Benefits of Outsourcing:
- In-house sales teams can become more productive and achieve higher sales yields
- Outsourcers who use advanced technology will enable improved quality measurement and achievement of higher hit rates
- Campaigns can be geared to business requirements - e.g. a burst of activity in the early part of the financial year will fill up the sales pipeline with leads
- Aligning your costs to results by payment on performance
- A shorter sales cycle will result if more qualifed sales leads can be identified early in the year
Location Considerations:
- What is more important - relevant skills and experience or close proximity to my office
- Which is more important - lowest cost per hour or return on my investment
- If I need to focus on multiple countries - Should I source partners in each country or select a single partner with the capability of running campaigns across multiple countries
- Does my outsource partner need to be in the same time zone as my target market
Other Considerations:
- Experience in similar B2B projects
- Capability in relevant languages
- A quality measurement process to ensure that leads are properly qualified and my company is represented professionally
- A flexible reporting process for day-to-day control over the project
- Terms that permit the project to be shot down if the desired results are not being achieved
- Adequate capacity to achieve my required timescales
Why Not Telemarketing:
Some reasons why companies often hesitate to use telemarketing
- Too expensive to Outsource:
- You need to take account of the total in-house costs including Staff recruitment
- Training,
- Replacement costs
- Management overhead
Consider the difficulty of recruiting suitable skills for business development
- Don't Need to Outsource:
- Consider if it is time to try new approaches to Direct mail and trade shows
- Try a controlled test of direct mail alone vs direct mail with telemarketing and email marketing to drive up response rates
- Don't Want to Lose Control:
Ensure the following controls are available from a potential outsource partner:
- Ability to measure results daily
- Ability to shut down at short notice if not meeting goals
- Ability to receive a voice recording of any call needing detailed review
- Ability to pay for performance achieved or on a cost per result basis
Partner Selection:
Ask questions such as:
- Company Background Similar projects in same industry or activity area
- Capacity and turnaround capabillity
- Human Resources Project Management
- Calling skill levels
- Process development skills
- Infrastructure
- Telecommunications
- Power
- Systems
- Automation Outbound calling
- Call scheduling
- Emailing
- Fax communication
- Letter Printing
- Branch scripting
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