Outsourcing cold calls?

Search the forums before posting a question. Rule of thumb.

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...ml#post5365264

Actually, what you're looking for is more of an appointment setter. A lot of people offer them, but they're not usually cheap. If they are at a decent pricing or you're willing to pay, you'll have to buy quite a few to actually close those interested and make a good ROI. Check out luxury leads, they're somewhere here on forum. Just search up "appointment setting" here.

Hi, I started my first business doing this and now trained a woman to do this for me. I have a call that she did to setup her first appointment. She made 28 calls and setup 1 appt. PM me if you want the call.

HI volit. Telemarketers who can do cold calling can be really hard to search nowadays. However, based on my experience with our company, it is just a matter of patience. If you still need a person to do the job for you, just PM me

Hey volit. I have been selling and cold calling for years. My advice is do the calling yourself. You will foster relationships and gain so much knowledge from doing it yourself. If you want some specific advice Pm me. I'll tell what you what I was taught, and I will Dow it for free. Yes you can hire someone else but they won't have the same passion and enthusiasm that jyou

Message me and I'll pass on to you what I know. No questions asked

You need to manage and schedule your day so you HAVE the time to do this. You must make time for the proactive things in your business as this is what helps your business grow.

If you don't have enough time to make the calls during the day, do them at night or early morning.

I actually prefer calling before or after business hours and leaving a message with something along the lines of "and I thought about your business and have a few ideas I think you'd be impressed with. Give me a call back at XXX."

When they call back, it's on their terms so the whole interaction is more relaxed and they are pre-qualified as an interested prospect.

Then, work your magic. =)

There are outsourcing companies that provide telemarketing services. It is just a matter of finding the one that can deliver your needs. These outsourcing firms have been in the industry so they know what to do.

outsource if you can - your time is better spent on other things

The problem is two fold, you don't get to always call when you want to and good help is hard to find.

For example, restaurant owners usually only want to be called between 10 and 11 a.m. after breakfast and before lunch or between 4 and 5 before dinner prep.

If you hire from India and the Philippines, some owners will hang up on your call force before they are even given a chance because many have grown tired of outsourced phone reps who either cannot speak clear English or have a robotic response when questioned about what is being offered.

It is better to hire a seasoned salesperson who can also cold call. It costs a little more as most great ones don't work on commission only unless you offer big revenue splits, but if you can afford it, it will pay off in the long run. You just have to hope that they don't some day realize that they don't need you anymore and begin to make calls for themselves.

Run potential outsourcers through some scripts and see how they do live...

I'm a mobile marketer, and I'm not pretty good in English. So for me it can be very hard to close sales or to draw customers attention on what I have to offer. Don't you think outsourcing cold calling is the right way to go?

You can hire appointment setters. They can set business meeting for you, just let them know who and what is your target market. Also, make sure you set your qualifications so that they can filter the leads. If you are interested PM me, I can refer you.

I have hired someone to do cold calling for me. There are many reasons I did this, and limited time is one of them.

I pay this person to call for 10 hours per week and set appointments. I then go to the appointments in person to close the sale. They are able to generate about 6-8 appointments per week and I am able to close 1/3 of them on average (I think a better salesman might be getting a much better close rate)

It works wonders. The reality is, even if this is your full time job, you don't have time to do everything. I outsource the things I am bad at and focus on the things I do well. I am terrible on the phone, but pretty good in person. I also am able to build the products I am selling and follow up and upsell clients.

A few words of wisdom:

1. Don't go cheap. Be willing to spend at least $8, maybe more. Have applicants send you an audio sample. Avoid callers that have thick accent or that clearly sound like an 'outsourced' call center employee. If they sound like a canned outsourced calling agent they will get hung up on at a very high rate.

2. Set up a skype manager account, order a local US number and have that number set up to show on the caller's caller ID. An out of area phone number on Caller ID also leads to much higher hang up rates. If you call in multiple areas, get multiple numbers. They aren't expensive.

3. If hiring from Odesk, make sure you review the client history. Even if they have a 5 star rating - it doesn't mean they are successful. Do they have any long term projects? What is the longest project they worked on? Truth is, if they have been profitable on another project they would have kept the job for a long time. Why get rid of a profitable employee?

Now, I don't typically 'penalize' for short contracts - as many people hire outsourced agents without the proper budget - but I do reward for long term. My most successful callers actually have other work projects they have been on for a long time. This makes it hard to get many hours from them, but it shows they are a valuable asset.

4. Look for a salesman (or woman). One of the easiest ways I have had success in determining this is through the interview process. If someone seems impressive, toward the end of the call, I ask if they would accept a lower rate. Not anything outrageous - but enough to make a difference. (Usually between 25-30% lower than they quoted). If they say 'yes' with no objection, I thank them for the interview but I do not hire them. If they, instead, use traditional sales tactics to justify their wage - then I hire them.

If someone isn't willing or able to sell themselves, then how on earth are they going to sell your product/service?

I have had pretty good success with this. But even then, nothing is perfect. It takes a few weeks to get someone trained and comfortable and successful. I had one great caller leave because his other project was too demanding. I have had another miss days because of issues out of their control and internet reliability. Outsourcing can save you a lot of time, if done well - but it still requires a lot of attention and work to manage.

If you don't have time or you feel your time can be better spent then by all means you should outsource your cold calls. If you go the route of outsourcing I would strongly recommend that you go with someone that speaks the local language. People will be much more receptive. ie, if you are in the US/United Kingdom do not outsource to the Phillippines. (I don't mean to offend anyone.)
Tom Miles

Do it yourself for at least a few days so you can get a feel for it. Then, when you find a person, put them on a trial period for a week. They must make x number of calls during the week or else you will find someone else.

Set up an autodialer for them (like CallFire) so you can record and listen in to all of the calls. This will allow you to give them training at the end of the day - what to say, what not to say, how to answer certain questions.

You will learn a lot about the person by listening to their calls.

If there are high number of concurrent calls, I would recommend to go with smart autodialer application with few trained agents to best use resources, A smart autodialer application will reduce your costs to more than 80%

I found a guy on oDesk, from Bangladesh. Very good English. 3.5 bucks/h.
He makes 50 calls/day and gives me 3-5 good leads/day which I follow up on.
Mine is an easy niche, B2B, but for me outsourcing cold calls is working nicely.

Good luck,

As long as they are just building a little bit of interest for you, and setting the appointment, then you should see a good ROI. They don't come very cheap, unless you sacrifice quality but at the same time you just need to know your numbers. That one deal could pay for the rest of the leads ten times over...

If you want to go the way of cold calling it is certainly worth it provided you have the right set of calling database and an aggressive tele marketer working.

Outsourcing cold calls is great if you get really good people who can call for you. They don't even need to close the sale or anything. All the need to do is help sell a bit to get them interested in an appointment, do doing so is a good idea if you really want more opportunities.