I hear the economy is in a scary situation. If that’s the case, I understand why everyone is looking for ways in which to increase their sales – we’ve found that a growing number of our clients are taking on virtual telemarketers to boost their sales, which makes a lot of sense.

Lets face it – cold calling is not everyone’s forte, so outsourcing your cold calls or semi-cold calls is a smart way for you to free up your time to focus on other things that are more important to your life or your business.

Now cold calling is a powerful strategy that can generate business fast, but there are 3 things that you need to do to make sure that your telemarketer is a good return on investment for you.

1. Define Vertical Markets
- Often entrepreneurs and business owners will try to service everyone – unfortunately everyone is too big for a telemarketer to canvass. Even if you are a service which everyone could use, like for example an accountant, you may want to have your telemarketer work in a niche market, or a vertical market.

How you define the market will make a big difference to you getting higher results from your agent. This market could be defined by a number demographics including stay at home mums, singles, home owners, professionals etc. Lets go with the accountant – if you are a tax accountant, maybe you want to define three markets for your three telesmarketing agents – family businesses, professional services and start up businesses.

Once you have defined your vertical market, your telemarketers and you can work out the best way to appeal to that vertical market.

Next week, in Part 2 of this series, we’ll look at how to prepare your telemarketing database so that your telemarketing agent is giving you good value on your investment in them.