Which is better:

Hiring a commission only salesperson or salary/commision mix?

-What are good % commission I should aim for to motivate individuals?
I sell cell phones well below retail prices to businesses so profit margins is not the highest (perhaps 100$ per units at best).

-Is it better to have a physical room where people work and have actual control over what they do, or save the office overhead and simply tell them "you can work at home on a commission, I'll take care of the telecomms, just sell.If you don't,you're on your own".

Any taughts? Councel?
Thanks BHW

If you are willing to let people work at home I am deff interested. I can work full time.

You'll be hardpressed to find anyone reliable on a commission only offer. The "type" that will apply (considering the job) are not motivated people. Pardon me if I offended anyone.

Work from home agents on commission never works, they make 20 calls and determine it is too hard and give up. If you can afford it get yourself a small room. There are many ways to get people to work basically for free and minimum wage for a period of time. Look to set up your room on a bus route near a halfway house, drug rehab center. These type of individuals have been my beat employees. They must be at work, will work for cheap, typically of the hustler mindset, you can grind them hard.

I think that your products are not enough expensive to pay by commission because the conversion rate will not be so strong. However, you can test it.

You need to know how many phones by day you can sell and how much telemarketers can earn from hit. It's the basis to know if it have sense or not.

A suggestion is that you keep a good tracking of what is done. So, you need a really simple system like magic jack because other systems like ring central are more powerfull but bring a lot of network problems to have it setted up properly.

you also need to use a crm that will allow you to analyse everything because you will probably need to hire few ones before getting the good one and you dont want to lose traces of what is done and what is not.


About paying by commission, its a great possibility if you can find interested people. It's hard but possible!

If you wanted to hire commission only telemarketers, I would of course look first in your local area - especially if the majority of your business clients are reasonably close to where you are (where you can actually do face-to-face meetings).

Don't go near overseas freelancers of course, I think every (even small local business) are sick of the never ending stream of word-for-word can't think on their feet script reading drones.

I've been a telemarketer for 6+ years full time. I actually started my own business from home cold calling.

If you want productivity have an office, brick and mortar. Trust me, when working from home it's easy to get distracted, and not take it as serious as when the boss is *right there*

Commision is the way you're going to want to go.

If you pay people hourly, they will pretend to work.
(not everyone but the majority trust me) they will go through the motions, because its not as crucial for them to make sales. Telemarketing is a hard gig, alot of people cant hack it.

When you pay commision, not only is it better for you (you aren't wasting money on people who aren't producing or, making you any money)
but they will take their own time more seriously, considering no sale = no $

When you work hourly, lets say 7$ per hour just for fun, 40 hour week - 280$
every week, no matter how hard you work your still going to make the same 280$
Now on commision, lets say you were selling phones at 40$ commision per sale. Someone could sell 4 phones 1 day, 3 the next, 2 the next day, 5, then 3 again for a total of 18 phones in a week, 18 x 40 = 720$ that they would earn.
With commision you earn what your worth but you have potential to earn a lot more than people who just slave hourly jobs.

It may be a good idea to pay hourly for 1 week or something while you're training, but thats up to you.
Jobs like this, you'll end up hiring a lot of lower class - criminal minded.
(although these are some of the best salesman) Telemarketing attracts a different class of people, and if you're not doing background checks and drug screens. Some won't have an option for better work.

Just always be hiring, you'll find some good people it might take going through 100 people to find 6-10 that are loyal, and become good salespeople. Once you have that team though its all worth it.

Hope this helped a little, if you have any questions ask.

What is the optimum number of people to have at any given time in the office (I am alone in this endeavor)? Also,if bricks and mortar is the way to go, does anyone have any tips on how to find a cheap office?

Thanks people, I really appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Nick1

Which is better:

Hiring a commission only salesperson or salary/commision mix?

-What are good % commission I should aim for to motivate individuals?
I sell cell phones well below retail prices to businesses so profit margins is not the highest (perhaps 100$ per units at best).

-Is it better to have a physical room where people work and have actual control over what they do, or save the office overhead and simply tell them "you can work at home on a commission, I'll take care of the telecomms, just sell.If you don't,you're on your own".

Any taughts? Councel?
Thanks BHW

A lot of "brick and mortar" telemarketing shops charge you only when a sale is made. I've done a decent amount of telemarketing and have found that the better agents gravitate towards 100% commission structures.

This makes sense; the better agents are willing to trade the security of a guaranteed paycheck for a more lucrative structure usually offered when working for commission only.

I recommend finding some such telemarketing agency. There will be overhead, however, you may find that it will still be beneficial due to the fact that you will burn a fair amount of leads if you blindly invite just about anyone to participate via telecommute.

Originally Posted by Nick1

What is the optimum number of people to have at any given time in the office (I am alone in this endeavor)? Also,if bricks and mortar is the way to go, does anyone have any tips on how to find a cheap office?

Thanks people, I really appreciate it.

It depends on how much space you have, you dont want a 15 x 15 office with 10 people in it, you want people to have enough room to where their conversations aren't overlapping too much.

A cheap office? not really sure on this, I would call a real estate agent in your area, they might be able to help. Tell them what you can afford, they usually have access to alot of propertys.

OK, I've been sleeping on it, and I realise I've forgotten to ask the most important questions:

What is the amount a single telemarketer can do in a day (not what you personally can do, more like the average one)?
Is it better to have a hard or soft management style?
How many leads per month do you need if you just start with 4-5 people?

It will be hard to find people who will work for commission in the telemarketing gig, but at the same time its your best bet to find people who will actually work, and as its been mentioned before, your saving money by paying the people who actually earn it.

Have you considered automating your process vs. hiring telemarketers?

If you're selling to businesses vs. consumers, you can use phone broadcasting to generate interest, then you can handle the sales aspect and close them yourself....dealing only with warm prospects.

BTW, if you're curious about a solution, PM me.