Starting a Telemarketing company

[Jsmith93]

Hi Everyone,

Me and a friend have been looking into starting our own telemarketing business! I currently work in recruitment, which I spend most of my time on the phone to potential clients and I currently recruit for contact centers, which gave me the idea of starting up a telemarketing business. My friend works for a broadband company selling broadband,TV ETC. We both have the outbound call experience and are comfortable picking up the phone.

We would like to start it from home just the 2 of us and gradually invest in an office and grown from there really (invest in staff ETC) easier said then done!!

We are currently doing lots of research as we need this to be successful as we will be quitting our full time jobs. We have determinate to put the hard work in to make the money. To start of we need to find clients to sell our services to whether it be Lead generation, appointment setting ETC...

My question is can anyone give us advice how to kick it off... We know we have lots more homework to do before we give it a go, however this is why I am on here asking your advice.

How much would we charge for our services? I have read you can do it per hour per operative or one off fee or commission, however I don't like the sound of commission only.

Any advice would be great!

Joe

 

[Bruceflea]

Hi Joe,

I recently was approached by someone doing the same as you are hoping to do and to be totally honest, I liked what they said but have yet to make a decision on whether I will be using them for appointment setting.

To give you an idea of how they are operating (and I know a few do the same as I've outsourced in another company), there were two payment options: set fee per appointment of 100.00 or block booking calling hours which was 250.00 for 10 hours calling.

All the data was supplied by them, they had access to my calendar to arrange meetings, confirmed all the appointments and all I had to do basically was show up and sell our business.

Obviously I prefer the block booking of calling hours but I can see certain issues arising from that unless clauses are added e.g. minimum amount of appointments booked within those 10 hours and said appointments have to fit a specified criteria.

You mentioned your partner and your experience and it is good to see you aren't afraid of cold calling. Within recruitment do you work in a specific industry of is it broad scale? Is your partner's experience purely in broadband/ TV sales?

The reason I ask is I think you need to identify your target markets for lead generation/ appointment setting before you go anywhere. For example, if I were to try and start this type of business I would be sticking to trying to get business from telecoms/ vehicle tracking companies etc as I have been involved in that area for about 8 years.

 

[Jsmith93]

Hi bruceflea,

Thanks for the reply! Great to know about the pricing structure as it gives me an idea where to start at.

Regarding my friend he does only have knowledge of broadband, tv and phone lines of course and I specialise in recruitment within the contact center side as I generally recruit for telesales agents for marketing companies..

We do need to specialise in an area and hopefully start branching out! I also have worked in telecoms selling mobiles to customers.

Thanks for the advice and the help. Do you have anymore advice or anyone else

Joe

 

[TPTele]

Hi Joe,

If you are calling people / businesses you will need to ensure that you do not call anyone who is registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). If you do you could face large fines.

If you want to ensure that you stay compliant then we offer a service that automatically blocks you from calling TPS registered numbers. It is updated regularly so you don't have to worry about re-validating your data every 28 days.

Kind regards,

Stuart.

 

[AllUpHere]

Hi Joe,

If you want to ensure that you stay compliant then we offer a service that automatically blocks you from calling TPS registered numbers. It is updated regularly so you don't have to worry about re-validating your data every 28 days.

Kind regards,

Stuart.

That's a damn good idea. Is that something a lot of Voip providers offer?

 

[TPTele]

Some do some don't. The thing to keep in mind when buying is most businesses only need the service on certain lines so ensure that you only have it added to the ones who are cold calling.

 

[Cypriot]

Hi There,
we have employed 4person for 6month to try cold calling for the free utility brokerage service we offer but didnt work for us , if you find yourself successful by any chance after you trying i would like to hear from you guys maybe we can work together ?

 

[dmckellar]

this is from a company we were going to use for our telemarketing, never went ahead with it in the end. We are based in Scotland and they had a very heavy english accent, nothing wrong with that in England but i felt people up here would be put off by cold calls from down south.

"
Through our dedicated data bureau we shall analyse your database prior to us picking up the telephone, double checking field lay out, the company is still active, hasn’t moved, correct telephone number, and the decision maker etc. where the record is no good we shall supply our own data we have spent years building to offer higher conversions for the cleaning sector. Basically you can rest assured we ensure throughout the telemarketing project we spend more time building relationships between you and your prospective clients without affecting appointment quantity.


We take your USP's and create a bespoke presentation explaining your features, benefits and experience over and above all competition. Our in house operatives are trained on your company and the presentation but are expected to use their experience (5 years minimum sales experience ) to adapt throughout the call to qualify, present and overcome objections turning negatives into positives to book the face to face only where there is an immediate need/ quoting opportunity. Where we have an interested party but for whatever reason is unable to have a face to face appointment (in a contract till May for example) we shall opt them in to receive future communication for your sales staff to continue generating business months after our 1st, 2nd and even 3rd campaign.


