NewsBusiness

Have you been following the progress of the proposed law to extend the Do Not Call Register to business? The register, originally set up to allow consumers to opt out of telemarketing cold calls, is due to be extended to protect businesses as well. This move will severely hamper those businesses that still rely on cold calling to generate leads and sales.

The Council of Small Business of Australia (COSBOA) and the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) are lobbying the government to abandon, or at least amend, the proposed legislation, saying that it could cost companies up to $108 million in the first year, as they’ll have to spend time and resources checking who is and isn’t on the register.

COSBOA also claims that the law will unfairly penalise small or new businesses that do not have already established customer databases. The government is pushing the bill to go through, in the words of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, to stop “unwanted calls and faxes… wasting valuable business resources.”

The new legislation is expected to cover telephone calls and faxes.

In our view this type of ‘blanket bombing’ marketing is a very inefficient way to drive sales, and the legislation is probably good news as much for the companies that are (or were contemplating) using it as it is for the people it has been designed to protect. Cold calling telemarketing (and your author has done his fair share of this in his time!) has always been very much a numbers game and probably the worst example of ‘pursuit marketing’. ‘Attraction marketing’ (ie PR Marketing) is generally much more effective and, dare we say it, more enjoyable.

I’d be very interested to hear your comments on this.