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Question for the Cold Callers

by IMStrategus
7 replies
Hi. I'm in the process of hiring a telemarketer for my offline consulting business.

I know here a lot of cold callers so I wanted to check something with you guys.

We'll be pushing free consultation appointments with no obligation.

My question is how much calls on average do you make per hour/ per day.

How many appointments on average do you get per 100 calls / per day.

Thanks a lot in advance.
#callers #cold #question
  • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
    Your question has been asked by others and responded to many times. The answer is that your numbers are not my numbers. Your numbers are your numbers.

    Track # of dials made, conversations had, and sales made.

    These will improve as you go. I can make 6 dials and it's very likely that I will have one good conversation. As a beginner, you may not be able to meet this number. It may be more like 20 dials for 1 good conversation.

    Watch these for ideas and proper expectations:

    http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...beginners.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ccess-tip.html
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  • Profile picture of the author Mwind076
    As Jason stated my calls will be different than your calls. What you have your caller do depends on:

    1) what you need accomplished
    2) what you can afford to pay them to do
    3) what expertise they have (how many calls it takes them to produce)
    4) how good your list is
    5) how good they are at getting to the DM, and getting a commitment

    ...and many other things.

    Our contracts all vary. Some we make 200 calls a week and some we make 800 calls a week. Some of them are 15 calls per hour (because we have longer discussions when a prospect is reached) and some campaigns have a calling rate of 40-55 calls per hour. These are normally the ones with poorly targeted lists, or ones where we are getting a "yes" or "no" answer, or gathering email, or even just checking a name or number. It all depends.

    If you hire the right caller, and they either know what they are doing or YOU have calling experience (meaning you know how to train them, what to teach them and what to look for to know if they are doing well) then you won't have any issues. However, since you're asking, it seems that you probably are like most business owners we work with that do not know how to arrange a calling campaign. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, it's just that there are many business owners that THINK they can hire some random person to call for them and then train them in something they have never done themselves...successfully. Therefore, I'd suggest hiring a caller that can tell YOU what they need to be successful, and you let them do their job. Or, hire someone and find someone that knows about calling to train them. That is, if you want to be successful.
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  • Profile picture of the author WeavingThoughts
    It really depends. If you just need to call, and no forms/emails then at least 10-15+ calls an hour.

    With warm calling you may get 1-2 interested people or semi interested people for every 10-15 you call.

    With purely cold calling it may be more like 1-5 in 100 or so.
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  • Profile picture of the author mrjosco
    From the standpoint of hiring a telemarketer, these responses are only kind of helpful - as they are talking about YOU calling.

    But there is some truth. The number of calls your telemarketer should make will depend on the script, their training and many other factors. HOWEVER, with a basic 'appointment setting' script you can expect an experienced marketer to make anywhere from 20-50 calls per hour.

    Some of the factors that will impact this number:

    What kind of equipment are they using? Will they be outsourced and calling from overseas via Skype? If so, do they have an auto-dialer on Skype?

    If you are hiring domestically, then what kind of equipment are YOU providing?
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  • Profile picture of the author socialentry
    I would just say ignore the dials and just check the # of contacts/conversation and conversion ratios.

    Dials is just an indicator of the quality of your list. Not nescessarily of how hard you work.

    You can make 300 dials in 3 hours if your list is REALLY bad (I've seen it, most of the time 50% to 60% of the numbers were bad) and reach like 20 people only on a old,bad,beat up residential list.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jason Kanigan
      Originally Posted by socialentry View Post

      I would just say ignore the dials and just check the # of contacts/conversation and conversion ratios.

      Dials is just an indicator of the quality of your list. Not nescessarily of how hard you work.

      You can make 300 dials in 3 hours if your list is REALLY bad (I've seen it, most of the time 50% to 60% of the numbers were bad) and reach like 20 people only on a old,bad,beat up residential list.
      It's a fair point about list quality. However, you still need to track dials.

      You need to be able to back into your # of dials necessary to hit your revenue target.

      Yeah, your list quality might be poor and that will affect your dials to conversations ratio. No question. However, if you don't track dials you'll never find that out, other than a sense that it's taking a lot of dials to get to talk to someone.

      If your list is lousy, don't you want to know that ASAP so you can change your source?!

      Also, you track these numbers on a daily, weekly, monthly and all time basis (easy to do by spreadsheet). You'll improve in your skill as well as your phone # sources, so over time these ratios will improve. But you have to start somewhere.

      To manage we must measure.

      That phrase was beat into my head over two intensive years of Operations Management training. That's how you continuously improve on your situation.

      So how do we back into our # of dials needed to get to our revenue target?

      Let's say we have a 6 month revenue target of $50,000. I know that would be excellent for newbies. You design websites, and decide $1,000 is the average price you're comfortable at.

      So right away we know we have to sell 50 of these things in the 6 months to hit our target.

      You just started making prospecting calls, so you know your ratios aren't going to be great yet. Since you don't have actual data at this point, you use a tough ratio of 20 dials to get one conversation, and another tough one of 20 conversations to get one sale. You might be better than this, and at that point you can adjust your numbers, but for now this is an OK place to start.

      So to get one sale, we predict that 20 dials x 20 conversations = 400 dials to get one sale. Seems a little high, but our newbies aren't so great on the phone yet. And we'd rather overestimate than under, at this point.

      400 dials for 1 sale = 400 x 50 = 20,000 dials over the 6 months! Whew!

      6 months = 6 x 4 weeks x 5 days = 120 working days to make those dials.

      20,000 / 120 = 167 dials per day to hit the target. Worst case.

      Gulp.

      But now you know. 20 dials a day ain't gonna do it. 50 dials a day won't get you there.


      Say after 2 months you've developed some skill. The real figures you're experiencing are 15 dials to get a conversation, and 12 conversations to get an order. 15 x 12 = 180 dials to make a sale now, those are your real numbers, and so you need to make a total of 180 x 50 = 9,000 dials in the 6 months to make your money target. That's 9,000 / 120 working days = 75 dials a day.

      Whew.


      Now you start adding in other prospecting methods into your plan: referrals, talks, webinars, seminars, joint ventures, etc. Each of these will have its own conversion ratio (eg. the right kind of referral will close 50%+ of the time, meaning if you get 2 in a month you have a great chance of closing 1...and that removes the need for 400 dials for our brand spanking newbie, doesn't it?). These really add up. 6 months into your business, and you should have leads and sales coming from other sources, so that prospecting calls, while remaining as a source, isn't so heavily relied upon as your revenue generator.

      Make sense? This is the kind of thing that separates amateurs from professionals who want consistent, measurable results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mwind076
    Jason, That is probably the single most genius thing you have ever explained here. That needs to be an article of it's own so we can all link new customers to the facts of calling campaigns.

    I'd like to add that even with EXPERIENCED callers, you cannot expect grandiose results with a random list, you can expect THESE types of results if you don't want to listen about how to pull a list or find your target market.
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