Let’s think about that for a moment.

From the 3rd May 2007, every telemarketing company in Australia didn’t have to call 200,000 people who would have never taken up their offers.

In direct marketing, the biggest cost is wastage.  Sending catalogues to people who call it junk mail and throw it away without opening it – waste. Calling people who will never ever in their life buy over the phone – waste.

Then along comes this beautiful targeting program which allows non-customers to opt-out, leaving behind people who don’t mind receiving telemarketing calls.

How many people are on the Do Not Call register as of 17th December 2008?

2.6 million.

That’s 2,600,000 people who have removed themselves from the pool, leaving behind those who, again, don’t mind receiving telemarketing calls.

A recent report titled Go Away, Please by The Australia Institute’s Josh Fear (a perfect name for a mad scientist by the way) has found that the register has reduced telemarketing calls by around 30 per cent.

This means that instead of making 1000 calls for, say, 50 sales, telemarketers now only need to make 700 calls for the same 50 sales.  What an improvement in conversion that is! What happens when conversion rates go up? Telemarketing becomes a better return on investment which means more companies choose it to sell their products.

Mr Fear recommends the register changes from Opt Out to Opt In. Telemarketers would only be able to call people who have shown willingness to receive calls by putting their name on the register.

This idea probably has telemarketers quaking in their boots!

They hold tight to the idea that they can call someone who doesn’t want their service/product and through their amazing sales ability make a sale. Now, it is true that some people can be enticed to buy based on a call but the sheer number of calls which need to be made to find them is a colossal expense.

Telemarketers should be embracing the Do Not Call Register as the greatest boon to their industry since the invention of the auto-dialer.

If the register became opt-in, we’d start seeing tick boxes with “Yes, I’d like to receive offers” appearing on forms when we bought products or signed up to websites.

This self-selected group may be far smaller but the conversion rate would be through the roof!

Pete

p.s.  To sign up to the register and make telemarketing an even better return on investment go to www.donotcall.gov.au

Morons #1
A few days ago a customer sent us a competing quote so we could beat it. We opened the file and it looked very familiar.

IT WAS OUR PROPOSAL!

The Infiniti logo was swapped out for a shall-remain-nameless Sydney telecommunications company.

They hadn’t changed a word. They hadn’t added anything. They took our terms and conditions information wholesale.

Seriously guys?  You can’t create your own sales proposal?

What do you think is going to happen when customers shop around? If they come to both of us they are going to realise the proposals are identical!

After contacting them (and mentioning that magic word “lawyer”) we now have their “undertaking” they won’t use our proposal again. We’ll see how it goes.

Morons #2
Yesterday we received one of our subscribed magazines and as I was reading through it I found an article that looked very  familiar.

Ah, I know where I’ve seen this before – OUR WEBSITE!

These guys have been slightly cleverer than the last lot and changed a few words here and there. Not enough to completely disguise it because being lazy is a key trait of those who steal work.

We haven’t decided what to do about this yet. Should we call them up? Should we post a copy of the article to them along with a copy of our website?  Let me know if you have any suggestions.

World Wide Web of Copying
The web has made it incredibly easy to copy work from anyone but it has also made it incredibly easy to track down those who copy your work!

Copying websites and sales proposals is a little different from music, videos and books. Let’s face it – no one is downloading an Alcatel phone system proposal unless they’re in the market for an Alcatel. Kids aren’t sharing our proposal on iPhones.

Businesses who rip off content are almost guaranteed to be caught – either by the customer or the people they ripped off.

And what does it say about you as a business? It’s easier to steal than create? It’s easier to cheat than be authentic?

How true are the claims this Sydney Telco company makes?

What I don’t understand is this: it’s really easy to make an excellent telephone system proposal. Make a competitive offer, back it up with service and support and most of all – stand behind everything you do.

Don’t steal a competitive offer, change out logos and then flake out when your customers need you. We’re all in the same telecommunications industry and it’s clowns like these two examples who give everyone a bad name.

For all the readers out there – if you see something that looks familiar, something that has that feel of Infiniti about it but it’s not us, let us know so we can slap some more morons!

Pete

Sometimes it seems like people forget Christmas is coming. But isn’t Christmas on the same date every year? Hasn’t Christmas been on this date for some 2000ish years?

It’s not a shocking surprise that leaps out of nowhere is it?

Then, I wonder – if Christmas wasn’t coming, would you still need it installed before the 25th?

