Telemarketing Help Please!

[seobarbershop]

Ok so... I will be honest.


I have been contacting Telemarketing companies with the following email...


I’m The Sales Manager of a company called
(My website) and I’m looking to source a Telemarketing company to run an ongoing B2C Telesales campaign on our behalf.

The campaign would be on a cost per acquisition basis with a zero budget with the intention to move onto an hourly rate depending on performance. I would however look at giving away a high CPA to accommodate not having a budget.

All leads would be provided and I would require the company to complete the full sales cycle by taking credit card details and paying online on behalf of the client.

If this is of interest to you please get in contact.



And with the same result on every occassion it's a NO.

So i contacted them and they all gave the same reason 'We would be taking on the campaign with all the risk' and I can totally understand this. But what I want to find out is if I am totally wasting my time trying to find someone who will do this?? Doe's no one do it, at all? :|



I would love to hear you comments even if they are really bad... Positive ones are even more wellcome :rolleyes:


Im now looking at recruiting freelance telesales staff but just dont know where to start with;



A bonus structure, per sale or lead or what?
Where do I find these freelancers? Job ads are expensive
Legal issues
Do I need then to sign a contact?


HHHEEEELLLLLPPPPPP!!!

[Hattey]

Hi Epic CV's

I agree with your replies thusfar - you are asking a company to take on everything in your first paragraph - you haven't given them an idea of the product or anything either.

B2C is hard enough without having to take on the full risk too! Also, not all the freelancers are set up to accept payment over the phone.

You may find people on 'gumtree' for instance willing to work on a pay per lead basis and perhaps if you can share a bit more information we can assist you further.

Can I ask why you are unable to carry this out yourself and have to outsource? Just curious?

Hattey :)

[seobarbershop]

Hi Hattey,


To be honest I didn't put what the product is or too much information because I was just expecting everyone just to call and get back to me lol!

It's funny you say Gumtree because thats where I looked first, I found a couple of people interested but the majority of adds I have to say really are time wasters!

I have done two days a week for 6 weeks with an average of 100 calls a day and my conversion rate for sales was 6% which would or easily rise to 10/12% if I had been present to answer calls and follow up on leads at the correct time. I will continue to take this on full time and spend all day every day doing sales in Jan 2010!!! But I want a huge jump to market as I have plenty of Consultants to write the CVS but I need lots of orders coming in!


Thanks for your reply!

[K2012]

Hi EpicCv's,

What an interesting business model you have, selling a CV writing service to consumers/jobseekers with no money? for almost £60.00.

What made you think of this idea, it is very expensive and I can understand why a telesales company would not look at this.
I run a recruitment company, and I and my consultants modify CV'S on their behalf just as every other agency does.. For Free!

So, I am wondering what made you think people would pay for this?

Good Luck!

Kevin

[K2012]

I think it is clever that you say 14 days to receive the CV, why? is this because you know in law after the 14 days the consumers cooling off period is gone?

Kevin

[telemax]

Effectively what you are asking for is a Telemarketing Company to work for free with no risk to yourself. It isn't going to happen. Why not share the risk with a small hourly rate plus a good commision, tha tmight receive a better response,

Jonathan

[seobarbershop]

Kevin Wright- After speaking to several PROFESSIONAL recruitment agencies they all agreed that it can become time consuming having to help out every job hunter with their CV and their reply (Apart from yours) where all very, very positive. Most said that they can't remember the last time they where seeing CV's that didn't need work on one way or another.

You ask why I 'think' this would work? You mean apart from all of the other very sucessful agencies already opperating throughout the UK?? The Companies House are reporting profits of in excess of 200k for some agencies.

I carried out a Telemarketing campaign myself conducting approx 100 calls a day, two days a week for a six week period. This resulted in a 6% call to sale ratio and with more time and effort I could of easily achieved around 8/10% call to sale.

Based on 8% I would turn over approx £9592 per month... Not bad for a 22yr old on he'e first start up venture.


Prehaps your just another grumpy old Recruitment Manager im not sure. But what ever status please try and lower the level of your sarcasm and patronizing manner.

I'm also amazed you can sterotype every job hunter and say they have no money? What on earth are you talking about? I really can not continue to comment on that statement.ridiculous :eek:

Thank you everyone else for your replys...

