Ding dong, BellSouth calling

While many companies are looking to automate their sales channels, at least two Bell companies are rediscovering what Bill Porter always knew: It never hurts to sell door-to-door.

Working with third-party vendor Cydcor, BellSouth has found unexpected success with reaching consumers by ringing their doorbells. In an Atlanta trial of door-to-door sales, the company found a surprising 20% of consumers welcomed a BellSouth representative into their homes, and 35% of those wound up buying additional services. Workers are hitting 50 to 75 homes per day in their efforts.

SBC tested door-to-door sales last summer and based on positive results, expanded its efforts into 11 in-territory markets.

"What we discovered in our analysis is that we need to be more proactive in reaching out to our customers," says Bjorn Leigvold, director of alternative channels for BellSouth Consumer Services. "There is a set of customers we have very little contact with--they don’t answer the phone when we call and they don’t call us. So we wanted to do a trial and see if we can reach some of them."

As a result of the trial’s success, BellSouth expanded its door-to-door sales to the cities of Charlotte, N.C.; Birmingham, Ala.; Jacksonville, Orlando and Miami, Fla.; and Louisville, Ky.

BellSouth may not be the only telecom service provider to have its sales force pounding the pavement. SBC Communications tested face-to-face sales in its business and consumer markets, and AT&T has been doing similar sales for some time, according to a spokesman. Other service providers could turn to this form of sales now that telemarketing is highly restricted by the do-not-call list.

BellSouth’s response to date "has been higher than we expected when we set our goals," Leigvold says. "Our services have become more complex as we sell broadband DSL. They are able to provide a consultative sales approach. I’ve walked with these people several times and the response has been very positive."

To date, the third-party sales force isn’t selling satellite services, which BellSouth sells in partnership with DirecTV, but that could be added to the menu, "once we get some kinks worked out," says Leigvold.

The traveling salespeople aren’t trained to help consumers sort out billing problems, but instead allow the customer to vent concerns and then provide the appropriate 800-number to enable a resolution.

"We know we can’t sell the customers something new until we have talked to them and listened to any problems," he says.

BellSouth is being careful to take into account local ordinances and licensing procedures, Leigvold says, and where problems have arisen, have addressed them quickly.

Cydcor is a national company that specializes in outsourcing face-to-face sales. The company has come under fire on various Internet blogs for the way it recruits and compensates workers. A BellSouth spokesman said the company is satisfied with the way Cydcor is performing.