I'm working very hard to help people differentiate between telemarketing and teleprospecting. I'm sure most people would look at the two terms and see no difference. But it's important to differentiate, especially if your company is interested in outsourcing pipeline development. Choose telemarketing and you may not get the results you're seeking.

Let me tell you a quick story that illustrates what I'm saying here. I received a cold call awhile back. The caller, obviously very inexperienced and working from a script, was trying to sell me an early bird discount to an industry event. You could hear other callers in the background, so obviously he was calling from a boiler room. This is an example of traditional call center, script-driven telemarketing.

When I'm talking about teleprospecting, I'm calling out the top-of-funnel activity as the first step in the selling cycle. The goal of the teleprospector is to identify, contact, quick qualify and commit the prospect. The prospect must commit to something, either reviewing some information or agreeing to meet with our client's sales representative. Any prospect these days that's willing to commit their precious time is a pretty good early stage prospect.

If you hire a telemarketing firm, you may end up with leads. If you hire my firm, you'll end up with prospects. I'm sure that's a difference everyone can understand.