Laws about Outbound Cold Calling

johne1
April 23, 2013

When it comes to sales, there is that point where a sales person is required to cold call. Here, the sales person can either look out for new referrals, making a call to new clients, networking, or even chasing leads. This is not something that augurs well with a lot of salespeople. However, cold calling has its fair share of benefits. This is because the fact that a sales person is able to cold call professionally, confidently and effectively, it will enable the salesperson to expand their business potential, and allow them to empower themselves as well as being in control of their own destiny.

Hence, regardless of the time that you have been in this industry, you shouldn’t overlook or stop to make outbound cold calls. This is due to the fact that, the moment you stop to make cold calls, you will be overwhelmed by the pressures of the economy and the market. Thereafter, you start to lose business, or even prospective clients. Therefore, in order to ensure that you are successful when it comes to cold calling, you must not only come up with a prospecting plan, but you ought to make it an integral part of your day-to-day diary. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the laws that govern cold calling. Failure to comply with these laws, you might find yourself protracted in unending court battles.

Telemarketing sales rule:
This is one the statutes that governs telemarketing cold calls. The Telemarketing Sales Rule was put in place by the federal trade commission. The main aim of this rule is to bar telemarketers from lying to their consumers about the nature of a product or service with the aim of increasing their sales revenues. In addition, this rule has made it a requirement for telemarketers that make outbound cold calls to existing and prospective consumers to ensure that they minimize abandoned calls. Thus, they are required not to keep a consumer waiting for long to be connected to a sales representative.

Telemarketing consumer fraud and abuse prevention act:
This act gives powers to the state to sue a company on behalf of residents, if the company is deemed to have gone against the requirements of this particular act. Therefore, this act requires all companies that are involved in the business of goods and services to clearly state to their consumers, the goods and services that are being sold and any other existing offers. The main reason why this law was enacted is because the government identified quite a number of deceptive practices from telemarketers whose main aim was to deceive unsuspecting clients. Hence, there was a need to get rid, or reduce this kind of abuse.

State Laws:

This law requires businesses that would want to engage in any kind of telemarketing practices, to first obtain a license at a fee set by the state. In most cases, state laws that govern outbound cold calling are closely linked with TSR and TCPA statutes.

Telephone consumer protection act of 1991:
This law has set aside specific rules that will help to check on businesses that are involved in outbound cold calling to residential consumers. Thus, businesses that make telemarketing calls to residential consumers are required to make the outbound cold calls between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. depending on the time zone of the consumer. Furthermore, the telemarketer ought to identify their names as well as the name of the business when the recipient picks up the call.

Author bio- This post has been written by Johne Prantel. He loves to write about various aspects of Law and Technology. He is evangelist for concordecommunications.com they provide best call center and answering service