Telesales in an IT environment?

How many times have you, in a B2B environment (but also as a private consumer) really bought something over the phone? I mean the whole way: a sales agents contacts you, presents the solution, attracts your attention and finally (maybe after multiple intermediate steps) you buy ...


For most IT companies (hardware, software, telco, service providers ...) Telesales is considered to be a "must-have" sales channel (besides direct sales, resellers or vars, e-shops and other). It is true that a telesales channels has some clear advantages ... for sure for the seller (scale, costs, direct, ...). Just think about the "ease" to establish direct contact with your potential customer compared to the chance of attracting attention with paper brochures or e-mail communication. Direct effective 1-to-1 communication and personalisation are also for the buyer reasons to "like" tele-sales. Although I have to admit that the number of "customers" that really like to buy over the phone remains limited. The tele-sales person that interrupts you, unasked and likely at an inconvenient moment, trying to overload you with information/promotions and things you should not miss ... is very unlikely to be successful. And the more complex the solution offered the lower the likelihood of success.

I read lately (and I hear from personal contacts) that a majority of CIO's do not like the telesales approach of their supplier. I just think about my own reaction when I pick up the phone at night, after a busy day at work, and hear the commercial speech of an over-enthusiastic sales agent promoting things like ... eg. digital TV. I will ask them polite to send me some information, so that I can think about it. But it is very unlikely that I will buy the new stuff over the phone from the person who just called me.
Although on the other hand, I have to admit that in this particular case, the call attracted my attention, got me into thinking about digital TV, and initiated my buying reflects. A couple weeks later I actually ended registering for digital TV, ... But I went to the "shop" to buy and I used the face-to-face contact to answer all my questions.
Maybe I am not representative for regular behaviour (age? culture?), but buying on the phone is not what lots of CIO's actually do.


According to my proper experiences (personal and professional) telesales is a channel to initiate sales, but not a pure "saleschannel". The approach with tele-sales people can be valuable to promote the "stuff". And then I rather call them a Telemarketing channel, because the chance to sell over the phone in countries like Belgium remain small (culturally we are different from eg the US).


Finally, telechannels are like other channels. If the seller differentiates through the approach, the new customer might give it attention. Be the first, or be different. Because if everybody in your market is doing it, the success rate will be lower (similar to your brochure that is lost in the pile of commercial mail or you e-mail that overloads the inbox of your potential customer).