Should You Use Telemarketing Services for Trade Show Follow Up?

Hiring an outside telemarketing company may help boost post-show sales when agents are effectively trained to represent your organization and products on a call.

To maximize trade show results, companies sometimes opt to utilize the services of an experienced telemarketing center to make personalized phone contact with prospects and clients before and after a show.

When time and staff resources are limited, a professional telemarketing company can be a valuable support tool for achieving exhibiting goals.

Before a show, trained callers can extend the reach of a sales team by directly contacting clients and inviting them to stop by your exhibit area.

After the event, trade show follow-up contact can also be handled by telemarketers to thank visitors for visiting your booth and to further qualify purchase intent for the sales staff.

You can even arrange a call transfer to your in-house sales department for prospects who are screened as high potential buyers.

Expert telemarketing centers offer a full range of services that include call strategy development, script writing, data verification and reporting.

Agent Hiring and Training

Look for a company that values its agents as the highest unique selling proposition. The quality of each agent’s screening, hiring and training is key because he or she is the person who will have direct interact with your clients.

Be sure to ask about English and/or bilingual speaking agents based on your trade show follow-up needs. Also, inquire about the level of training in contact management etiquette.

Quality Control Systems

An internal quality control department within the call center is a must. Each call should be recorded for quality assessment. You should be able to listen to a random sampling of calls any time to ensure they are meeting expectations and delivering the script as planned.

The call center should always provide daily reporting of live party contact, data verification updates, and live transfer numbers.

Getting Started

Once you select and contract with a telemarketing center for trade show follow-up, you need to work together to develop and test a call strategy and script that meets your needs.

Provide your contact with a clean, up-to-date customer data file in csv format from which to make calls. The call center agents can help verify your data and update your client records, if necessary.

For leads generated at your trade show booth, have your strategy and approved script ready before the show begins.

Immediately following the event, send your lead file to the center so personalized calls can begin the next business day.

Industry experts say that companies utilizing call centers to assist with trade show follow-up are seeing as much as a 50 percent increase in after-show sales compared to organizations trying to handle phone follow-up with an inhouse sales force.

This article was written by Cathryn Malinowski .