Why You Have To Pay Telemarketers Hourly! The REASON Why They Wont Work On Commission!

9 replies
Why do you have to pay hourly?


Because you don't know your numbers! You have no track record of what your selling process will produce!


I see a lot of people post about hiring telemarketers... Hardly anyone wants to pay hourly. Why?


Because they don't have a sales process in place with numbers behind it.


I have seen people get downright pissy around here about the fact that they cant seem to get others to work for a "handful of magic beans"!


Before you can hire telemarketers, you have to know what you are hiring them to do! You need to give them a sales process that they can predictably succeed with.


That is the step BEFORE hiring, which makes hiring successful.



You can't have successful salespeople without having a successful selling system in place for them to work with.


So you design websites... Big deal.


You have a skill, NOT a business.


When you have a proven sales process in place THEN you have a business that someone might feel privileged to work for.


If you need a telemarketer to prove to YOU that your idea is sellable, then you still aren't ready for hiring.


You need to be able to tell the TELEMARKETER how THEY are going to make money, and KNOW that they are going to, if they follow your system.


As a rule, you cant hire telemarketers and expect them to perform without handing them a solid sales process to work with, that is going to work for them.


You cant hire telemarketers to make up your entire selling system for you.


UNLESS YOU HAVE MONEY!


You need a proven selling process in place, or the money to develop one, or the fortitude to sell for yourself and pave the way until you have one.

If you have that (a proven sales process), then hourly is safer (for YOU) than commission because you know at what rate your numbers work, then you can base your compensation formula on how much you KNOW your new hires are going to produce per hour.

If you know that 2 out of 100 people purchase when an action is repeated 100 times in a prescribed manner, like a clock, then you know you can afford to pay a telemarketer hourly to dial 100 numbers per hour in the prescribed manner...and you wont lose even in the worse case scenario.


Everyone wants to pay commission because they don't have that process down. Which basically means you have no business yet. It is still just an idea. If you had those numbers down, then hourly would make a lot more sense to you than commission does.


If you hire people you need to have a work process for them to follow, and if you don't, then you don't have anything to base any expectations or numbers off of. The best you can do in that case is to create a process that is based on proven principles that have been proven to work in the past, and pay someone by the hour to implement it, testing and tweaking until you have those numbers.


Or, get out and sell for yourself, which I understand is not the thing for every body.


For instance, Amway and other direct marketing and MLM companies, Rainbow vacuums.... they can all hire inexperienced people on commission because they can solidly say "If you do this, like this, this many times, then THIS will happen..."


And they have 100 other successful salesman who used the same process while working for them, who drive nice cars... who can attest that a person can indeed succeed with their sales training/processes.


They are handing each new hire a successful system to work with, with numbers behind it that will produce at a predictable rate for the new hire, if they do it as prescribed.


When you can do that (produce those numbers) , then you have a basis for hiring people and creating expectations of them.


Otherwise, all the hiring in the world isn't going to make a difference. Instead of saying you cant find people to hire, you will be saying that you hired 10 people and no one was good enough to sell for you.


That's the thing about people wanting to hire telemarketers here... Do you have a process that works , for them to implement? If not, then how do you know when they are or are not performing to expectations? How do you know what you can or should expect? How can they ever succeed at their job?


You have to pay them hourly to test and tweak scripts for you. Nobody is going to do it on commission without some proof that your system of selling works and/or has worked for others.


Not to be redundant. I am not trying to discourage anyone. Just saying you need to go with hourly and pay that person to be the guinea pig that tweaks out a proven sales process with you. When you have that, then you have a serious business. You have an action that can be repeated, duplicated and scaled upon. That's where the business is. Everyone does mobile sites, but few of them have a sales machine that works. That's where the business is.


If you go out of pocket to design, test, and tweak out a proven duplicable sales process, then you REALLY have something.


One sided deals don't work. There has to be something in your offer for the salesperson that would motivate them not only to think of the financial potential, but ALSO the probability of them being able to personally succeed with it.


Hiring sales people is itself a sales job. They are talented and you need their skill more than they need yours. You need to have money to pay them like shadow92 did with his cousin, or you have to have some killer proof that a person can achieve desirable success with your system.

