Among many call center services, telemarketing is an area riddled with controversies. With the advent of the Internet and other technology products and services, some skeptics are wondering if it is still relevant. Others even go as far as to call it a “lost art.”

The current state of telemarketing

There’s no denying that the reputation of telemarketing has turned for the worst, due to years of unprofessional practices by some telemarketers. Moreover, the Internet has made it possible for consumers to easily search for products or services, making it redundant for telemarketers to introduce new items.

Despite these, however, telemarketing continues to thrive for businesses around the world. In fact, in the United States, this industry is expected to notch $15.5 billion by 2015.

There seems to be several reasons for this. One is that consumers are still more receptive with a human voice compared to electronic formats, making it easy for telemarketing call center agents to build rapport over the phone. Moreover, it also takes less time to close a sale compared to online methods. Calling customers also enables a company to get feedback which can then be used to improve its offerings, something that cannot be said with visitors to websites.

Telemarketing is still an effective sales strategy, but it needs a more intelligent approach. For instance, rather than doing a blind campaign involving 100 people, a business should limit its calls to highly qualified, researched leads, which will result to a higher success rate and even prevent the population in question from feeling harassed or annoyed.

Given the right strategies, telemarketing remains unfaltering in terms of driving sales and generating leads. If uncertain with the ability of its internal team, a business can choose to form a partnership with a third party vendor with expertise and records of delivering results to ensure telemarketing campaigns are carried out as desired.