Outsourcing lead gen telemarketing overseas. What do I need to know?

Yes, Philippines is one of the best country to do outsourcing. You can find cost-effective call center solutions that suits your business.

IMHO, I would not out source and telesales.

Yes it will be cheap but the quality is not there. Telesales is not new anymore so the fluent english speaking philippine will not do.

I have been working in telesales all my life and I hear a lot now that as soon as people hear a different accent they hang up the phone.

A local call centre may cost more but the quality is so much better.

Every one you speak to anywhere will always tell you quality is better than quantity. All day long

Regards - Aiden

Here's the brutal truth: my experience and that of my clients has not been great with outsourcing like that.

You can find Filipinos who WILL make dials...they really will get on the phone. But they are so friendly, they don't stand up to American prospects the way it needs to happen, and fold. They're too nice and quit the conversations too quickly. So you burn through your money and calls are made, but no results occur.

Also, because they're not in the room with you, it's difficult to hear what they're saying and doing unless you are on skype live with them or listening to recordings. You will get all kinds of excuses why this can't happen.

I'm sure people are not going to like to hear that, but it has been the experience I've seen over and over and over again.

I've been told Puerto Rico is a good source of English-speaking callers at a good rate, but don't have any experience with them.

Your best option is to get training so you know how to make calls effectively...then hire someone to be right there with you making dials. You need to monitor them...hear exactly what they're saying. Make sure they're following the script. And not just any script: a proven script. Handing over the responsibility of making effective calls to the caller, saying, "Here; you figure it out," is a terrible idea. And most people lack the discipline to work from home, so unless you get them into your environment they probably won't do the work.

Also, as was once pointed out by a fellow trainer in this forum, if you give a chunk of money to a US call center, they will get a bunch of callers to dial all at the same time, and your money will be burnt through in a couple hours. Instead of 5 callers burning up your $500 in 5-10 hours and learning very little about the effectiveness of the process, insist on 1 to do the work and actually learn something.

Trying to source a salesperson from companies professing to help in this area has also proven poor for my clients. These companies will take the money...but in one case produced ZERO candidates...and another, far fewer than promised and of low quality. Waste of money.

Best thing to do is run your own ad, hire the caller to work supervised in your entrepreneurial environment, and train them with a proven script & program. Then you have control and know your money is being used effectively.

Yes, this is work and you have to be involved. But it's YOUR business. If you want to sluff it off to someone else, you probably aren't serious.

Jason,

Thanks for the detailed response. Greatly appreciate it!
I spent some time weighing my options, & I think you're right. I'm going to take this approach once I figure out how to make it work for our situation (This is still a side business for my business partner & I, so being available to monitor them isn't an option just yet). I'm spending some time now researching more of the telemarketing & cold calling process (Jason, your info & videos have been a great resource so far) & figuring out how to do this while still working a separate full-time job. My thoughts are to do the following (along with dates):

1) Continue researching & training myself on making effective calls (1 week)
2) Make my own calls for a little while (Begin Monday, June 16th)
3) Develop a proven call script & strategy (Begin Monday, June 16th)
4) Hire a local person or company to make calls. I obviously can't work alongside them at this point, so it'll have to be a work-at-home person or a company. I'm leaning towards paying extra for a company. (Shoot to begin the hiring process July 1st with a start date of Monday, July 14th. Contingent on feeling comfortable I've developed a proven call script)
5) I'm hoping all calls can be recorded. If so, I'll be spending my evenings reviewing calls to ensure quality (Begins Monday, July 14th)

Based on my experience as a telemarketing manager and having worked with outsourced companies, there are always massive problems. I will give you examples.

1. One centre took an average of 12 minutes to conduct a survey that my Australian team could do in 60 seconds.

2. Further to that, most of the information was wrong so the surveys were useless.

3. They don't speak clearly enough to be understood by English speakers who, let's face it, hate being called anyway.

4. In another centre, I had staff that would muck up appointment times and dates so that we lost business and upset clients.

5. The amount of administrative work tripled compared to when we did it ourselves.

You may save physical money but the repercussions of outsourcing such work is NOT worth the aggravation and problems caused.

I will add that we used centres in India, the Philippines and South Africa.