The Stigma Attached To Telemarketing: A B2B approach, the difference between telesales and pipeline management?- Chris Parker

When you think of telemarketing or telesales, you automatically paint a picture of a call centre, miles away, with employees aggressively and randomly calling you at an inappropriate time, trying to get you to buy some dodgy double glazing or make you switch your electrical supplier. You would be right in thinking this to a certain extent, however there are various different forms of telemarketing and there is also a massive underlining difference between telemarketing and pipeline management.
Theodore Gage once quoted “as far as the mails concerned, the garbage can is only an arm’s length away……..Mail is pretty inoffensive. But the phone-especially if certain companies use persistent operators-can be a real and unavoidable nuisance”. This just adds to the renowned stigma attached to telemarketing and many working professionals question the effectiveness of telemarketing and the negative implications. It could be argued that telemarketing can be intrusive, be un-ethical, effect company image and represent a “discontinuity with the status quo of advertising”.

Telemarketing as a concept is fairly broad and is diverse, although, it can be broken down into three categories; Conventional Tele-marketing, Automated Tele-marketing and Tele-marketing with a disguised message. So in contrast to these different forms, the definition of pipeline management is much more specific. Pipeline management is, in basic terms, the assessment of all your potential opportunities/leads for the balance of quantity and quality. The best metaphor which was used to me in explaining pipeline management is that companies who do not use pipeline management is similar to riding a rollercoaster; exciting and exhilarating at first but in the long term exhausting and ineffective.

Additionally, another clear difference between telemarketing and pipeline management is that it is tactical and approached in a more strategic way. From conducting market research and then positioning the business, a relevant strategy can be put in place for managing a pipeline, where by specific organisations are targeted and the requirement for a product/service is evaluated through budget, authority, need and time. Once the lead has been established it can then be placed into a CRM where a pipeline can build over time and a relationship can evolve, in the end filtering your leads down to the qualified prospects where sales can be completed and customers can me made. A longer a process than first thought!

Telemarketing can, in essence, be used in the process of pipeline management and in an opposing argument isn’t really as bad as it sounds. There a countless benefits to telemarketing but in my opinion the core advantage is that a phone call is a lot more personal than an email or advertisement. If you compare most forms of advertising to telemarketing it is more cost efficient, it is more flexible and is far easier to measure. As well as offering a degree of time compression, in Kenneth Schneider’s journal (Telemarketing as a promotional tool) it features a head to head study with direct mail and shows that telemarketing is 2.5 to 7 times more effective. So in conclusion when you next think of telemarketing don’t judge and think more so of pipeline management.