[Successful Selling]

Don't worry about people putting you down Epic. You will never be able to please eveyone, just like everyone won't buy your product. If you have found a business to make you some money, then fair play to you.

However I have a question for you; How many CV's can you do per week?

Just doing the maths, if someone was to make 100 calls per day, 5 days per week and converting around 6%, that's 30 sales per week.

That must be (at least) 30-40 hours work for you?

Just doing the Maths myself, if I was to work on a commission only basis for you, I would want approx £16 per sale min. However, if I was selling on average 30 a week to start with, by the time I've perfected my pitch I would of thought I could sell 40-45 per week.

Can you write 45 CV's per week?

[seobarbershop]

Hi Successful selling! What you have said is very right... I have one freelance consultant to write the CV's and also have my sister, who is a Recruitment consultant currenly now a Housewife (First child) who will cover any extra CV's for the immediate future. As we do not write CV's from scratch we re-write CV's a consultant would spend on average 30-45 min on each CV so a little less time than from scratch.

I don't have all the answers (yet) but im planning to learn new things along the way to help me plan my time effectivly.

The problem I have at the moment is finding really good consultants to write the CVs for me and finding freelance telesales execs to push the business forward. I can't do everything myself!

As for kevin Wright - I just think if you have nothing constructive to say in any way at all why bother? I joined the fourm to learn new things and to challenge my way of thinking, not to have some grumpy guy tell me how wrong i am?

thanks for your input s.selling

[Hillyer]

Maybe just ignore any grumpy responses. Don't ignore criticism of course, but I would have preferred it if you ignored his message, as you didn't look very professional when you responded!

Nice work on finding a niche @ 22 years old ;)

[saxondale]

got "I`m a graduate" written all over it....... someone else does all the work and I moan about how unfair it is.





Sorry O/P but if no one will touch it you really need to alter it.

[seobarbershop]

Saxondale- another person who just can't help but comment without reading my other threads first, check out my introduction at the bottom of the new posts page and stop jumping the gun.
:mad:

[Successful Selling]

got "I`m a graduate" written all over it....... someone else does all the work and I moan about how unfair it is.





Sorry O/P but if no one will touch it you really need to alter it.At least read the whole thread before making comments like this.

At no time is the op moaning about how unfair it is-he just wants to find a way to maximise the opportunities open to him.

If you are going to criticise the idea, fine, but without telling the op why it won't work, or how he can overcome this problem, this comment is pointless.

[JElder]

Hi

We tend to avoid working on projects based on results as:

1) We know our hourly costs, so for any project, we calculate expected income per hour. We generally charge on an hourly rate, per call, or sometimes per outcome.
2) We do not know your product or market. Therefore we cannot calculate the expected conversion, and cannot work out the expected hourly rate. Therefore, working on a commission becomes very difficult
3) Margins are not huge in the industry. A small change in the response rate from 5% to 4% could turn the job from profitable to unprofitable. We would still have to pay call costs, wages, overheads.
4) Where we do jobs on pay per result, it is on projects where we have good statistics for expected conversion rates (we do a lot of STATUS surveys and customer profiling for housing associations, for example, and many of these are on result. We have enough historical data to accurately calculate expected income)
5) If we are on a pay per result on a less sure project, we want to make 30% to50% more than our normal rates. Why? Because we are taking a risk, and in all investments, the higher the risk taken, the higher expected reward. This could make your project unviable on this basis, as we may want to take ALL the income!
6) (minor point) Our costs are based on average call length. If we are to get onto a customers merchant account, take payment details, address, etc, it will add at least 5 to 10 minutes. The issue is in that time we could have made another 5 calls - therefore reducing our conversions per our and therefore income per hour. The more work we have to do, the higher the charge per call or conversion.

Hope this helps.

[neil_coul]

Hi,

I think you will struggle to get someone to work commission only.A lot of countries would do this,unfortunately the UK doesn't really take to commission only.As a telesales person myself i would expect at least 20% on a commission only basis and lots of companies would pay it here and abroad.
6% percent conversion seems quite high although i do not disbelieve you,I have 8 years experience and dream about that sort of conversion rate on any sales job.Try doing the telesales for a whole week or a month as you could just have a good list.I have been on jobs were i couldn't fail to sell one week and got a new list and no sales for weeks.

