I am seriously considering giving telemarketing a try for my web development services. Has anyone considered this for themselves? Has anyone tried it? What were the results?
It depends on what you mean by telemarketing. I would certainly not be cold-calling, but you may want to look into “warm-calling”, where you prime a potential client before you call him. Just cold calling any kind of business will not pay off.
Personally, I just don’t like sale calls. But if you are comfortable with redundant phone calls then, telemarketing can be a good money maker. I worked as a telemarketer for a prestigious pot company and at the end of the day after making 100 local calls. We will have at least 3 appointments set up for the next day to make a sale.
In general the results of cold calling are basically 0, companies that make it succeed are selling high margins and getting few sales. Warm leads are a much more interesting idea as maartenvr suggested but still something you should expect to see only a small fraction of even come close to converting. If you have truly hot leads (i.e. companies looking for a web service) you can change this model but get use to rejection, that’s the telemarketing game… in truth it’s not much different than a bulk email or direct mail campaign, except that you’re on the phone trying to win another 15 seconds of the person’s time while they’re actively pushing to get you off.