Do you hate telemarketing? Me too. In fact, I don't personally know anyone who likes telemarketing calls. Yet somehow it goes on. And here's why: Not everyone is like you and me and our friends.
There are people out there -- lots and lots of them, actually -- who don't mind getting those calls, and happily respond to them. Go figure. But it's true.
In his column at Fundraising Success, Jim Hussey takes a good look at telemarketing as a fundraising tool: Telemarketing ... the Necessary Evil. His point: telemarketing isn't evil at all. It's a very effective fundraising medium, and smart nonprofits do very well with it.
So why don't more organizations use it? As Jim puts it:
A couple of donor complaints about dinner-time calls and a few jokes from late-night comedians usually are all it takes to turn a development officer against the use of phoning in his or her solicitation programs.
Ah -- the power of personal preference. I hate it, so everyone else must hate it too.
That's just not smart. How you feel about something tells you almost nothing about how others feel about it. Your spouse, your friends, or your Board won't enlighten you one bit more.
The no-telemarketing hypothesis is Our donors will be so pissed off if we call them, they'll abandon us. We'll end up further behind than without telemarketing.
That's a fair hypothesis. It could be true. But the only way to know is to test it. When you test it, here's what will happen:
- You'll get some complaints. Some of them will be very articulate, and they'll tell you exactly what you already feel about telemarketing.
- Other donors (probably an overwhelming majority) will respond postitively.
- You'll get revenue that you would not have generated otherwise.
I could be wrong. It's possible you don't raise much revenue and lose a lot of donors. That would be a first in my years of working with nonprofits. But test it. Move out of ignorance and into knowledge.
Chances are, you'll find telemarketing to be a valuable tool -- not a force for evil.
Technorati Tag: telemarketing
What we need is a way to get only those calls we want without all of the rest of the crap calls.
Posted by: Rob | 14 August 2007 at 16:57