Many companies laugh off the idea of using inside sales or telemarketing professionals in order to generate leads or close business over the phone. Yet the biggest companies and the best in class firms across just about every industry are using that as part of their arsenal in order to accelerate their sales and drive their growth. Its a lot more efficient to deploy inside sales people and telemarketing professionals than it is to use outside field sales professionals for the same function.

Often, theres a big gap between marketing and lead generation programs and field sales people that can only be filled by inside sales or telemarketing professionals. Companies use telesales & telemarketing in a variety of ways: Perhaps, they are doing lead generation qualification or theyre following up on leads that are coming from marketing programs. Or, they are actually performing inside sales functions and closing deals over the phone. Theres also a hybrid model which is commonly used by companies to qualify opportunities, close deals that can be done over the phone, and then pass larger relationship based sales opportunities out to the field sales force.

If youre thinking about deploying a field sales function or adding to your field sales force, think first about how you can use inside sales or telemarketing go to boost your sales efficiency at a lower level of cost. Once youve decided to deploy inside or telemarketing sales professionals, its really critical that you bring in the right outside consulting or outsourcing capabilities to set up the function in the absence of having your own experience in this area. An outsourced telesales or pipeline development consultant can bring you a myriad of experience which will have a huge impact on your ability to actually be successful when deploying this capability.

Many companies have tried and failed at telesales and telemarketing efforts because they lack the experience and the management acumen to fine tune telemarketing and telesales programs for success. Its absolutely critical that you think about acquiring the management skill that goes with hiring the bodies to actually do the phone work. A good telesales and telemarketing professional or consultant will come in and help you to determine the message, the approach, the target, the unique selling proposition the call flow and the script, all of the essential elements to be used in order to train your telesales and telemarketing individuals.

A good consultant also will help you recruit and hire the best telesales and telemarketing professionals for your companywhich is not an easy task because there are many people who are not capable of this kind of job. If youre considering deploying additional sales resources think about telesales and telemarketing and bringing in an outside resource to help you with that goal.