Does Anyone Selling Websites Using Telemarketers Have Some Tips For Me?

Hey Folks,

My telemarketing operation is scheduled to begin next week. I already have a couple of guys on board and could be looking at a couple more coming in as well for the first phase. I will be focusing on the well known "free website for hosting method". My plan is to expand and sell more advanced services once this portion of the operation is successful. I already have a lead source that can generate over 1000 leads a week from the U.S and also created a script that got great feedback from the telemarketers and is optimized to turn cold leads into warm ones. I'll probably write down an agreement with specifications of what I am offering to all the new clients so there are no misunderstandings down the road and my website building team is also set.

I've already read and taken notes from the larger threads that talk about this method and have tweaked my strategy accordingly. My expectations are for each telemarketer to be bringing in between 3-5 "sales" per day which considering that the daily call volume should be of about 150-200 calls ends up translating to between a 2%-3% conversion rate. I think that is a reasonable expectation for this type of offer although please correct me if you think my numbers are off. The base plan is for telemarketers to close the sales on the phone and then send the clients my way (via email) so I can go over the technical details with the client (nothing fancy just the necessary hosting sign-up and domain purchasing instructions).

I think that covers what I have done so far. Any feedback from someone that is already spending cash on this particular approach to selling free websites or payed websites or even just sales-intended telemarketing would be appreciated.

I would be suprised if you got 3-5 sales from 200 calls, maybe from 700 calls. Are your guys experienced telemarketers?

Yeah, they've been in sales for several years.

to be frank from just 150-200 calls you are expecting a lot
it also depends on other factors like the country you outsourced it to and their agents, dialing method (manual, automatic and predictive dialing) & how the agents pitch (pitch is only gonna be good after a couple of days if u force them to try different pitches so that within a week u know what works).

manual dialing : 100 leads a day/agent 7hr window
automatic & predictive dialing : around 500 leads a day easily per agent 7hr window (this is very efficient as the dialer weeds out all the answering machines and busy calls connecting only an answered call to an agent and also an agent doesnt have to manually sit and dial each numbers instead dialer does it all, agent just picks up a connected call so defenitely the effciency increases which inturn increase production)

if you have a trackable number (toll free works best) then i think i can try to get potential calls to your number and we can work on a pay per call basis becoz inbound calls converts atleast 5 times more than outbound cold calling.

I owned and operated a medium sized contact center for 4 years, if you have any questions lemme know i will surely try to help you out.

asritad said:

to be frank from just 150-200 calls you are expecting a lot
it also depends on other factors like the country you outsourced it to and their agents, dialing method (manual, automatic and predictive dialing) & how the agents pitch (pitch is only gonna be good after a couple of days if u force them to try different pitches so that within a week u know what works).

manual dialing : 100 leads a day/agent 7hr window
automatic & predictive dialing : around 500 leads a day easily per agent 7hr window (this is very efficient as the dialer weeds out all the answering machines and busy calls connecting only an answered call to an agent and also an agent doesnt have to manually sit and dial each numbers instead dialer does it all, agent just picks up a connected call so defenitely the effciency increases which inturn increase production)

if you have a trackable number (toll free works best) then i think i can try to get potential calls to your number and we can work on a pay per call basis becoz inbound calls converts atleast 5 times more than outbound cold calling.

I owned and operated a medium sized contact center for 4 years, if you have any questions lemme know i will surely try to help you out.

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Sounds interesting. I'll give it some thought and get back to you about that proposition. Thanks for the feedback too. Useful information. This my first time dealing with anything telemarketing related so if I wanted to optimize the operation with one of those automatic/predictive dialers how would I go setting one up? Also is there a simplified solution (something like aweber for automatic dialers) and more or less how much does it cost?

there are people who charge 80$/hr and installation charges, but if u can get someone from countries like India u will get it a lot cheaper.
back in 2008 i used to pay around 200-250$ for a complete setup for 10 seats not sure whats the case now. Its not a windows based software its an asterisk based system which u neeed to install on a dedicated system locally and that system makes all the calls and stuff and then connected calls are transferred to an agent.
The thing is efficiency increases a lot more coz if u dial manually believe me after the second half of the shift the agents will be lazy like hell to manually take the number and dial and that affects the production for sure and also agents are gonna dial manually max 150 leads a day its really tough to get some conversions from 150 leads, iam not hurting you but this is the fact becoz u will come across a lot of answering machines and all that stuff out of 150 and a very less number of calls will be connected to the owner or decision maker so ...

To add to what Asritad said, if you want your call center to work, you need to hire go-getters who have great phone voices. Hiring people with bad phone voices will be the death of any telemarketing operation. Hiring people who are not go-getters, who just want an hourly job, will also be the death of a telemarketing operation.

You need to have people who want to make bank! Slackers do not succeed in telemarketing sales.

The rule in telemarketing is the same in any sales job and that hardline rule is: ABC = Always Be Closing!!!

You need to hire people who understand the telemarketing mantra, "Smile and dial!"

You need to hire people who comprehend that they need to get through the "NOs" in order to get to the "Yes'es."

My point is, you could have the best predictive dialing system in the world but unless you hire go-getters and heavy hitters, you will be spinning your wheels.

