Hired A New Appointment Setter

You should do it yourself, at least at first. Otherwise how are you really going to be able to coach them to become better? Not only that, but you will gain the experience to know that if you have a difficult time finding a caller later, then you can hop on the phones. You do not want to rely on one person in your business.

Are you recording their calls? If not, you probably should.

Skype (or any other VOIP solution) + Solicall (or any other free, third-party software solution) can be used to record calls for quality assurance purposes. Just remember, even though your rep is making calls from overseas, they must still abide by US law as a representative of your company - you are liable. (assuming you're in the US).

Cold calling is no ones favorite thing to do, that's for sure. I do agree the only way to really scale up is by being able to hire those processes out. Just make sure that you are still doing it yourself to keep your skills sharp.

You probably will end up going through many more callers before you find the one or more that works well for you. In my experience as a telemarketing supervisor, we would continue to have a weekly group of at least 15 new hires in order to maintain 110 callers in the building. Lots of people can't handle doing it and would quit. So you have to keep enough cycling in to make sure that a few are good enough to make your quota.

How green is he? Maybe give him some time to assimilate. Truthfully, though, ... never mind, I won't get in to that.

check my thread. I may well be your man.

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...s-morning.html

I would love to pay per appointment (and plan on it once I get established revenue wise again) and have tried paying commission only (generous commissions with other bonuses) and with that latter attempt, found some of the laziest people on the planet who seem to think 20 dials a day is sufficient along with disappearing for days on end. Ugh.

I just need to be cloned... (just kidding).

So, at the end of the day, he called 90 leads (well short of the 130 for the day we agreed on, and he didn't even say anything to me) and got 4 appointments.

One of the appointments canceled on me once I followed up with them, which is kind of odd... and the other 3... well, they're later this week, so we'll see.

I'll be following up with the list tomorrow or the next day, depending on if I go out and prospect face to face tomorrow or not.

What is he setting appointments for? And you're paying him for every sale you make - not per appointment? If so, he may not be very motivated...

I agree. Although my experience is lacking in this department, what you are saying makes sense. I also think that some things are going to be easier to sell, and easier to train for. Depending on how persistent you want your reps to be, though, is another matter.

For sure some things are easier to sell than others. At the old telemarketing building we did everything from selling cell phones, disney vacations, sears siding, insurance for their credit cards, and doing surveys for insurance agents.

Of course the newer people started on the much easier surverys. I still remember my first day on the phones almost sixteen years ago now. I was nervous as hell and barely made it through the training as it was. Even though I was doing the easy surveys, I still had a manager listen to me and guide me through the process of a few weeks.

It was not for another couple of months before I would catch on to it fast enough to be able to become a backup supervisor to help out when the supervisor had to run an errand or was sick.

My whole point of the post is that it takes a lot more to managing cold callers than people think it does. Even if they have experience on the phones does not mean that they will not need to be taken by the hand and guided though your system. Many of the good callers could not manage themselves if someone is not watching over them.

I did have a good friend that used to work with me for a while decide that she could make more money working at home telemarketing for a sales system. She was easily one of my best callers and was real sad to see her go, but it made sense. She was getting 50 bucks for each free trial of this sales system that she sent out, and it did not even require a credit card. She did great for a few days and made a sale an hour. It did not last.

She found every excuse in the world possible to stay off of the phones and worked less and less everyday until she went days in between picking up the phone. It was not long before she was broke and asked me for her job back. She could have easily just gotten back on the phones and banged out more sales, but she knew better that she could not trust herself to keep working.

Most TSRs are workers not entrepreneurs.

Adrian,

Perhaps your script just needs a little tweaking.

Are you willing to share your script for honest feedback here on the thread?

I think you are expecting the same level of commitment from the telemarketer as you have towards your business and thus you might be harshly judging him/her.

Take a step back and let things progress a little. See how many appointment you get out of 100 or 200 calls.

Then go to those appointments and you'll learn very quickly if the telemarketer is worth anything or not.

It REALLY hard to outsource such an important task and find people who will be as dedicated as you are to your own business.

Do you give them a performance bonus, to incentivize them to set quality appointments? I remember, many moons ago, I worked for a mortgage broker during college and he gave us a bonus, for every re-fi that they closed, to the person who got the lead. It was a good idea because it forced us to focus on getting quality leads rather than lots of useless leads.

-Terry

See the problem is that many not all but many telemarketers will pretty much say just about anything to secure the appointment.

This is where the trouble starts and you waste not only your time and money but the prospects time as well. Plus you look like a total idiot when the prospect is expecting something the telemarketer might have promised or said over the phone in order to secure the appointment.

I know because I've been there and done that before with outsourced telemarketers.

Your best bet is to have a script and insist that they follow it EXACTLY. This way you can have a base line to measure how effective it is and what results to expect.

Also I'd put a clause in the agreement that if the script is deviated from in any fashion via a false claim or whatever and an appointment is secured, you don't pay for it.