Ring, Ring Google Calling: Starts Telemarketing Local Businesses
Google has a 300 person phone room dialing for dollars, selling local businesses their Boost and Tag services, Greg Sterling reported.
“The telephone reps are addressing a number of US markets apparently (but less than 30). Thus the SMB sales force and culture exists at Google (as we knew to some degree). Groupon would have added substantially to that sales force of course,” Sterling stated.
Where they previously were all about buyers coming to them, unless you represented a very large spend, it seems Google has learned that some types of services require reaching out to get interested customers. “Google has crossed some sort of “cultural’ threshold around sales to SMBs and will either be going after another sales force directly or a product with a sales force attached like Groupon or Yelp.”
Groupon has 3,000 employees – so Google could increase their marketing team tenfold. Obviously they are trained to sell advertising buys which is a great fit for Google, but I know a couple of major telemarketing firms that they could buy for seriously less than the $6 billion Groupon turned down.
So if they are getting aggressive, small business owners should soon be hearing – Hi I am from Google and would like to talk to you about how working with us can increase your profits.
Ok now where is the number for the ‘Do Not Call’ Registry?
Google Boost is set up from within your free Google Places account. Google Places helps your business get found on Google Search and Maps. If you don’t already have a Places account, we’ll set you up with one first. Learn more.
Boost is currently available for select categories in select locations.
