Resellers are divided on the impact of plans to extend Australia’s Do Not Call Register (DNCR) to include business and government telephone numbers.
As previously reported on <i>ARN</i>, expansion of the Do Not Call Register legislation is currently under inquiry in the Australian Senate. If approved, it will limit a company’s ability to make marketing and sales calls to potential business customers listed on the registry. The inquiry was launched on November 30 and reports are due by end of February.
Managing director of Dubbo-based Axxis Technologies, Matthew Dickerson, said it would be better off for businesses to join the list, so the reseller could concentrate efforts on businesses that wanted to be contacted. Checking the DNCR before dialling the number could also save a couple of minutes making a call to the wrong type of business.
“Ultimately, people who want to be on the register are ones that aren’t going to respond very well to a cold call,” Dickerson said. “It probably weeds out some people we shouldn’t be calling anyway.”
However, managing director of Queensland-based Computer Merchants, Norman Jefferies, recalled only one time he was told to not call back a business, but earned new business from the company after approaching them a year later.
“All businesses are about making some sort of transaction and communication,” he said. Jefferies added he personally wouldn’t want to be on the register from a business point of view.
“It’s part of growing your business,” he claimed. “Customers have always had the opportunity to say ‘don’t call us’.”
If DNCR expansion did go ahead, it would create more pressure on other forms of marketing, NSC managing director, Craig Neil, claimed.
“If you stopped telemarketing from a voice perspective, it’s only going to increase the amount of email and direct mailing,” he said. “I don’t know why the government really needs to control business executives receiving too many telemarketing calls, especially when they can have those call rebutted.
“I think it’s going a bit too far.”
According to representatives from Direct IT and the Australian Information and Industry Association, DNCR changes have the potential to significantly affect telephone sales for all organisations. Telemarketing is the most common method to generate new business leads by many organisations, including IT resellers.
