Outbound Telemarketing Services

One main reason that a business may consider outsourcing telemarketing services is to save money. Additionally, if a business doesn't have the employees or resources to support a telemarketing staff, outsourcing is the most logical option.

Benefits of Using Outside Telesales

• An off-site call center will provide telemarketing support without taking up additional space in an office or business complex.
• An outside telemarketing company will hire their own staff; a business will not be responsible for additional employee expenses, like healthcare, sick leave, etc.
• An outside telemarketing company will handle all training and phone scripts. A business will be able to focus on its own services and products instead of training and managing a telemarketing staff.
• If a business isn't satisfied with a specific telesales outsourcing relationship, they can simply terminate the contract and move on to another provider.

Below are two examples of how telemarketing can benefit specific business types.

Accounting Firms

As you look to expand your client base, telemarketing for accountants is an excellent way to bring back old customers and generate new leads, whether among other businesses or private clients. Here are two ways that these services can provide you with the boost you need at any time of year.

Setting Calling Schedules

When you are working on multiple fronts for your business, it's doubtful you have the resolve to continue calling a prospective customer. Telemarketing for accountants will put a schedule in place and stick to it, meaning that a lead is not considered dead until there have been several attempts to win an appointment or set another time for opening up discussion.

Qualifying Customers before Referring Them to Your Team

The best telemarketers won't pass on a lead unless they are sure it is a genuine prospect. To gauge this status, they use a script known for results and work around it based on a lead's responses. When the process is handled correctly, your team only gets prospects that are proven to be for real.

Insurance Providers

If you are an insurance provider or broker, insurance telemarketing can be a vital ingredient to your success. Outbound services that cater to the insurance industry can basically do business-to-business calls or business-to-consumer calls.

If you cannot hire more people, lack the resources to establish your own call center, or want to launch a campaign quickly, it makes perfect sense to outsource the marketing of your business to another company. Just make sure you deal with an outbound telemarketing company that has a very good reputation, offers cost-effective solutions, and can assign a dedicated team to handle your sales campaign. Here are some things that insurance telemarketing companies can do for you.

Agent Recruitment

You can ask an outbound telemarketing company to help you find the best insurance agents in the industry. They call prospects that can help your business grow. This is very handy, especially when you are just starting your insurance business.

Aside from calling job candidates, a telemarketing company also can help you through the process of confirming the interview appointments of potential insurance agents. Outsourcing simple tasks like this will allow your team to concentrate on office functions that are geared toward generating profits.

Quote Insurance Buyers

Insurance telemarketing companies can call a list of prospects that may be interested in getting coverage from your company. Outbound representatives will ask the right questions, gather vital information, and get you qualified leads.

Outbound telemarketing companies will have trained professionals who can help spread the word about the benefits your products can provide to consumers. The telemarketing campaign can call potential insurance buyers or existing clients and help convince them that life will be secure and sleepless nights avoided if they take advantage of your insurance products.

Verify Insurance Leads

Call center companies can also help you call leads that you may already have and help you close the sales. Aside from generating new business, they can also verify other leads that you might have acquired through other means or partnerships. This enables your own team to focus on generating good revenue for your company.

When outsourcing telemarketing of your insurance products to another company, determine what you need to achieve with the campaign. Set your goals and make sure you set up the campaign so they are achieved.

Tips to Hiring an External Telemarketing Company

Price

It's a given that price will be a business's top concern when evaluating and selecting a provider. According to Computer Weekly, outsourced telemarketing pricing will most often be charged by the hour. On top of that, many firms may require a project minimum size, such as 1,000 man-hours as the bottom line. And the more minimum hours that you have in your contract, the less that you will pay per hour.

As an alternative to an hourly rate, you may choose to pay per lead or per contact for a flat fee. On average, most call centers will charge $2.00 per call, depending on your project size. If charging by the hour, a call center will bill roughly $20-$40 per hour in the US, although offshore telemarketing rates are significantly lower.

Experience

It's important to work with a telemarketing company that has experience in your industry. But more important than specific industry experience is a company with positive customer referrals and a solid reputation. Remember, this company will be making an impression on your customers, so it is imperative that they are skilled in what they do.

Staffing

New telemarketing companies are emerging every day. It's critical that a business understands how a telemarketing firm manages their staff before contracting them. Do all telemarketers work in a single call center, or do they telecommute from home? How is the training facilitated?

If possible, schedule a visit with a call center you are considering to evaluate how the staff performs at work. Another red flag is a very high staff turnover rate at less than a year. Recommended average staff tenure is 35% to 50% as a reflection of a company's commitment to training and staff development.