In today’s online era you’d be forgiven for thinking that international telemarketing is a dying medium. Digital channels are cheap to manipulate and telecommunication has been abandoned to a degree in favour of people ‘liking’, ‘poking’ and tweeting one another via social networks – a trend that has not gone unnoticed by advertisers. But international telemarketing is still a powerful channel. It’s just had to learn how to fit in among its contemporaries in the communications world.
“People argue that telemarketing is dead in a B2B world where the prospects spend a huge amount of time online and in social media forums researching, educating themselves and seeking views from peers around the world,” says Claire Edmunds, CEO of Clarify. “The fact is, prospects still want to engage face-to-face or over a phone when ready. They want and need to be educated so they can choose a solution of the most benefit to them.”
The trick, says Edmunds, is to stop selling and start listening because “when positioned effectively in the buyer’s journey, telemarketing is a very visible face of the brand.”
Think globally, act locally
Putting together a telemarketing campaign on a global scale can seem like a complicated job. How do you centralise the process so that you can keep track of activity and results across multiple territories? The solution, says Edmunds, is to think global, but act local. International campaigns are usually handled centrally by an agency that works with sales teams within each locality being targeted. “Telemarketing cannot ever be truly international – there can only be well targeted, locally sensitive, regional telemarketing managed centrally at an international level. It allows controlled management of internal politics, objectivity in management and reporting, as well as local autonomy and communication,” suggests Edmunds
Some telemarketing agencies – normally those that cover cross-continent campaigns in regions as far as Asia and the Middle East – will have operations in those territories from where telemarketers make their calls in the appropriate languages. But a lot of pan-European telemarketing is handled from just one office, usually in a major southern town, such as London or Brighton, where it is easy to recruit multi-linguists as telemarketers.
“That way,” explains Paul Thomas, MD at Market Makers “you know that they all receive the same training and level of account management, in English, whether they’re French, German or Spanish.”
The language of business
By far the biggest barrier that UK marketers face is language, the main question being whether to conduct phone conversations in English (the language of business, after all) or the native language of the receiver. According to most telemarketing experts there isn’t a clear cut answer to this. As a general rule, the Nordic regions respond well to calls received in English. In France, Spain and Germany, the native tongue is considered more effective. And this doesn’t translate to using English telemarketers with a second language, because these countries will pick up on that and be less responsive. In the Middle East, China and India there are multiple languages to deal with.
Often, explains Niall Habba, MD of The Telemarketing Company, callers to countries where multiple languages are spoken may have to take a ‘two-tiered’ approach – that is, revert to speaking in English where there is a danger they may get the initial contact wrong. He gives the example of calling China and accidentally addressing a Cantonese speaker in Mandarin. “You just need to be flexible in how you call, and flag records so that if you don’t get the language right on the first call, you can switch to a different language on the second call,” he says.
The language you converse in can also depend on the size of organisation you are calling. Thomas says his agency has performed split tests before showing that in most larger organisations, where senior level influencers or decision makers are being targeted, there is no big difference in responsiveness whether the call is received in English or in the target’s native language. “Often at a senior level employees are non-national, or as a pre-requisite can speak several languages including English,” he says. “On the other hand, if you’re targeting small town organisations, you pretty much 100 per cent of the time need to communicate with them in their native tongue,” he adds. Researching regional variations in dialect is also a must.
Multilingual recruits
The UK (and London especially) is a great place to recruit multilingual speakers. Major telemarketing agencies recruit foreign language speakers that will work in-house across multiple campaigns, and can contract in those needed for a particular campaign. But, warns Edmunds, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to language considerations. “The people you put on the phone to represent your brand need the same skills as top sales people. They need the skills and language to navigate global accounts. They need to be able to build rapport and trust, which requires a natural sensitivity to issues of culture and dialect – and the ability to interpret personal behaviour and the mood of the prospect,” she says.
The cultural considerations are as important as the language ones. National holidays and differentiations in working hours or the working week need to be considered. You’re unlikely, for example, to have much joy in calling Middle-Eastern regions on a Friday.
The data issue
Another obstacle to overcome before embarking on an international telemarketing campaign is how to source good, clean data. A telemarketing agency will have relationships with specialist list brokers who can access data from within specific territories and markets. But if you’re going to source the data yourself, it’s a good idea to do a road test before rolling out a full campaign, especially if you’re going into a territory in which you have little or no experience in using data before. Thomas advises purchasing data from three or four sources in a given country, doing a sample test for validity and accuracy, and deciding from there which sources to go ahead and use for the full- scale campaign.
Integrating your telesales teams with your sales function is of vital importance. If your telemarketers are calling from the UK, and the sales teams are on the ground locally waiting to chase up leads, you need to make sure the two are singing from the same song sheet. This means making sure that everybody understands the proposition being taken to market, through to ensuring that your telesales and sales teams have a good, team-spirited working relationship.
Gareth Clark, senior VP of sales at Slipstream, stresses that ‘consistency of message’ is the key thing to aim for. “It’s not just about the people making the calls, but about integrating that with a much broader marketing mix and utilising the people on the ground just as much – these are also the ones with the ingrained local and cultural knowledge that can help nurture the whole process,” he says.
You’ll also want to consider how you’re going to integrate your telemarketing activity with other strands of communication within a campaign. “The challenge lies in being able to use the information you have to target your messages effectively. Dealing with many different contact roles in large, complex organisations is a particularly unique B2B marketing challenge,” says Edmunds. He continues, “Social media and online communication can be an extremely effective way to establish dialogue, build brand awareness and credibility, and humanise your sales interaction.
“Social media must be as bespoke to the local audience as the telemarketing element. Marketers must be acutely conscious of trends in advertising, the preferences and behaviours of each community, and the forums they use.”
Edmunds’ last point sums it up nicely. At the heart of a successful international telemarketing campaign lies the ability to interpret and tap into the language, culture, behaviour and trends of the territory you’re venturing into. Go forth, and prosper.
