Reference no: EM132321590

Performance, Legal, and Ethical Issues

Telemarketing is direct marketing an organization conducts over the telephone. It seems they always have to call during dinner. It might surprise you to learn that telemarketing actually is more profitable for business markets than for consumer markets. When business-to-business marketers use the telephone to keep in contact with smaller customers, it costs far less than a face-to-face sales call yet still lets small customers know they are important to the company.

The major issue for telemarketers today is whether or now they should have access to cell phone numbers ... as many consumers fear. In fact, rumors crop up from time to time that it's now necessary to place your cell number on the Do Not Call lists to avoid telemarketing calls. So far, that's not true. Especially for many younger people, their cell phone often is their only phone, which makes the lack of penetration of this media a big hurdle for marketers desiring a telemarketing strategy.
(Solomon, M. R., Marshall, G. W., & Stuart, E. W. (2009). Marketing: Real people, real choices (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.)

1. How do you personally respond to telemarketing solicitations at work or at home? If a telemarketer leaves you a voicemail message, do you ever respond?

2. Yes, unfortunately a lot of the phone calls I receive seem too good to be true as well. And, it sometimes is a difficult or inconvenient process to get the telemarketer to take you off of their call list. So, with this in mind is there any way for the industry to regain at least a small degree of trust from consumers?Or, is it simply too late to revive the effectiveness of telemarketing to consumers?

3. Disconnecting a home land line is pretty much the norm these days. Most in the class have indicated that they simply ignore a call from a telemarketer. In fact, some services will show the caller ID as "Scam Likely" or something similar. Is there an opportunity for marketers to simply send the recipient a text? Or, is this even more intrusive and less effective than a phone call?

Some contend that the Internet is making salespeople more effective today in several ways. One is by helping them do various tasks more effectively. For example, the salespeople in your company may use the Internet to access product information, customer and prospect, and competitive information more quickly. The information is probably more up-to-date and thorough than other sources of information. The Internet may also be used to access product presentations as well as for processing customer orders, and filing necessary reports. The second way the Internet is helping salespeople to be more effective is a derivative of the first.

For example, as salespeople become more efficient, they have more time for building relationships with important customers. As many companies are using their own web pages to serve smaller customers, this too frees up the salesperson's time to serve more important and more profitable customers.

Spiro, Stanton, Rick: Management of a Salesforce. Eleventh Edition. New York, New York, McGraw Hill Irwin, 2003.

4. In what other ways does the Internet help a company's sales force become more effective? Have you seen specific examples at your place of employment?