My theory is because Christmas has a name then it’s a stronger deadline than “the 25th”. Which is why around Easter we get the same rush and for some people, even Melbourne Cup Day becomes the deadline to shoot for.

I wonder if we had a day every month – maybe called Deadline Day – would we as a society get a lot more done?

Hmm…

Anyways, enough pondering of the silly season!

Merry Christmas, good health and happiness to everyone over the holidays and for the New Year.

Pete

P.S. Remember – there is always room for dessert.

A lot of customers ask me just how important on hold messages are. I think it’s easier to explain what often happens without it.

Today was a prime example…

I was booking a trip to the States with a local travel agency and they had to put me on hold to check some prices. So far, so good. So I’m sitting there for about a minute and a half, listening to the radio that they played when – I heard an ad for Flight Centre. I couldn’t believe it! And to make my day, they were actually advertising a special deal on flights… to the States. Well, I waited another 20 seconds or so and ended up getting sick of listening to the commercial station. So I hung up. And who do you think I called? You guessed it – Flight Centre.

So not only did I hang up on the little local agency because I got bored waiting… but I called their competitor. If only they knew!

What this business and so many of our own customers don’t realise, is what an incredible advertising opportunity the time their callers are on hold actually is. Most of them rush through what they’re doing to get back to their customers before they hang up (either out of boredom or like I didn’t this morning, because I heard a competitor’s ad).

I always ask them this question:

Where are you more likely to find a potential customer than one who has already taken the time to call you?

The answer – nowhere!

This morning I did a few calculations to illustrate to a new client just how many hours he could be advertising to his customers. His business receives an average of 125 calls a day and based on the statistics, he puts about 73% of those on hold for an average of 45 seconds. In just one month that’s over 25 hours! And in a year, it’s just over 300 hours… imagine how much it would cost him to get 300 hours of radio or TV ads!

And based on what happened to me this morning, imagine how many missed business opportunities that is.

Use your on-hold time to turn your callers into customers.

A lot of our clients ask us whether they really need professional recorded voicemail, when they can simply record it themselves. I tell them to try calling a business that doesn’t have it.

Every day I have to call companies and have to leave messages on shocking voicemails, obviously recorded by their receptionists (and by the sound of it, on a lunch break through a mouthful of chocolate muffin). Or worse, I leave an important message with someone’s P.A and get told they’ll call me back shortly… only to find out three days later that the message was never even passed on and got “lost” in a pile of paperwork. It’s frustrating, costs both our businesses money and it’s not exactly a professional impression, is it?

The way your voicemail sounds is like your business “shop front window” -your reputation depends on it being a true reflection of your professionalism.

Yesterday we set up voicemail for a local accounting firm. They currently get hundreds of calls a week that go to their voicemail. These messages are then taken down by hand, put in the right accountant’s inbox and then each one has to be called back. As you can imagine, this process drives everyone involved crazy, including their clients!

We set up individual voicemail for each of the five key accountants. Now instead of clients leaving vague messages on the general voicemail, they feel comfortable leaving their confidential information and know that only their personal accountant will hear it.

Now the accountants can prioritise their call backs as well as having the right files and answers on hand before they call each client.  Plus, the company is saving money with shorter calls and no unnecessary return calls.

And, if they needed another reason to be happy with their voicemail solution - it’s also the “green” option – without handwritten messages they’re saving the trees!

What does your voicemail message say about your business?

With professionally recorded voicemail, you can offer callers so much more that the option to “leave a message after the beep”. We’ve helped thousands of businesses create lasting impressions with their voicemail, like the voicemail message that we recorded last week for a real estate company:

 “Hi you’ve reached ABC Realty. We’re either out showing one of our exclusive properties or signing over a sale to a happy customer, but we promise to get back to you before the sun sets.  Leave us a message or call Lisa directly on 0415 ### ### and get the answer to your question immediately. ”

Your telecommunications person should take the time to negotiate straightforward mobile plans with competitive rates, should investigate and weed out financing plans and contracts that may lock you in to unworkable or ultimately hideously expensive agreements. They definitely should prevent staff from purchasing incompatible or unneeded telecommunications facilities, or scarpering off with the bundled “free” plasma screen/ handheld computer/ barbeque or trip to Bali that attracted their attention in the first place, leaving your business to pay and pay.

If you cannot spare staff time or do not have anyone able to develop the right degree of expertise, a respected telecommunications consultancy can assist you to negotiate fair deals at the right price and save you money today and into the future.