-JD
#hiring #people #sales #step
  • Profile picture of the author qu4rk
    So, what you're saying is: If you have no sales system there are 2 ways to do it.

    1. Pay someone hourly & make them your testing machine (devised & guided by you of course).
    2. Or, do all of the testing yourself, have scripts, processes, etc., then still hire hourly, so you can keep the extra scratch. Or you could do commission & blow it through the roof.

    Is that correct?

    Also, how low of an hourly wage do you think you can hire someone for telemarketing B2B?

    Also, what qualities (character traits to screen for) do you want in a telephone dialing machine?
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Cart before the horse played out over and over! Great Post John!

    what gets me... if you really start looking around. there are as many people good at doing something but suck at sales as there are people that are good at sales that suck at doing stuff. Its simply a matter of finding the right pair.

    I have a forum project that is a JV. As a pair we make a pretty decent whole. Im good at the technical stuff, but seriously don't do well with video. - just something I have gotten into and thought it to be to time consuming, so get in when I have to.

    My partner on the other hand.... He can throw down 5 - 10 minute tutorial videos all day long. Can he answer questions about CSS and PHP.. no not really. We have about equal work ethic, and compatible strengths and weakness' and it works.

    I think the same principles hold true with those that have "Skills" and cant sell. I would try and find that person that could join in a JV situation and make a go at it. As things develop you then have a guy that can train others to do the stuff, and the other partner that can train to create work. It really is a win win.

    I do all of my sales in house. I literally have Coders making cold calls. What I sell can quickly get on the technical side if the prospect is in the least bit knowledgeable so this becomes a bonus.

    As John said however... there has to be a proven ability to sell the service / product. I have a well... we will call it a "script" that works. I have some pretty set ques in place so they know when to start making that push. They know when to step it back, and slow it up. We sit there as a group and listen to the calls that succeeded and those that failed.

    its not about making anyone look good or bad... its about making the team as a whole better. I personally think CONTRAST is the best teacher.

    That's the other thing... In this forum we... well I don't but others talk about running call centers and the like. the callers are all right there. I have my little round table. we are all right there... there is an amount of control to be had. Are you following the script? Are you making the calls?

    The moment you outsource this... well who only knows what's really going on. this thread: http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...t-results.html day in day out 3 days a week. someone that knew nothing was a part of a team that produced better than good results.

    I could take this whole thing a step further and talk about the metaphysical aspects of "joining" but I will spare you all that!

    Bottom line I think. Is find someone that you can work "WITH", and the potential is priceless!
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    Success is an ACT not an idea
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Originally Posted by qu4rk View Post

    So, what you're saying is: If you have no sales system there are 2 ways to do it.

    1. Pay someone hourly & make them your testing machine (devised & guided by you of course).
    2. Or, do all of the testing yourself, have scripts, processes, etc., then still hire hourly, so you can keep the extra scratch. Or you could do commission & blow it through the roof.

    Is that correct?

    Also, how low of an hourly wage do you think you can hire someone for telemarketing B2B?

    Also, what qualities (character traits to screen for) do you want in a telephone dialing machine?


    Exactly.


    Once you have a system in place that works, you can scale on it either way, commission or hourly.


    Its a sales job to get someone to work on commission, but it will be a lot easier sale if you YOURSELF are convinced of your numbers and what is possible for an average person that you hire.


    In answer to the other part of your question.


    It can be a crap shoot hiring new people. Some people talk loud and overbearing and you might think that's a good reason to hire them (although bigger voices do tend to do better IN GENERAL IME), but then just as many times you hire them only to find out that they are just a loud mouth who likes to gibber jabber, and they don't know how to lead someone to a close, they are pretty much just a bssr.


    Then some people can seem quieter and you may think that's a good reason not to hire them, but they are just one of those easy going, gentle voices that somehow people buy from like crazy...


    Most telemarketing managers in call centers will hire JUST ABOUT anyone who walks in the door and wants to try, with the understanding from both ends that the person has to perform or they are gone... because you just never know honestly.


    Some people even come in with track records a mile long telling you of all of their successful sales experience, and then spend half their day talking stuff about how they use to do it in their old room, and blame it on your stupid system for the reason why the shy guy across the room is beating the crap out of them, because they aren't use to selling this way or whatever...


