Call centre business model.

You need way more info before we could begin to give you help. I have run various size call centres for in and outbound but I can't help you because you need to know the reason for setting up a call centre BEFORE you do it.

I have a call center and I generate leads for myself as well as generating leads for clients. I would not try to sell a product (whether it's yours or someone else's) until you have all of the sales process, fulfillment, and customer service in place. You'll end up losing focus on telemarketing and concentrating more on the sales process, administrative responsibilities, and customer service, which means your telemarketing focus will be greatly diminished.

If your skillset is in telemarketing then stick with what you're good at and build a call center to generate leads for hire. Then eventually start tinkering with actually selling a product/service.

Agreed with Bob! Selling a call centre service like being hired for being customer service or generating leads is great, and it should be vital to know that you really need to be prepared for the fulfillment of the product way beforehand. Generating leads as a call centre is very profitable, especially if you have a call centre in a place like the Philippines or India.

Aaron has excellent points.

My thoughts:

1. It's going to be a delicate balancing act of hiring enough people to fulfill your campaigns but be able to have more at the ready when callers don't show up or quit (which will happen often). That puts you in a position often where you'll hire more people than you need, so what I do is just fire the underperforming ones and bring in new blood. This of course creates a revolving door -- an unfortunate but necessary part of this business.

Prepare for it!

2. Be prepared for all the paperwork and recordkeeping that goes along with having lots of employees passing through. I'm not sure how it compares in your country to the USA but most likely there are a lot of compliance issues you'll have to make sure you're following. Payroll, bookkeeping, and regular office administration will require at least one person but likely a minimum of 2 regardless of how small you are.

3. Get your systems down perfectly so that you can hire the cheapest workers possible. Since you're reselling your services, you'll need to keep that hourly rate down as low as humanly possible so that you don't outprice yourself but can still make a profit. Because the workers will be 'bottom of the barrel' you'll need to have everything down pat so they can simply read a script and pass the call off when someone is interested.

You do NOT want to waste your time training callers to be superstars who can handle the calls from start to finish. That kind of training will take too long and 95% of the trainees will not be able to do it. You'll need to have them simply read a script and then you or someone who has the capability can take over the calls that are interested.

This way you'll only need warm bodies to read a script, and not any kind of talent. Even if someone may be able to handle calls from start to finish, it will be a waste of time to let them do it.

The talent will come naturally as someone you hire will shine and can be promoted to a supervisor in progress.

3. The person who moves up can become a supervisor in progress, where you don't really have to pay them much more at all and they can continue doing the basic work, but they'll be adding responsibilities to their workload. Eventually when you have enough callers to warrant a full time supervisor you can move that person to that position. You want their hourly pay diluted heavily by callers. One supervisor who is only supervising 3 or 4 people will burn your money fast. You want one supervisor handling a lot of callers with 'supervisors-in-progress' supporting him.

4. Get a tracking and reporting system in place. You'll need to track and report everything so that you can identify anywhere money is being lost or made.

5. Systemize out every little problem that's eating up time or slowing things down. The smallest things possible can eat up time especially when you have multiple callers. If you have callers who are writing leads down after setting them, that right there might be 10 minutes wasted, which multiplied by even a few agents, adds up to hours and hours of time throughout the day that are wasted and could have gone to production.

Supervisors and administrative staff should be handling all of that stuff so that callers can strictly be calling.

6. Get your training system down to a science. My newhires are on the phones after 3 hours of training. Everything is systemized to get them on the phone in 3 hours or less.

7. Make sure to have insurance and protection in place. With employees you'll be dealing with potential issues like discrimination, sexual harrassment, payroll disputes, accidents, unemployment, etc. so be prepared in case something happens, because situations will happen, regardless of validity.

8. Have the right tech in place. virtual pbx for phones is the way to go. You can add and delete extensions as you need, record calls, track all calls and durations, and most importantly, be able to transfer or barge-in quickly.

Have a database in place (I use a custom built one in access).

9. Motivate and pay bonuses. Everyone will need to be constantly motivated. The slightest hint of negativity needs to be eliminated immediately or it will spread like cancer. You will need to rule with an iron fist or it will NOT WORK, I promise you that. It needs to be north korea in that callroom, with everyone on eggshells, particularly the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Your bonus structure should reward them just enough to get their weekly check and remind themselves that it's worth working for you.

10. The atmosphere of the call room and the company itself should feel like a special unit of elite people that they can feel proud to be a part of.

Think of what it takes to become a navy seal... You have to listen to every beck and command of your supervisor or you'll be terminated and another person will gladly fill your space. You have to push yourself harder than ever, and it still won't even be enough. The hours will suck and the pay will suck, but you'll do it because once you're "in" and have proven yourself, you'll be part of a special group that can't be found elsewhere.

That's the kind of environment you need to create, and it doesn't take much to do it other than a culture of people working hard as hell and focused on production, with a master at the helm. When dealing these kind of people, you'll find that some of them have never been (and never will be) given this kind of opportunity ever in their lives, where they can move up and make more than their college-educated friends do.

Not only is it rewarding to make money yourself, but it's rewarding to give people jobs and see them succeed when they probably felt like they were going to be losers the rest of their life.

Of course you want to watch out for people who will harm the reputation of the client.

I worked for a call center. They had one project that went well. They were actually selling a home fitness machine. There was enough profit margin to make it a good deal for the call center, the call center employees, and the client. The client did the shipping and billing and such.

They had another project where they sold long distance telephone service. Problem was that the client only let them try to sell the small accounts, keeping the larger business accounts in house. Sometimes there were no savings, or not enough savings, or not enough dissatisfaction with the current provider - so no reason to go through the hassles of switching. $50 a month versus $48 a month for long distance service - not enough reason to switch. (This was a loooong time ago. lol) And, not enough profit margin to make it a win, win, win.

So, be careful with project selection and margins. Lead gen in the right markets sounds good.

If it's outbound, you have to either buy a list or do cold calling. If it's inbound, you should advertise the service so potential customers will contact you.

Opening a call centre business is new to anyone it contain inbound and outbound calling types.

One of the most important element of a call center is having a skilled agents who will do all the customer service for your product/services. You must have business plan and decision making is really important whether were your focus will be.