For so many small business owners throughout North America telemarketing is a vital tool designed to raise awareness of products and services, as well as boosting sales.
In fact, telemarketing-driven sales have increased 50 percent over the last five years, accounting for $900 billion worth of goods and services in 2006 alone, according to a study from Compliance Systems Corporation.
Now, small business owners are stretching to learn ways to leverage these increases in an effort to ease costs of compliance with federal Do-Not-Call (DNC) legislation that coulde hurt many bottom lines.
"Given the current economic landscape, it is imperative that small businesses maximize every opportunity for sales while avoiding extraneous expenditures," said Dean Garfinkel, CEO of Compliance Systems Corporation (CSC).
These expenses come in many forms including such basic necessities as costs of software upgrades, training personnel and implementing practices to come in compliance with legislations. And these costs don’t even include possible fines for inaccurate call list information or calls placed to DNC-restricted numbers, inadvertent or otherwise, fines that can add up to $11,000 or more per call, according to Garfinkel.
"In our history, we've never had a client place even a single call in violation of DNC lists," says Garfinkel. "There are plenty of companies that, in hindsight, would have been glad to pay for a service like ours instead of facing the massive legal battles and fines levied for improper calls."
Compliance's flagship, patent-protected product, TeleBlock, screens and blocks outbound calls against federal, state and in-house Do-Not-Call lists. The company's Regulatory Guide is available to online subscribers and is regularly updated with all pertinent DNC information.
As telemarketing sales continue to grow, companies such as Compliance Systems continue to prove that the investment required for small businesses to protect their brand from DNC liability need not be prohibitive.
Garfinkel suggests small business in that telemarket to follow advice such as:
-Document Your Work. Comprehensive and clearly documented "good-faith" efforts in the name of Do-Not-Call (DNC) compliance can help ensure against haphazard inquiries by the Federal Communication Commission.
-Protect Your Brand. Recognize that you are still accountable for the compliance of freelancers, salespeople in the field or outsourced employees working under your company umbrella. The negative publicity gained from irresponsible calls can earn you costly fines sabotaging your customer-base expansion efforts.
-Compliance Is Imperative. Firewall your phones with a DNC blocking service, especially one that provides third party verification.