    Sometimes even people with great track records don't work out. for all kinds of reasons.


    Again; you just never know. It's good to have some standards to go by, which will come a lot easier once you have seen what type of people do best with your opportunity, but for now you don't have that.


    A successful hiring campaign is when you have a SYSTEM that works for an AVERAGE person.


    That means you have a selling system in place whereby you know that an average person can perform certain numbers by repeating the actions in a prescribed manner, a prescribed number of times.


    This way you aren't people dependent.


    While you don't know how any INDIVIDUAL is going to perform ahead of time, you know that the AVERAGE performer will do "THIS"... So you have a fifty fifty chance with anyone who walks in the door, and if they don't perform, give them 3 days and fire them.


    What you want is a SYSTEM that works, which you count on more than you do any particular persons talent.


    Otherwise you can make the best guesses possible (even educated ones) for who to hire, based on work history (a solid one is good) , references, all the usual things. They are all good but they aren't the most IMPORTANT factors.


    The important factor isn't who you hire AS MUCH as it is "how your selling process works, for an AVERAGE person."


    If your selling process works , then you can hire average people to implement it and it will still work. That opens up a lot more hiring possibilities, and closes down dependency on particular peoples talent.


    I also agree with Savidge4 that a partnership can be a great option.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    In other words


    A desperate job seeker isn't going to be so desperate that they are willing to put themselves through the hardship of being your personal sales guinea pig for a commission that they MIGHT be able to make IF your plan works.


    BUT


    A desperate job seeker IS desperate enough to do things exactly like you tell them to, in hopes of MAYBE making a commission WHEN YOU TAKE THE RISK WITH THEM, AND PAY THEM A GUARANTEED BASE!

    Or, when you have other employees who they can see are succeeding with your program.

    It takes work to sell, most people aren't going to work for a hand full of magic beans, without at least SOME proof that others are succeeding with the opportunity too, and that the sales training you give them is going to work in a predictable fashion. They want to know that if they follow your instructions and do what you tell them to, then they are going to get paid. Pretty simple.

    Ask yourself if YOU would take the job you are offering. That's a great place to start.
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  • Profile picture of the author Freebiequeen1999
    I think I have said this various times here...and usually get a "spankin" for it

    I am getting real sick of seeing people here think that telemarketers are so desperate...I would not waste my time on most of these lame ideas here

    Fact is : a telemarket room is only as good as the product/offer /pitch/sales PROCESS

    iT MUST BE DUPLICATABLE

    Brag brag.....LOL....I know I can sit down with any *reasonable pitch and sell it...
    I have done all sorts of sales, appt setting, closing, fronting, and so forth.

    I have also run rooms, owned a room, and taught sales .....

    You have to have a pitch and a process that is geared to the average telemarketer....not just the super stars.....

    You have to have all your objections written out....all your parameters in place - qualifiers - you have to know what you want them to look for - do NOT waste their time and say "no" to a deal if you have not told them what you need and want

    example : some vacation (time share visit really) sales require a certain income, a married or co-hab couple , a major credit card.

    Most of the stuff I see here is people who have some (some...and sometimes not much) tech ability to make a website, video, or whatever.....and they are "skeered" and afraid to pick up a phone..don't like talking to people....don't like walking in doors...or are in another country ...

    Fact is....most of what they really need is a "appointment setting" IF they are in the US....

    cause there are so many variables with the product that there is no way a non tech non web designer will be able to go beyond the basic "yeah I am interested" point

    the idea of gettng people to sell over the phone long distance is simply stooopid...


    if you are determined to try this, you should do what I said before....get locals

    hire off an existing room...see if owner will let you pay them by the hour for some leads or whatever....or let you "rent" a couple seats or whatever
    set
    IF you have a good sales process you could try (try) getting some people to work from home...but tracking will be hard. Most will want to be paid hourly

    sometimes you can get people to set appointments from home and you pay per appt.

    No one is really going to be interested in these schemes for "commission"

    Time to stop dreaming that others are going to slave away for you

    as for the "non US' peeps....you are better on odesk or elance etc or selling in your own country

    IF you have a great deal, process, sales pitch....I could use it and simply hire some guy in India on fiverr and fulfill it myself right?

