Getting Offline Leads with Hiring Telemarketers

Hi Matt,

I also run a bricks and mortar business in the UK and we use outsourced telemarketing to generate leads as we mainly operate in B2B. They're a company of British Expats living in Spain so costs are much cheaper than using British companies, but with the same effect.

Generally our sales funnel is

1) Qualify contact is in fact the person we need for our service with authority to make decision
2) Qualify an immediate or mid term need
3) Send info by email

<<second call>>
1) Ask the prospect to try a free sample and book a date

<<third call>>
1) Follow up and Feedback
2) Conversion Attempt

Generally, 1 day of activity with 1 operative costs £125 (approx $180). This generates four - six solid leads who receive a sample. Our conversion of sample to sale is currently 82%. From our own experience

- Pay by the day or hour, not by the sale or lead - long term this yielded much better results with less weaker leads
- Test several different scripts but insist on the same operative
- Test several different data sources - ensure they tell you where and how the data has been collated

Hope this helps

Justin

Hi Justin,

Wow, that is incredibly helpful Justin. Thank you so much I'm pm'ing you.

Matt

Hi Matt,

We are offering telemarketing services. We have a 100 seat call center in the Philippines which operates 24/5 for our international accounts. Currently we are handling US, Australia, and Canada accounts. Wesspecialize in lead generation, generating new clients and creating sales opportunities for
both B2B and B2C campaigns.Sales have been our
business' lifeblood. Agents has a minimum of 3 years experience, and
well tested excellent in their field.

Virtual Assistant Company: The Best Way to Reclaim Your Time - GlobeTask

They are a company of US expats living in Israel.

They are very affordable are US English first language speaking and can do what you are seeking. Tell them I suggested you contact them.

Before you start to look at this - I would strongly suggest you take a long hard look at what you are offering people. When you just get someone, especially in the Philippines, just to book appointments for you it can be very hard work. It's much better if you can turn it round so you are offering real value to them.

Rather than booking appointments, the callers then start with 'I was wondering if I could send you some info about how you can help you business by...'. You'll get a much more positive response in general doing that. Once you shown them that you can offer value you can then start to listen to what they think and start to suggest ways to help them.

It's a similar process to what Justin says:

1. Call up and make sure that you have the right information - "I need to send you an email. Can I check that I have the right contact info for you"
2. Send email, with useful info in it.
3. Call back and make sure that they got it & see what they think about it. "I spoke to you a couple of days ago and you agreed to get the email - just wondering if that's something that interests you...". Once you have feedback, then ask if they would like to get more info.

I know a couple of great people I use in the Philippines and the UK for this - drop me a line if you want contact info.

Wow, thank you SO much everyone. This is such helpful information. I'll definitely be contacting some of you

I agree with what Jamespitt is saying, and that it would be a good idea to pull these people into a sales funnel, and will certainly explore things in that way.

Matt

You should have a sales funnel regardless of your lead generation method. The easier the first step the prospect has to take, the more leads you'll get. Then you just work the leads through your funnel.

I've tried several different calls-to-action with my mailings. I prefer seminars as step one, but again, that's just the opening for my sales funnel. Cold calls are no different than mailings.

Matt,

I used to do cold-calling w/script for company called Destination Television. They offered 15 second graphic-type commercials on plasma screens inside of gyms. Cold-calling businesses worked 'cause we stressed "exclusivity" within a 5-mile radius...

We only accepted ONE pizza place, ONE hair salon, ONE car shop, etc. within that area.

You could have someone calling for you saying "We're only accepting 2 doctors, 2 dentists, 2 chiros...etc... within a say 10 mile radius.

~ JIM

Matt,

Have you considered hiring someone local and advertising on craigslist or another job related site? With unemployment as high as it is in PA right now and many people underemployed, I'd think you could find some good talent close to home at a reasonable rate.

If you tried local and that didn't work, I'd be curious to hear about your experiences.

Cheers,

Steve

Hey Steve,

That's an excellent idea. I actually started looking for an administrative assistant this week using craigslist, and I got almost 80 responses. Unbelieveable! There is such a great need in the job market right now.

I'm going to start this person off helping me promote through in-print methods, but will consider expanding to this too

Matt

This is an amazing amount of information.

I used to convert pretty well using an automated IVR (prerecorded message)...
Automatically call business & consumer phones... then they listen to a recorded message... at the end they press 1 (or whatever) and they are taken to a real person who try to sell them (or hook them into an appointment)...etc..

Then a change happened in September/2009 and calling "consumers" with a prerecorded message has become illegal (I know it was annoying, but being illegal is a different story)... however, calls to "business" has not been criminalized.

This might not be the route that you want to go... but I thought about putting my $0.02 here, for you or anyone who wants to try it.

Tamer

Hello Matt

Here are few call centers that I know of and they're pretty good too. Good luck!

West .:. Communication Services .:. Direct Response Marketing (800-841-9000)
Protocol Global Solutions - Contact Center Services, Integrated Marketing Services, Case Management and Monitoring Services (800-677-2001)
Triton - The Clear Choice (800-704-7538)
West Corporation (800-232-0900)
Contact Center Software and Call Center Outsourcing from LiveOps (800-411-4700)

Jamian

Hi Matt,

I have had businesses in the offline world for nearly 30 years and we used telemarketers extensively, particularly when selling high end services.

Here's what we did for a $30,000 a year coaching program

1/ Build database from Yellow Pages Online - used a yellow page crawler
2/ Sent out a slaes letter
3/ Had the telemarketers follow up the letter and make an appointment for me
4/ Sent the prospect questionnaires for them to fill in and send back
5/ Then sent info about us
6/ Had the appointment and closed over 75% of appointments made

There was a lot involved, but considering I was asking them to commit to 30K a year and they were buying thin air, we had to let them get to know us.

One thing you need to know is your actual acquisition cost. Mine was $749 per client which a lot of people will cringe at, but considering my average lifetime customer value was $38,922 - it was a great investment.

Good luck,
Steve