Digital Business

 

 

I have recently joined a great small business which develops digital solutions for its clients and produces very high quality work. I have been hired to develop new business so that they can continue to grow their profits and expand their capabilities.

The small sales team is very good and highly committed. In the past, to generate new leads and appointments they hired the services of a telemarketing company. They pay them £400 per appointment made as long as it is qualified to their requirements.

Fair enough, you may think, for them to pay the telemarketing company that sort of money for making them appointments according to their brief. But, if they make five appointments for them a week the bill soon mounts up (£2,000 a week if your maths is a bit tired!).

I have been encouraging them to use LinkedIn and it was easy to see that using this tool will be far more effective for the sales team to find new clients than paying a telemarketing company.

Using LinkedIn, I found a prospect in the group of one of their existing key clients. We asked their current contact if he knew the person in question and he replied in the positive. We now have an appointment with contact found on LinkedIn and it cost us nothing bar a couple of phone calls and an email, saving us £400.

So, my question is simple. Will LinkedIn, and other tools such as Twitter, kill telemarketing companies when it is far easier and cheaper to find key prospects using these tools?

 

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Tags: business, digital, entrepreneur, Five, HTML, LinkedIn, marketing, networking, PHP, sales, small business, Web

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