Wrong signal

Smart, nimble companies thrive on spotting opportunities and pouncing.

If you hear about someone who is looking for your product and service – perhaps from a friend or business associate, or perhaps even in a story you’ve read on SmartCompany – you get on the phone and call them.

Straight away.

With any luck, you can land a bit of business, or at least establish enough of a connection that you’ve got a prospective customer for down the track.

It’s a scene that would be played out in countless businesses around Australia every day. But if the Government’s plan to extend the Do Not Call Register passes Parliament, this sort of sales strategy will be lost.

Instead, you’ll be forced to look up the company’s number, check it against the DNCR and then make your call, providing that business hasn’t registered.

Exactly how long this process will take isn’t clear at present, but the point is that the Government is about to put another roadblock, another compliance burden and more red tape in the way of business by extending the DNCR to cover companies.

Yes, I know this view isn’t shared by everyone. Few issues spark as much debate on SmartCompany as the Do Not Call Register and we almost always receive comments and emails from entrepreneurs who are sick of annoying telemarketing calls.

And we share your pain. We really do. It can be annoying, disruptive and occasionally time consuming.

But for us the downsides of extending the DNCR to business are much worse.

Lead generation and prospecting can be tough at the best of times, but the extension of the DNCR will make it that much harder.

While scatter-gun style telemarketing – with little research or targeting – is a questionable marketing tool, the fact is that telemarketing and cold calling are powerful tools used by companies in nearly every industry. But this form of marketing will be restricted if the DNCR is extended – with potentially disastrous results for firms that rely on this style of marketing.

Having to “wash” or check your list of prospective contacts against the DNCR is one thing, but the fact that businesses with existing relationships with customers (whether this extends to former customers isn’t exactly clear) will tilt the balance of power even further towards the large incumbents in a certain market.

Finally, as the Coalition Senators pointed out today in a Senate Committee report on the DNCR extension, there remains some confusion about the difference between routine business-to-business dealings and telemarketing.

So next time you pick up the phone to call a sales prospect, think about how that call would occur under the DNCR.

We’re pretty sure it’s not going to be easier, and that’s a bad thing.