Berlin, 1881. The telephone rings, hello? to your delight you hear a polite sweet voice, you listen carefully. It’s offering you sweet pastries from Mr. Kranler’s pastry shop.
You have just witnessed the birth of what we know today as Telemarketing.
Or at least, this is how the urban legend is still being told. This story is considered by most sources as the initial beginning of the first commercial call. A humble birth, without knowledge, and whose planning or strategies are unknown. We can only rely on its objective: a confectionery that used the amazing invention registered by Bell to sell sweets and pastries.
Despite the device that Meucci had presented to the society only 21 years earlier, “modern campaigns took a while to appear. So much so, that we had to wait until 1962, when Lee Iacocca, president of a car company called Ford, planned and targeted a telemarketing campaign for 20 million people with a specific goal: to gain two appointments daily for each of his salespeople. In total 23,000 appointments were gained through this method, helping them increase their sales.
This is what Telemarketing can do to increase sales. It can also fulfil other functions: customer service 24 hours, build trust, loyalty… What seems clear is its importance, far from decreasing, it’s still huge. So huge, that the information is supported and provided by the Infoadex Study of Advertising Investment 2013, according to which the investment of Telemarketing has increased by 1.5%, reaching 1,157.7 million euros.
