer by phone only, to motivate them to take action now. This is a good way to generate short-term cash-flow.

Another approach might be to gather a list of 100 potential clients you have not done business with, and send them a brief letter introducing your company and your best benefits that you can provide them. This could be as simple as a single page letter or a full-blown promotional piece. Next, give them an incentive to call YOU, perhaps a discount, coupon, or other promotion. Then, include a phrase in your letter such as: "We would like to follow-up with you in a few days by phone". Finally, call the telesales prospects who did not respond a few days later and simply ask if they got your letter. You can easily start a conversation from here and go into your product, service or whatever you offer.

These two telesales examples are easy ways to get started. They do not rely heavily on a script, but you will certainly want to put a script together for calls you make, even with these two methods. Whether or not you stick to the script is up to you, but you should have telesales guidelines in place to make the calls move along in an orderly fashion. Otherwise, you may forget key points on some calls, which could have resulted in sales, appointments etc.

Results.

A key tip for any telesales effort is to constantly track your results and improve on the system. If you are telesales yourself or have others do it for you, if you do not track your results, you cannot determine what is going right and what needs improvement. This is important, and although boring, you need to keep record of how many calls you make, how many people you actually talk to, and the resulting sales, appointments etc. that you get from your calls. Only then can you see how you are doing and what needs work.

I hope these basic tips get you started in the right direction.

By: Timm O'day link