Each appointment is exclusive to yourself, unlike many of my competitors we do not re sell on the same appointment to pretend we can offer a "cheaper price" we call from you, or your marketing arm and will never supply appointments in the same territory to your competition.


In order to achieve the return on investment that will allow us to look at long term contracts after the trial, which I'm sure we both are aiming for, we shall undertake a trial campaign over 1 month which costs £2,500 + VAT.


No hidden extras that covers everything from calling fees, management, reporting, data and bureau work."

 

[AllUpHere]

this is from a company we were going to use for our telemarketing, never went ahead with it in the end. We are based in Scotland and they had a very heavy english accent, nothing wrong with that in England but i felt people up here would be put off by cold calls from down south.

"
Through our dedicated data bureau we shall analyse your database prior to us picking up the telephone, double checking field lay out, the company is still active, hasn’t moved, correct telephone number, and the decision maker etc. where the record is no good we shall supply our own data we have spent years building to offer higher conversions for the cleaning sector. Basically you can rest assured we ensure throughout the telemarketing project we spend more time building relationships between you and your prospective clients without affecting appointment quantity.


We take your USP's and create a bespoke presentation explaining your features, benefits and experience over and above all competition. Our in house operatives are trained on your company and the presentation but are expected to use their experience (5 years minimum sales experience ) to adapt throughout the call to qualify, present and overcome objections turning negatives into positives to book the face to face only where there is an immediate need/ quoting opportunity. Where we have an interested party but for whatever reason is unable to have a face to face appointment (in a contract till May for example) we shall opt them in to receive future communication for your sales staff to continue generating business months after our 1st, 2nd and even 3rd campaign.


Each appointment is exclusive to yourself, unlike many of my competitors we do not re sell on the same appointment to pretend we can offer a "cheaper price" we call from you, or your marketing arm and will never supply appointments in the same territory to your competition.


In order to achieve the return on investment that will allow us to look at long term contracts after the trial, which I'm sure we both are aiming for, we shall undertake a trial campaign over 1 month which costs £2,500 + VAT.


No hidden extras that covers everything from calling fees, management, reporting, data and bureau work."

That reads as if it were written by a child. I really don't know why people don't put a bit more effort into such things.

 

[dmckellar]

That reads as if it were written by a child. I really don't know why people don't put a bit more effort into such things.

its not very fluent i will give you that, add a few bigger words in and thats what they sent me.

Never went with them, or any other tele company actually

 

[Bruceflea]

That's a fairly heavy commitment for the first month; did it continue at that cost or reduce after the trial campaign?

 

[Aspire Utilities]

Hi Joe

Just curious to know how you and your friend have got on with your adventure??? I deal with Telecoms within the SME market and wondered if we could talk some time

Regards

Paul

 

[Dan Angell-Collins]

Hey Joe,

I'm a BDM for a call centre and the usual issues with getting new business on board is gaining trust to use your services. I'd suggest starting off with some contacts you and your friend already have and grow from there. We now have 120 staff and like to show potential clients our site as it helps build confidence before they run a trial. I would suggest you agree a minimum trial for work you are going to do and look at billing per hour rather than on commission only.

We run trials of around 20 hours per month which isn't massive and allows for enough time to see if the new campaign is going to work. We do offer inbound and outbound services which might be something you want to look into.

Dan

 

[Tony Wray]

Hi Joe,

I have just sent you a PM.

I started something similar to yourself a few months back and it has proved very rewarding.

Let me know if I can help in anyway.

Tony

 

[Thermodynamic Man]

Over the years I have been contacted by telesales companies. Some good, some bad, some even worse than bad. A lot make claims of what they can do only to fall way short.
But regarding commission only or fixed payment for hours worked. This has always been a little bit of a dilemma really as to which way to go.
From my point of view it was always going to be best to pay on a results commission basis only. Obviously it would have to be at such a rate that it was well worth the telesales company getting just a few appointments to make a good day's pay. At the time we were paying £300 for any lead that turned into a sale. This was actually good for both parties as the guy on the phone(one man band) was getting 3 appts a day on average...happy days for both him and us
On the other hand paying upfront is good for the telesales guys as he knows he has his Wonga irrespective of his success. Unfortunately when we went down that route last time was with a guy who had four women working for him. They rarely came up with results and I could just assume that they were getting up in the morning, watching Jeremy Kyle, working from 11-.00 to 12-00, two hours for lunch after watching an afternoon soap, calling then from 3.00 to 400 and then deciding enough was enough. They would claim allsorts of reasons why the results were poor citing just a bad day, nobody interested in the product/service, everyone I tried to call was on holiday, sick, jury duty. etc etc... heard the lot
In the end I have decide that I would rather offer a very big commission instead of a payment based on hourly rate. I just think there is a distinct difference in the level of commitment from both sides.
This has obviously come from my side of the fence and I have no doubt somebody from a telesales position will argue the toss for the other side. Just my experiences that's all...for what they are worth