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Phone just one type of tool for marketers casting their net

By Sarah Anne Wright
Seattle Times staff reporter

	HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES Edie Meyer makes calls at Cascade Subscription Service, a telemarketing firm in Seattle's University District. She is trying to reach tow-truck operators on behalf of American Towman magazine.
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Joe Flynn began calling people at home more than 20 years ago to sell home siding and vacation time-shares.

"They'd trip over their furniture to answer the phone," Flynn said.

If people didn't need what he was selling, they'd hang up — most, politely — and he'd go to the next number. It was cold calling, and it got customers.

"Is that an intrusion?" Flynn asked, today national sales director at Continental Services in Lynnwood, where 90 people sell extended warranties to car owners in 48 states. "I don't think so. That's business."

Businesses — from telemarketing call centers to companies that use telemarketing as one of several ways to get customers, have adapted their sales strategies because of the National Do Not Call Registry, which allows customers to add their telephone numbers to a list of numbers that telemarketers are not allowed to call.

Do-not-call registry Register a telephone number at 888-382-1222 or online at www.donotcall.gov.

The registry, challenged in court and set to be argued Monday before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, could curtail the potential customer pool considerably if it holds up in court.

But with 54.2 million numbers — about 1.3 million from Washington state — on the registry, people clearly don't want telemarketers calling them, no matter what they're selling.

So even if the registry is struck down, businesses are trying to find ways to bring in customers without telemarketing.

While many rant against telemarketing, some telemarketing works, said Tim Searcy, executive director of American Teleservices Association, representing 650 telephone-using companies nationwide and one of the organizations suing to block the registry.

"It's clearly a successful business model or there wouldn't be so many people doing it," said Lois Greisman, a Federal Trade Commission associate director.

"It is a relatively low-cost way of reaching customers," said Douglas "Mac" MacLachlan, a marketing professor at University of Washington Business School. "Even though the probability of a sale might be low, it obviously justifies the cost of doing it."

Some company representatives say they will have to find new marketing and sales techniques to replace or supplement telemarketing, but they couldn't say specifically what those would be.

Redmond-based Trendwest Resorts, which uses hundreds of telemarketers to sell its time-share memberships, has moved away from its near-total dependence on cold-calling by advertising more on the Internet and marketing to consumers who've given them permission — whether they know it or not — to call.

"We've really been working hard over the last two years to diversify marketing channels," Trendwest spokeswoman Sonia Tolbert said.

For newspapers, which use telemarketing to get new subscribers, the registry means using more direct mail and other marketing methods.

The Seattle Times Co., which handles advertising, marketing and circulation for The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, plans to try to do more to keep customers, spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin said.

Many companies anticipated regulation and found new ways to target telephone customers.

At the Continental Services office in Lynnwood, telemarketers don't make cold calls, Flynn said. They call only those who have expressed an interest in their warranties through Internet ads or flyers, he said.

"As far as I'm concerned, the whole country is on a do-not-call list," Flynn said.

But for companies that depend on cold calls, eliminating numbers listed in the registry can be costly. Every company that makes the calls must register annually with the FTC. Lists of restricted numbers for the first five requested ZIP codes are free, but each additional ZIP code costs $25. The entire list is $7,375.

At American Mortgage Center in Bellevue, owner Richard Scott says he will spend $5,000 upgrading computer equipment to scrub his call lists of telephone numbers on the registry. But until then, employees manually cull numbers from their calling lists using printouts from the registry.

"It's really impractical," Scott said.

Adam Waldo, an analyst with Lehman Brothers in Chicago who tracks the business-services industry, predicted that the registry might mean that call centers merge or that smaller ones are forced out of business because the registry would make it cost more to do business.

In the meantime, many telemarketers want the registry overturned in court. But if it holds up, they hope it drives unscrupulous telemarketers out of business.

"Hopefully, some day, people will again see us as respectable," said David Wasman, a telemarketing manager at Pacific Mortgage Advisors in Kirkland.

Sarah Anne Wright: 206-464-2752 or swright@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company