TeleSales/Marketing

BOOKWORM.1

Hi Everyone,
I opened up my own business last year with the prospect of selling workshops and seminars of a high level and incorporating top speakers at these events etc. No expense spared.
Well let’s just say things have gone from bad to worse. All my intentions have gone on deaf ears and nobody seems too interested.
Even with all the setbacks I still believe what I’m selling is a worthy cause so I have since contacted a telesales company who say they agree – it is a worthy cause . . .
I have spent a lot of money on advertising so far and am wary that this is just a sales ploy on the sales company’s behalf.
So I suppose I am asking you guys is it worth my while using the telesales company or maybe you might have some suggestions were I am going wrong.
Thanks.
Orla

JerryQ

Who knows in the current market - but you should make a fairly large portion of the Telesales payment based on results - i.e. a percentage of their sales of your product.

JohnDigital

This is a very specialised and cluttered market, there are lot and lots of events companies that organise similar things, and without a track record it’s going to be very hard to secure attendees or speakers.

Most chambers of commerce and business trade organisations also run these sorts of events so many business people have lots of opportunities to attend similar events already, often for free. Lots of Telecoms companies and many of the Banks have in the past run similar networking events or business advice style breakfast presentations for SME’s. Those events usually are based around the idea of helping their customers do business better.

I attended one of Vodafone’s about a year ago, it was very good. No hard product sell, just pure entrepreneurial and business advice given by guest speakers after a bit of a blurb by the CEO. http://www.vodafonementornetwork.ie. From what I have seen most of these events are generally poorly attended and must cost a packet to stage, they live or die on the strength of the guest speakers.

Unless of course you can secure the likes of Ben Dunne or Michael O'Leary you are going to find it very difficult to get large numbers of people to attend. It’s very hard to pick a topic or speakers that are going to have universal appeal.

Have you considered approaching some companies and seeing if they want to either sponsor an event that you are already planning, or for you to run a breakfast or evening seminar that they want organised? Without the backing of a sponsor, your unlikely to turn a profit, so tread carefully.

What exactly is this telesales company doing for you?

BOOKWORM.1

Thank you both for your replies - very helpful.

John, the telesales company are basically ringing around other companies to flog the idea and hopefully they will sign up to attend. As I type this post I see what I'm typing reads silly as you're probably thinking I should be doing this myself!

JohnDigital

Definitely, you should be doing it yourself. A telesales company is never going to be able to sell the idea anything like as well as you will.

The current economic climate means that many companies are pulling in the purse strings and events etc are often the first to go. This however opens up some opportunities for you as there will be fewer events staged. From a corporate perspective there are lots of companies that are looking to add value for their customers, rather than cutting costs to compete on price, for some of them hosting events like this for their customers might be an attractive offering.

If I were you I would give consideration to topics around financial management or keeping a business running under the pressure of a recessionary market. These are the topics that are going to appeal to most, but you need to ensure that your event lives up to expectations.

I’d steer clear of the entrepreneurial topics for the moment, with the fact that it’s so hard to raise finance these days, you’re better off concentrating on promoting topics of use for existing struggling small business rather than the ‘how I build an empire from my sitting room’ sort of topics.

Best of luck with it.

BOOKWORM.1

Thanks John. Great advice.