Voice broadcasting (making a huge number of automated phone calls and playing a pre-recorded message) is a remarkably powerful and affordable way to get your message to large numbers of customers or prospects.

Despite its power, before you spend one thin dime on a phone broadcast, you must learn this secret. Because without it, you might just waste your money. So what could this terrible secret be? It's really simple - Most folks hate getting telemarketing calls...

OK, OK, I know that's really not a secret. If you're thinking about using an automatic broadcasting system and you fail to consider this "secret" carefully, it can really hurt your campaign. Here's why...

The vast majority (90% or more) of people who get a broadcast call simply hang up. The next biggest group (a few percent) of folks press "2" (to be removed from the call list). The smallest group, around 1-2%, press "1" (to speak to a live person, or listen to more, or leave a voicemail).

You're probably thinking"OK, but I'm only paying for the "press 1's, so what's the problem?" Here's the problem.

Just because someone presses "1", it does't mean they're interested in your message. Some of them only want to tell you to not call them again. Those responses are worthless to you. But you still pay for them. So you should carefully consider how to maximize the positively interested, qualified responses.

Now, whether you're selling merchant accounts to business prospects, or even selling raffle tickets for your charity event, you'll hear some folks say "remove me from your list and don't call again" (or worse)... No surprise there right? And I promise, even if you're soliciting donations for sick children, even if you're calling your own list of past donors, you will STILL receive some negative calls!

The inescapable fact is this - out of 1000 people, there are probably 2 or 3 who get so irritated when they receive a telemarketing call, they will "press 1" to complain. To illustrate the effect of response rate on the number of negative calls received, consider two hypothetical broadcast campaigns.

Campaign #1 - selling merchant accounts to businesses - response rate is below average, at 0.6%. Campaign #2 - asking for donations for sick children - using a donor list - response rate is above average, at 1.5%.

Now, assume that 3 out of 1000 (0.3%) of the folks called are the type who will "press 1 for no good reason"... If you work through the numbers, the merchant processing campaign gets 50% negative calls, but even the sick children campaign gets 20%!

The fact is, if you are delivering your calls to live answered phones, and taking live transfers, you simply cannot escape negative calls, no matter what your message is about. And the main way to reduce them is to create a message with a higher response rate.

We've described how getting negative calls is a fact of life in this business, and how increasing the response rate will decrease the number of negative calls. Join me in future installments as we discuss how to handle or avoid negative calls, along with other voice broadcasting tips.