Telemarketing Glossary

This glossary aims to provide access to all of the necessary vocabulary required to discuss telemarketing like you’ve been doing it for years.

Agent

A trained telemarketer who makes or receives calls on behalf of a Telemarketing Company.

Appointment Setting
This is one of the tasks of an Outsourced Telemarketing team working on a B2B campaign or project. The aim is create leads for the client’s sales staff to convert by setting appointment times for them to call or visit.

B2B
The abbreviation of the term Business to Business. This is a phrase that refers to doing business primarily with other businesses.

Call Back
A Telemarketing Service that calls back an interested potential customer in order to turn a Prospect into a sale. Recently, Call Back has been a service operated directly from a client’s website. Prospects create themselves by providing the details necessary for a telephone Call Back through the website and clicking a button to ask for a Call Back.

Call Centre
The term often used to refer to the building where Telemarketing campaigns are conducted. Call Centres are often defined as Inbound, Outbound or mixture of both.

Call Recording
In order to provide transparency to all concerned, many Telemarketing companies record all of their calls so that their clients can listen to them and assess their effectiveness.

Cold Calling
The practice of making calls to potential customers with whom you have no prior relationship.

Cold List
A list of people to call who have no prior relationship with your organisation, product or service.

Conversion
The process of turning a Lead into a Sale.

Data
A term for the vital Lead information that includes the name, address, telephone number and other personal details of the Prospect.

Database
The filing system (these days it is computerised) for storing, amending and maintaining all relevant information regarding Leads, Prospects and Sales Data for a particular telemarketing campaign.

Decision Maker
A person in a household or business that has the power to say ‘Yes’ and buy or authorise the purchase of your product or service.

Deduplication
The thorough process of ensuring that the Prospect Database contains only a single reference for each customer. This reduces any wasted Talk Time and upsetting potential customers with multiple calls. Also known as Deduping.