Christian Telemarketing?

Following up on yesterday's post, Christian telemarketing is an interesting phenomenon. Each week at Hillcrest we get several calls from Christian telemarketers about a host of products and services. Part of Christian telemarketing (and all telemarketing, for that matter) makes sense, at least on the surface. Most likely, Church A has bought an item from the caller before, and they are only trying to inform the customer of their newest product. In some ways, it's a form (albeit not a good one) of permission based marketing.

But in an era where millions of consumers have registered their phone numbers to avoid such tactics, one would think Christian publishers (and similar companies) would be moving away from telemarketing as a way to move their products and instead try one of these tactics:

• Create a remarkable product- this isn't to rip on existing products, most of which are probably good, but to point out the fact that remarkable products really do not need telemarketers to sell them. Two examples would be Rob Bell's Nooma videos and the more dated Experiencing God curriculum, both of which have done (or did) well and both of which I can't remember receiving one call over.
• Solve a problem- most telemarketing calls offer short term fixes (plug this program to train parents of teens) rather than solving holistic problems (how does this program fit into one's overall ministry to parents of teens?). One good holistic problem that faces most churches is the issue of security and children's ministries- how do we all we can to insure the safety of our kids? Group publishing solved the problem by creating a service that allows churches low cost background checks on potential volunteers as well as partnered with a national insurance agency that provides tips and information on other security issues. Because Group has solved a problem for me, I'm more inclined to let them interrupt my life (though Group does this very infrequently, which is another plus).
• Consolidate- my bias is that there are too many Christian companies selling too many products that are too similar. What might happen if there were fewer companies that offered fewer, but better, products? There might be less interruption and more of a relationship between churches and companies.
  

These are just a couple suggestions, but as I wrote yesterday, the overarching question might be how churches move away from content-based programming as a whole altogether. In fact, the company that helps churches free their people from content-based groups and studies, might actually 'win' in the long run, though in the short term it might seem counter-intuitive.