Good luck with your venture

Neil32

[GeorgeM]

Try engaging one on a paid-for short pilot campaign, calling for say 1 or 2 calling days - with agreed targets to be met. That way you are sharing some of the risks with your suppliers.

Regards

[seobarbershop]

Thank you all of your comments, I think im going to have to share some of the rick with the telesales company and introduce some sort of hourly rate.


I really appreciate your help and detailed feedback.



Many thanks,


Scott L

[Deliberator]

Hi EpicCv's,

What an interesting business model you have, selling a CV writing service to consumers/jobseekers with no money? for almost £60.00.

What made you think of this idea, it is very expensive and I can understand why a telesales company would not look at this.
I run a recruitment company, and I and my consultants modify CV'S on their behalf just as every other agency does.. For Free!

So, I am wondering what made you think people would pay for this?

Good Luck!

Kevin

So the website now states £19.95 per CV written. Has the price changed from £60ish then down to £19.95 or did Mr Wright get it wrong ?

[K2012]

The website has changed and it looks very good, and for £19.95 that is much better than £60.00..

I am sure this will work well!

Best Wishes

Kevin

[Successful Selling]

The website has changed and it looks very good, and for £19.95 that is much better than £60.00..not if you need to sell three times the amount to make the same profit!

[seobarbershop]

sorry your signiture says what?

[futurex]

I think Freelancer.com is the best place for outsourced telemarketing campaigns... Just start a project there for free and You'll get a good response.

[Fadtastic]

Interesting points raised, good luck with your venture, ignore the tools out there. The biggest step is always the first and youve done that.

I have a similar query, but wont hijack the thread, in brief:

I am looking to outsource some of my telesales activity, ideally on a commision only basis, how would telesales/telemarketing companies feel if there was a 'profit sharing scheme' so a 75/25 split on the revenue, not profit, generated?

Some figures, with 10 telesales agents making 2/3 sales a day , this would generate around £4500 revenue.

feedback? Alternatively pm me

[Durbish]

its so hard not to rise to sarcastic criticism though, its like being told that your an idiot for thinking people need this service.

your not an idiot, its a market i didnt even realize existed

[sbayliss204]

I work in telemarketing and would be very interested in helping. please PM me.

Steve

[skeeter]

One thing that is interesting is you are outsourcing the important part - the whole sales process.

This is unusual.

[telemax]

Interesting points raised, good luck with your venture, ignore the tools out there. The biggest step is always the first and youve done that.

I have a similar query, but wont hijack the thread, in brief:

I am looking to outsource some of my telesales activity, ideally on a commision only basis, how would telesales/telemarketing companies feel if there was a 'profit sharing scheme' so a 75/25 split on the revenue, not profit, generated?

Some figures, with 10 telesales agents making 2/3 sales a day , this would generate around £4500 revenue.

feedback? Alternatively pm me

Hi

I think the problem is that the product value is too low for telesales to work, from what you are saying it's around £150 per sale. Telesales or telemarketing seems to work a lot better with a sale value of over £1000. From a personal point of view working for 25% of £150 per sale really doesn't "excite" me as a salesperson. In fact we will work commison only on very high value products eg a commision worth a minimum of £1000 per sale, otherwise whats the point.

I hope this helps

Jonathan

[Fadtastic]

Hi

I think the problem is that the product value is too low for telesales to work, from what you are saying it's around £150 per sale. Telesales or telemarketing seems to work a lot better with a sale value of over £1000. From a personal point of view working for 25% of £150 per sale really doesn't "excite" me as a salesperson. In fact we will work commison only on very high value products eg a commision worth a minimum of £1000 per sale, otherwise whats the point.

I hope this helps

Jonathan

Interesting, however my argument would be that a product doesnt have to be high value to be exciting, a high value product could be something like a 3-piece-suite, I wouldnt find that exciting whereas selling energy, a service where u make £0 from the customer is exciting. And you save them money, another easy sell.

Having worked in the sales industry for real estate, I can honestly say I would rather work with lower value commisions but much more sales, coming from a week without making a physical sale with nothing extra in your pocket is quite depressing, whereas making 5/6 sales a day is much more exciting, the atmosphere is more exciting and more fast-paced

I think its very dependant on the sales rep and their personality:)

[Make My Calls]

Hey Epic,

Just sent you a PM.