You can tackle this one on two fronts. First, take steps to stop your staff misusing the company telecommunications facilities. Let them know that you will no longer tolerate undue personal calls, unauthorised downloading of material from the internet, such as music and videos, or calls of excessive length, particularly international, interstate or mobile calls.

Follow up with an analysis of excessive call costs on your telephone bill. If this will take too much time or is just too complex, call in the help of an experienced consultant. You may well find that their fee gets paid many times over by pinpointing areas of excess cost, allowing you to deal with the problem.

Secondly, you may find that you can get smart about the legitimate uses of the telecommunications facilities. It may be perfectly possible for your staff to communicate by email rather than by making calls interstate, or to and from mobiles. You may find that VoiP (voice over internet) calls give you acceptable quality and save a bundle. There’s plenty of scope to get creative and inventive about finding cost-effective solutions!

We can all look forward to a rather interesting time in the months to come as the global financial crisis is played out.

There are several ways that your business can consider its telecommunications spend and make strategic adjustments that will help to contain costs and contribute to the bottom line… and over the next few posts we’ll outline some of these.

Your telecommunications services are frequently the lifeblood of the business. You can generate revenue in many ways through carefully considered purchasing decisions and you can cut costs at the same time. Here are some tips for getting the best value for your money.

 Your telecommunications equipment and services should meet the current needs of your business. 

If your business has been around for a few years, it’s possible that you are paying for services that you no longer really need, or may have even forgotten all about. A little bit of housekeeping on the telecommunications bill or getting some informed advice from a consultant could delete recurrent unwarranted costs that will add up to big savings over the year.

Another tip is to make sure that you are using telecommunications that are appropriate to your business’s needs. It may be costing you money to expect your staff to provide efficient service with old, slow or inappropriate communications tools. Talk to the staff in the office and the field and see what they think. Then get some expertise to look at how to structure an optimal system. (Don’t just rush out to buy the latest and greatest – you are going want real value for your money.)

If you have accumulated a range of services and equipment, perhaps purchased at different times or by different people, you may be able to make really significant cost savings by bringing everything together under a single carrier. Benefits can come in 4 ways:

1.     You can negotiate a better deal and pay less for your services and equipment

2.     You can arrange committed service level agreements and deal with a dedicated account manager

3.     You can organize to receive benefits such as free calls within your organisation and avoid high charges for internet downloads

4.     You can manage telecommunication costs from a single point in your organisation, cutting administrative costs and increasing accounting efficiency 

This is just a silly out-take everyone in our office thought was funny..

Business up top and party down below (news reader style)

Wait for the end of the video, as Pete completely embarrasses himself. 

Earlier this month, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission finally “uncovered a minefield of hidden contracts and misleading conduct“ in the small-business telco market, launching action against dozens of respondents including small telcos, finance companies and individuals.

The ACCC action relates to bundled services being ‘aggressively’ marketed to small businesses Australia wide…

These “Bundled” deals refer to a telco providing several services under one contract and what often happens is the bundles include an offer of free equipment, such as plasma TVs, printers or fax machines etc etc. The ACCC alleges the equipment was not free, but supplied under rental agreements by finance companies unrelated to the telcos… and the clients phone calls are often also locked into the same contract period as your phone system rental.

We applaud the ACCC for (finally) looking into this practice, because we receive calls daily from small business owners who feel “mislead and deceived” by these types of practices.

The stories we have heard include things like

• “not being locked into” a phone call contract, but fine print stating their phone system rental costs increase sharply as soon as they move phone line carrier
• Being given “free” inclusions like the plasma experience only to find out it was virtually included in their phone system price
• Managers taking up these bundled solutions, and taking the free plasma home for themselves whilst leaving the company with the bill

If you want to read more about this, and find out some of the companies being targeted, check out the story over at The Age - http://smallbusiness.theage.com.au/starting/telecommunications/watchdog-on-trail-of-telcos–912973259.html

If you are looking for a new phone system and open to changing phone bill provider at the same time, please ask the provider the following questions:

• What is the contract period for the phone system?
• What is the contract period for the phone calls? (I wouldn’t advise going into a contact for phone bills; call costs are only going to get cheaper)
• What happens if I choose to change phone line providers at some point?
• What are my actual phone call rates? And are their flagfalls?
• What happens after the X month period with my costs and the physical system?