Anyone who’s ever taken a marketing class knows about the four P’s – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Everyone within the marketing realm knows about the four P’s, whether they’re a telemarketer or customer service agent. This strategy has worked as a basic rulebook for everyone in sales to follow, and it has resulted in countless successful customer interactions.
However, Shep Hyken, a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author, recently stated that there is a fifth P to add into the mix—Personalization. In his article, Hyken points out that personalization is a concept all sales representatives are familiar with. As we already know, the key to successful telemarketing is personalization.
Most people have a deep dislike for telemarketers because the last thing they want to do is get home from work and have their dinner interrupted as someone tries to sell them something. If that call isn’t personalized, the recipient is much more likely to hang up on the telemarketer out of anger. After all, who wants to feel like just another name on a long list of people to call?
Hyken writes, “Traditional personalization came from remembering past customers, using their name, building rapport and other personal, human-to-human, interactions. A good customer relationship management program (CRM) could help in certain sales and support situations.”
Going off of Hyken’s point, telemarketing software could be a huge help when it comes to personalization. Telemarketing software is capable of gathering information about potential customers and compiling it into one easy to access place for telemarketers to view. With the help of this kind of software, telemarketers can see a customer’s interests, what they’ve bought from the company before, age, gender, and so on. All of this information could easily serve to make the call more personalized, thus upping the chances of success for the telemarketer.
Hyken is definitely on to something with his assertion that there is a fifth P in the marketing rulebook. In order to provide that personalization, though, companies need to invest in telemarketing software.
Edited by Maurice Nagle