    I have given great advice here (ignored).....go work in a telemarketing room and or for a biz to biz company...learn your sales skills while you get paid.
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    • Profile picture of the author Underground
      Originally Posted by Freebiequeen1999 View Post

      I think I have said this various times here...and usually get a "spankin" for it

      I am getting real sick of seeing people here think that telemarketers are so desperate...I would not waste my time on most of these lame ideas here

      Fact is : a telemarket room is only as good as the product/offer /pitch/sales PROCESS

      iT MUST BE DUPLICATABLE

      Brag brag.....LOL....I know I can sit down with any *reasonable pitch and sell it...
      I have done all sorts of sales, appt setting, closing, fronting, and so forth.

      I have also run rooms, owned a room, and taught sales .....

      You have to have a pitch and a process that is geared to the average telemarketer....not just the super stars.....

      You have to have all your objections written out....all your parameters in place - qualifiers - you have to know what you want them to look for - do NOT waste their time and say "no" to a deal if you have not told them what you need and want

      example : some vacation (time share visit really) sales require a certain income, a married or co-hab couple , a major credit card.

      Most of the stuff I see here is people who have some (some...and sometimes not much) tech ability to make a website, video, or whatever.....and they are "skeered" and afraid to pick up a phone..don't like talking to people....don't like walking in doors...or are in another country ...

      Fact is....most of what they really need is a "appointment setting" IF they are in the US....

      cause there are so many variables with the product that there is no way a non tech non web designer will be able to go beyond the basic "yeah I am interested" point

      the idea of gettng people to sell over the phone long distance is simply stooopid...


      if you are determined to try this, you should do what I said before....get locals

      hire off an existing room...see if owner will let you pay them by the hour for some leads or whatever....or let you "rent" a couple seats or whatever
      set
      IF you have a good sales process you could try (try) getting some people to work from home...but tracking will be hard. Most will want to be paid hourly

      sometimes you can get people to set appointments from home and you pay per appt.

      No one is really going to be interested in these schemes for "commission"

      Time to stop dreaming that others are going to slave away for you

      as for the "non US' peeps....you are better on odesk or elance etc or selling in your own country

      IF you have a great deal, process, sales pitch....I could use it and simply hire some guy in India on fiverr and fulfill it myself right?

      I have given great advice here (ignored).....go work in a telemarketing room and or for a biz to biz company...learn your sales skills while you get paid.

      Great thread John, btw.

      I've always strived to provide quality and have something decent to sell. I've attempted to create those things but looking back on what I thought would sell in the past is slightly embarrassing at times. Other times I got it right.

      I didn't know at the time that I got in right and found it was easy to sell something (the trouble is running a business once you get the sales requires many skills in itself and they require their own toll), it was because I'd tapped into a real need in a strong market. The times I thought I had a winner and didn't work out was when I thought I was being clever and smart and coming up with my own thing that I personally thought would sell.

      But one thing I know, is that with a great product and a great selling process in place you can make a fortune because it's fairly mechanistic, and certain things are proven to work. There's no mystery once you have your own process down, tested and optimised.

      I think people need to focus and really take the time developing something in a strong market that is better than what others are offering, and getting the first part of this equation you outlined as strong as possible:

      Fact is : a telemarket room is only as good as the product/offer /pitch/sales PROCESS

      The rest of the factors can be the same, but if you something to sell that's at the right price to the right market with the right offers, then there's not much effort needed once you have that to make 10x more money than it is two sell something 10x less.

      There is massive neglect in the first part of the process on this place. It's because it can take years to figure out how to create and how to make sure your business can produce and make good.

      But worth aiming at over time. Too often we just grab a 'done-for-you' service from a WSO and that's all the thought and effort that's put into it product development and market analysis stage. It's not a great way to do things.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Most of them are trying to sell telemarketers an opportunity that they themselves would not buy, if the shoe were on the other foot, then wondering why no one is taking them up on the offer, and saying it's hard to recruit people.
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  • Profile picture of the author laurencewins
    Well said John. I used to run telemarketing rooms and we paid an hourly rate AND a commission if they hit certain KPIS. But there are people who have no idea what to do properly.
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    Cheers, Laurence.
    Writer/Editor/Proofreader.

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  • Profile picture of the author KD Recruiting
    Originally Posted by John Durham View Post

    Why do you have to pay hourly?


