SoEasy has a Call Centre Module that can be used as either an inhouse customer management system or by external service providers such as Telemarketers.
This discussion is regarding the set up of an external service provider (people who can provide you with telemarketing services).
How To Establish an External Call Centre Service
When setting up a call centre you will need to consider the following:
1. What are your costs?
To rationalize this you will need to create a spreadsheet and plug in various figures to work out the following:
- Rate to charge per hour
- Calls that can be made per hour
- Any bonus scheme
2. Common Customer Questions
The costing spreadsheet needs to provide you with the ability to handle customer inquiries such as:
- How much does it cost to hire you?
- What are the results likely to be?
In response to such questions, answers can only be provided when you ask the following questions:
Q1 - What is your budget?
Q2 - Who are we calling? If it is an existing database we will have a better response than if we are cold calling people who are not currently trading with you.
Q3 - Do you have a special offer or are we just promoting a standard service or product?
Q4 - Do you have a proven script or do we need to create one?
Q5 - What success ratios are you expecting? Example: for every 10 calls, 2 appointments concluding into 1 sale
Q6 - Do the appointments need a second level of qualification other than just interest? For example: "To qualify for our service you need to be earning $30,000 p.a. If you are earning this I can set up an appointment."
Q7 - What period do you want to run the campaign for?
3. Bonus
It is normal for a bonus to be offered for successes.
For example:
- $10.00 bonus for each appointment
- $50.00 bonus for each sale
However you must be careful about accepting a situation where your revenue is only derived from achieving targets.
Depending on the database, we may receive a lot of 'not interested' and 'no's'! This won't necessarily be your fault and skill is not always the issue.
It is very much a case of what the campaign is and unless you are getting a fixed income per hour, you can soon become disheartened and 'bonus' or 'commission only' should 'never' be engaged.
It is imperative that you charge an hourly rate or a rate per call. For example, "we can do 100 calls at $4.00 each + a bonus of ..."
4. Selling Telemarketing Services
Companies are always accumulating customer databases but they don't always do much with them.
They can send emails or post a brochure but nothing compares with a real live person phoning up a customer and generating a connection leading to a sale.
This is the best sale ever but few companies can afford an employed telemarketing person.
Costs involved in recruiting Telesales People
- Recruit
- Provide training
- Employment contract
- Holiday Pay
- Sick Pay
- Management
- Negotiations
- Manage Burnout/productivity
The salary of a Telemarketing Person varies from $16.00 to $25.00 per hour plus bonus.
If a company employs a Telemarketing Person it will need a Sales Manager to manage the person on a day-to-day basis and eventually, the employee may need to be replaced due to performance issues.
Services you Can Offer
Our telemarketing service is operated on a contractual basis where we offer 4 packages:
Package 1
Contact your existing database and promote your special message such as:
Review of recently purchased products or services
Book Services due on equipment or systems
Promote additional services or products
Requirements
- Provide a spreadsheet of your contacts and any relevant notes
- Detail the offer/s in a script
- Provide emailable links and/or PDF documents about the offer with a suitable email template
- Set desired outcomes for our telemarketing team to aim for
Package 2
Follow up enquiries through the Internet, shows, or advertising
Requirements
- Provide contact details in an email or in a list
- Detail the offer/s in a script
- Provide emailable links and/or PDF documents about the offer with a suitable email template
- Set desired outcomes for our telemarketing team to aim for*
Package 3
Cold call potential customers from a provided list.
Requirements
- Set desired outcomes for our telemarketing team to aim for*
- Provide a list of contacts you want us to contact
- Detail the offer/s in a script
- Provide emailable links and/or PDF documents about the offer with a suitable email template
Package 4
Locate and contact potential customers
Requirements
- Set desired outcomes for our telemarketing team to aim for*
- Identify the sources of contacts we can canvass
- We will locate or buy a list of contacts (at your cost)
- Detail the offer/s in a script
- Provide emailable links and/or PDF documents about the offer with a suitable email template
Charge Rates
We have three charge rates:
- An hourly charge for meetings, training, sourcing contacts, and if required, scheduling appointments
- Charge per call or per hour depending on the 'Campaign Tenacity**'
- Bonus for achieving targets
Bonuses
Nothing motivates a salesperson more than a bonus on success so we encourage our clients to provide a suitable bonus for the completion of a sale either by the telemarketer or, in the case of the campaign being to organise appointments, a sales by the representative.
Reports
A weekly report is provided covering the campaign's statistics and outcomes.
A full list of contacted names and outcomes is also provided.
Terms
The following terms are used to help us to define the campaign:
Calls Per Hour
The number of Calls per hour will determine how long we need to spend on the phone to complete the campaign.
The calls per hour will depend on many things such as:
- The quality of the database
- Cold call or existing contacts
- The offer being pitched
- The availability of the buyer
For example;
a campaign to farmers can be difficult because they are away from the phone a lot and involves many call backs to get an actual conversation
contacting the manager of a business can be difficult because they are screened by reception
Call Backs
Once a campaign starts we invariably start accumulating callbacks. This is where a buyer is busy, or has to confer with a colleague, or they are simply not in. Call Backs still count as a Call
* Desired Outcomes
We use three terms when setting the desired outcome:
- Call
- Appointment
- Sale
We use these three terms to set the Campaign Target Ratio (CTR). For example:
10 Calls = 1 Appointment
3 Appointments = 1 sales
Therefore the Campaign Target Ratio is 30:3:1 (30 Calls = 3 Appointments = 1 Sale)
First we estimate the CTR and after 100 calls, we have an actual statistic. Our systems then keep track of the actuat CTR based upon the campaign type.
** Campaign Tenacity
Campaign Tenacity (CT) is a measure of how much pressure we place on the phone call to achieve a result.
For example we may use a Level 1 CT where we only enquire once in the call if the potential contact would like to buy or is interested in what we have to offer.
A Level 5 CT would mean we ask 5 times and use a high level of sales persuasion and engage in various closing techniques to achieve a result.
A higher CT means the conversation takes longer. This affects the 'Call Per Hour' ratios and effectively means that the higher the CT, the call is more expensive. The CT needs to be set appropriately so as to suit the campaigns objective and probable effort required to achieve the targets.
Campaign Duration
A typical campaign is based upon one of three things:
- Duration such as 'this is a 2 month campaign and stops on dd/mm/yyyy
- Completed Calls. i.e. 'Contact 2,500 existing contacts and offer the following service/product'
- Results. i.e. 'The campaign is over when we have sold 2,000 tickets or date dd/mm/yyyy whichever comes first'
Book a Free 1 Hour Consultation
Something you may like to include in your promotion of services would be a free 1 hour consultation worded like follows:
"If you would like more details or you would like us to help you develop a campaign, please contact us.
We can provide a free 1 hour consultation over the Internet/skype where we can review your telemarketing ideas and help you with the process."