Also, you need go-getters and heavy hitters to help you ergonomically hone and tweak your script. You will never get that benefit hiring slackers.

Alec Baldwin's ABC speech... "I'm here on a mission of mercy... you're fired, LOL"



You can't close? Hit the bricks, you're fired!

Crewchief007 said:

To add to what Asritad said, if you want your call center to work, you need to hire go-getters who have great phone voices. Hiring people with bad phone voices will be the death of any telemarketing operation. Hiring people who are not go-getters, who just want an hourly job, will also be the death of a telemarketing operation.

You need to have people who want to make bank! Slackers do not succeed in telemarketing sales.

The rule in telemarketing is the same in any sales job and that hardline rule is: ABC = Always Be Closing!!!

You need to hire people who understand the telemarketing mantra, "Smile and dial!"

You need to hire people who comprehend that they need to get through the "NOs" in order to get to the "Yes'es."

My point is, you could have the best predictive dialing system in the world but unless you hire go-getters and heavy hitters, you will be spinning your wheels.

Also, you need go-getters and heavy hitters to help you ergonomically hone and tweak your script. You will never get that benefit hiring slackers.

Alec Baldwin's ABC speech... "I'm here on a mission of mercy... you're fired, LOL"

You can't close? Hit the bricks, you're fired!

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OP. This is all you need right here man. As Crewchief says, if you hire people who are looking for the Glen Gary leads (lol Crewchief, that's a sales guys favorite movie...that & Boiler room), then it won't work.

I posted this the other day that will go great with what Crewchief has highlighted.

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...g/443761-two-people-meetings.html#post4271137

In essence, sales is not about numbers at all. Its an art & YOU as the business owner are responsible for hiring the BEST sales guys. If you don't have a sales background, then this may be a foreign concept. But the sales guys/gals are the backbone of any telemarketing company.

Forget the system, forget the scripts...work on your backbone if you want success.

Good luck bro & keep us abreast of your success.

Yeah, I definitely get that part. So far I have an individual and a telemarketing company on board. Actually I just got confirmation from another individual that he is in. They all sound fairly excited about the "product" and have agreed to do a trial run in which they get payed only commissions with no hourly payment. I originally offered the trial to last only two days but after the first agent that came on board requested an extension, I told all the other prospects I was interviewing the length of the trial period would be up to them. One of the individuals and the telemarketing company requested 2 weeks to show me what they can do and the other individual requested a week. I take that as a good sign. This trial model will also allow me to save several hundred dollars in hourly expenses that may or may not have ended in success.

I'm afraid to waste money on a telemarketer I don't think it will produce results for what I'm trying to sell. I'm trying to rent out local sites and am afraid of exhausting the potential client list.

Silverion are you located in the states?

mrunknown said:

Silverion are you located in the states?

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Nope.

I would be interested to see the outcome of your trial period.Good luck for that.
By the way you have hired telemarketers from which country?

poweronics said:

I would be interested to see the outcome of your trial period.Good luck for that.
By the way you have hired telemarketers from which country?

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One agent is from the Phillipines, another from Bangladesh and the telemarketing company is from Canada. They all have good references or I wouldn't have bothered giving them a trial.

Hey,

In case anyone was wondering about the automatized solution for predictive dialer idea I had, I found something that works like that. They are called "hosted predictive dialers" and based on my research they can cost between $150-$200 per month, per person, depending on which company you go with. From what I read, it sounds fairly similar to skype as far as login in wherever you are and being able to use the software, so all you really need to operate it, is a computer with access to the internet and a headset. The hosted solution also appears to come with unlimited calling to U.S. and Canada so that won't have to be coming out of your pocket either, although that may vary from provider to provider.

I plan to buy subscriptions for my telemarketers once the trial is finished and see how much it really enhances the operation. By the way, I'm not done looking for suggestions so if anyone with experience in this area has anything to add, please go ahead.

How has your experience been thus far with your telemarketing campaign?

I can share my experiences w/ this kind of set up:

First of all, I've worked in sales for many years prior to doing marketing. I am currently partnered with a guy who runs a pretty sizable telesales operation at the moment.

-If your sales guys are manually calling people, don't expect more than 90-100 calls per day. In reality it might be lower than that.
-You'll do well by paying your sales people as little as possible. We've saved to much cash by outsourcing the sales force from the US to S. America. With the money you save from that, you can invest in more leads.
-I think it's better to generate your own leads, especially if the leads are being shared with competitors. The difference between shared leads and self-generated leads was like 10-15%, which is huge.
-2-3% sounds about right for the type of ticket that we sell (translates into between 100-200$ per sale, we share w/ 7-10 competitors in a highly competitive niche.)
-I'm of the personal opinion that sales really is just a numbers game. That doesn't mean that your sales force can suck, but I've found that emphasizing quantity over quality works better.
-I think it is in your best interest to automate absolutely everything that you can. For instance, once the sale is made and so on, you mentioned that the emails are sent to you and you follow up. I really hope that you have a nice database setup with a good back end or you're going to have trouble.

My 2c on the subject, hope it helps and ask me almost anything else if you need more insight.