    Because you don't know your numbers! You have no track record of what your selling process will produce!


    I see a lot of people post about hiring telemarketers... Hardly anyone wants to pay hourly. Why?


    Because they don't have a sales process in place with numbers behind it.


    I have seen people get downright pissy around here about the fact that they cant seem to get others to work for a "handful of magic beans"!


    Before you can hire telemarketers, you have to know what you are hiring them to do! You need to give them a sales process that they can predictably succeed with.


    That is the step BEFORE hiring, which makes hiring successful.



    You can't have successful salespeople without having a successful selling system in place for them to work with.


    So you design websites... Big deal.


    You have a skill, NOT a business.


    When you have a proven sales process in place THEN you have a business that someone might feel privileged to work for.


    If you need a telemarketer to prove to YOU that your idea is sellable, then you still aren't ready for hiring.


    You need to be able to tell the TELEMARKETER how THEY are going to make money, and KNOW that they are going to, if they follow your system.


    As a rule, you cant hire telemarketers and expect them to perform without handing them a solid sales process to work with, that is going to work for them.


    You cant hire telemarketers to make up your entire selling system for you.


    UNLESS YOU HAVE MONEY!


    You need a proven selling process in place, or the money to develop one, or the fortitude to sell for yourself and pave the way until you have one.

    If you have that (a proven sales process), then hourly is safer (for YOU) than commission because you know at what rate your numbers work, then you can base your compensation formula on how much you KNOW your new hires are going to produce per hour.

    If you know that 2 out of 100 people purchase when an action is repeated 100 times in a prescribed manner, like a clock, then you know you can afford to pay a telemarketer hourly to dial 100 numbers per hour in the prescribed manner...and you wont lose even in the worse case scenario.


    Everyone wants to pay commission because they don't have that process down. Which basically means you have no business yet. It is still just an idea. If you had those numbers down, then hourly would make a lot more sense to you than commission does.


    If you hire people you need to have a work process for them to follow, and if you don't, then you don't have anything to base any expectations or numbers off of. The best you can do in that case is to create a process that is based on proven principles that have been proven to work in the past, and pay someone by the hour to implement it, testing and tweaking until you have those numbers.


    Or, get out and sell for yourself, which I understand is not the thing for every body.


    For instance, Amway and other direct marketing and MLM companies, Rainbow vacuums.... they can all hire inexperienced people on commission because they can solidly say "If you do this, like this, this many times, then THIS will happen..."


    And they have 100 other successful salesman who used the same process while working for them, who drive nice cars... who can attest that a person can indeed succeed with their sales training/processes.


    They are handing each new hire a successful system to work with, with numbers behind it that will produce at a predictable rate for the new hire, if they do it as prescribed.


    When you can do that (produce those numbers) , then you have a basis for hiring people and creating expectations of them.


    Otherwise, all the hiring in the world isn't going to make a difference. Instead of saying you cant find people to hire, you will be saying that you hired 10 people and no one was good enough to sell for you.


    That's the thing about people wanting to hire telemarketers here... Do you have a process that works , for them to implement? If not, then how do you know when they are or are not performing to expectations? How do you know what you can or should expect? How can they ever succeed at their job?


    You have to pay them hourly to test and tweak scripts for you. Nobody is going to do it on commission without some proof that your system of selling works and/or has worked for others.


    Not to be redundant. I am not trying to discourage anyone. Just saying you need to go with hourly and pay that person to be the guinea pig that tweaks out a proven sales process with you. When you have that, then you have a serious business. You have an action that can be repeated, duplicated and scaled upon. That's where the business is. Everyone does mobile sites, but few of them have a sales machine that works. That's where the business is.


    If you go out of pocket to design, test, and tweak out a proven duplicable sales process, then you REALLY have something.


    One sided deals don't work. There has to be something in your offer for the salesperson that would motivate them not only to think of the financial potential, but ALSO the probability of them being able to personally succeed with it.


    Hiring sales people is itself a sales job. They are talented and you need their skill more than they need yours. You need to have money to pay them like shadow92 did with his cousin, or you have to have some killer proof that a person can achieve desirable success with your system.

    -JD
    Excellent post.
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    Kevin Downey
    www.kickinads.com

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