Hey guys, I have a list of about 56k individuals (names, company names, address, phone #, fax#) who are prospects for a new business I am starting (online/offline) and am wondering how much would a call center charge me for this? Any experience with call centers? Or, should I simply tackle a few individuals a day and do the regular meet&greet? I do not mind allocating 2-3hours/day in cold calling but I want to know if it will be more effective to have it outsourced. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Cheers!!
cold calling isnt too good of a marketing strategy (i find personally). I mean i just hang up on them...but good tho
Cold calling is an expensive way to market any product really, you would need a huge budget and may never recoupe the costs. if that is the way you want to go then you should outsource it and put your time to better use. this is a job that any trained chimp can do.
Google and contact a few cold calling companies. Check out the different rates and make a test run if you can afford it. If the profits are better than what you are spending - upscale it!
You could also try getting commission based sales people from places like Craigslist to do it for you. They only get paid if you make money. There's plenty of salespeople looking for jobs right now, just look for people that have b2b sales experience.
I had a few "cold calls" and they have all been from India. I don't have anything against Indians but damn it's annoying especially when that single phone number is used for business and you receive calls out of the blue from someone that wants you to outsource your bread and butter.........I find it very annoying.
Doing cold-calling yourself can become a bit tedious, to be honest. You really need to be motivated and a go-getter. After constantly getting rejected on and on, it might become a bit tiresome. In America, I wouldn't pay for it - rather allocate a few hours a day to call clients yourself. And remember, some of USA's best marketing guru's say you need to call a client minimum five times before he even considers taking your business (in most cases that is). Good luck!
Jovana, I've heard that quote before as well and have seen it in action. Staying in touch with anyone who's said "not right now" is an absolute must. You want to be the first company they think of when they're ready for the service/product you offer.
I think it depends on the niche, but I agree that cold calling is pretty ineffective on the whole. I say the niche because say your product is car insurance - it's a dull subject and most people could not care less about saving $2 on their insurance. Say you have 56,000 small business owners and you can save them 50% on their yellow page listings - then you may well have a better conversion rate. But... cold calling is not for me, I don't really see much difference between that and email spamming.
Hi, Telemarketing sales lists play an important role in making a business successful and profitable. Most good telemarketing firms charge seventy five percent less than what it would cost you to pay a big time company or in house staff to make the same calls. Most outsource telemarketing firms will charge anywhere from five to twenty dollars an hour depending on the volume of calls you need to be made.
Cold calling to businesses is a little easier in that there are no "do not call" problems and you don't get as many vcms. That's the plus side - the down side it they get a LOT of sales calls so you need to make sure your script is good. Once you've called some business owners yourself, you'll be able to refine your script and will be in a better position to outsource. I'm expecting that you're a good salesperson, so it would definitely be more cost-effective for you to do the face-to-face selling. You can hire someone to set appointments for you for $10-$12 an hour. If you're any good at presenting and selling your product or service, you should be making a lot more than $10-$12 an hour by talking to prospects and converting them to sales.
Thank Sheila Rose for those nice tips! if you should have any more info. please do share here or shoot me a PM! Cheers
If feel it is better that you out source your cold calling needs as it is very difficult for you to call the prospects by yourself. If you out source it to a call centre the job will be done much faster and you may get more results as the call center employees will be trained and experienced.
I'd go for the route of hiring commission only sales reps. I'm in the process of doing that myself. You don't have to pay anything until they make a sale which is great!
If you could outsource this on a commission-only basis, I think you'd get far better results than trying to call all 56k prospects yourself! It would take forever to call that many people (AND follow up, which is key) all by yourself, in my opinion.
They stink. I am never outsourcing to a call center again. Just hire some hungry sales people, who work on commission and a couple of telemarketers to feed them leads. Works for me.
Competition wise, startups in cold calling business strategies couldn't get ahead any longer. I would go for what cheburasha suggested to have your budget safe on board. Then, once you have already generated couple of sales, that time would be beneficial you could start your own and hire full time outsourcers.
You can definately outsource your Call centers, and can pay the outsourcing company per Mature lead, thats really time saving and like i always say "Let the Specialists do the job for you"