Telemarketers

[James Boston]

I'm hoping someone with telemarketing experience will chime in here.

How does this work? Who are the people who are actually responding to telemarketers?

I've worked in radio for a long time. Everytime someone posts about radio on 2+2, there's inevitably a post saying, "OMG, get Sirius, they don't have commercials, it's better." Still, I know that radio has plenty of listeners and plenty of advertisers, so I know it's not yet antiquated.

Given what I just said, I have to assume telemarketing works. Otherwise, no one would be paying people to spend hours upon hours bothering people at home.

My guess is that it's similar to coupons. The response rate for coupons is around 1%. Essentially, you don't expect much repsonse, you just expect enough repsonse to justify what you spent.

(You spend $10,000 on coupons. They are mailed to 100,000 people. You expect that the 1,000 who respond will spend, at least, $10 a piece with you - or $10,000.)

Can anyone add to this? I've always wondered, given that I HATE telemarketers, whether or not they actually make money for the companies they work for. What kind of closing ratio is expected? What type of person reacts kindly to telemarketers? You get the idea, please expound....

[guids]

Im actually opening up a telemarketing business (kind of), we handle incomming calls rather than outbound, although we will eventually will be doing outbound calls to customers that have called us first to checkup on things.


yes, it is a numbers game, sales people have a sales quota to meet, this depends on the industry, we will push them if they close at 8%, be happy at 10 to 12% and give weekly bonuses for everything over 15%. you call X mount of people, a percentage of X buy your product, your goal is to cut enough costs that the sales outweigh your expenses obviously.

[James Boston]

guids,

I think we're talking apples and oranges. Obviously, if someone calls you, there is some interest. Calling them back isn't exactly telemarketing. I'm talking about the people who call me to consolidate my credit card debt, who haven't done enough background check to see that I have no credit card debt. I find it really hard to believe that those types close at 10-12%.

[guids]

[ QUOTE ]
guids,

I think we're talking apples and oranges. Obviously, if someone calls you, there is some interest. Calling them back isn't exactly telemarketing. I'm talking about the people who call me to consolidate my credit card debt, who haven't done enough background check to see that I have no credit card debt. I find it really hard to believe that those types close at 10-12%.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dont know the specifics of other industries, but most if not all have databases upon databases of information that they use to target a specific audience, this is usually done by computer, and perfecting the algorithms to extract the right customers to call up is an evolving process, so that may explain why you get calls you dont need.

we have databases of customers, we send them mailers first (much cheaper than making calls).

eventually depending on how successful we become we will be doing outbound calls based on the database info.

[PanchoVilla]

I personally have set a rule for myself. No matter what it is I will NEVER buy anything from spam or a telemarketer. I refuse to encourage that business model to continue. I used to be much nicer to them, but over time you just get so sick of it that now I either hang up on them without saying anything, say No to whatever they ask even when its one of those 100% yes questions like "would you like to make more money" or "how would you like to save money", or just set the phone down and go do something else.

[Butcho22]

I sold The Arizona Republic newspaper for about 6 days. Straight cold-calling.

Not much to add to this post except that it sucked, which is why I only worked there for a few days.

I sold inbound products for ~1 year and killed it, but eventually I burned out and moved on.

[captZEEbo]

www.donotcall.gov

[JMa]

in order to get money for poker i worked at a foundation for people, mainly kids, who suffered from cancer. we offered two packages: the standard was a 365 SEK (symbolic, 1 SEK for each day of the year) but if the customer/whatever neglected that we would offer a 200 SEK deal. in order to maximize the amount going towards helping cancer patients we would not send out any gift packages to the customers, they just got to feel well.

we, the telemarketers, got paid commission wise; this rate was at 20% IIRC. so the small package would put 40 SEK in my own pocket. we were only allowed to work 4 hrs/day bc they told us that we would wear ourselves out otherwise. they were right..its tedious work.

all kinds of ppl agreed to send in money - mostly elderly ppl but also teenagers and middle aged parents. i guess somewhere around 10% ppl i called agreed to buy one of the packages.

i worked at this place for like 2-3 months when one day i was greeted by a "closed due to sickness". a few days later when i got there to work my next shift they told us the cops had raided the place and had taken their records and frozen all the accounts. they told us that they hadnt done anything wrong and that the police had made a mistake. at that point i was fed up with calling people at sunday afternoons so i decided to quit. the next day the raid was in the newspapers and like 2-3 months later it was pretty clear that like 5% of the money went to sick kids instead of ~70% or whatever. oops...

[TheRedRocket]

I found this on wikipedia on how it is effective

[ QUOTE ]
An effective telemarketing process often involves two or more calls. The first call (or series of calls) determines the customer’s needs. The final call (or series of calls) motivates the customer to make a purchase.

Prospective customers are identified by various means, including past purchase history, previous requests for information, credit limit, competition entry forms, and application forms. Names may also be purchased from another company's consumer database or obtained from a telephone directory or another public list. The qualification process is intended to determine which customers are most likely to purchase the product or service.

[/ QUOTE ]

I imagine the success rate based on that has to higher than we imagine. Additionally I'm guessing the companies using telemarketing save on some traditional advertising and overhead but I don't know for sure.

[RunDownHouse]

JB,

As a former financial planner, we were told that X number of calls led to Y number of followups which led to Z face-to-face appointments, which led to exactly one new client. So your response ratio guess is more or less correct. When you factor in the low cost - we were paid a very low "salary" and on a draw - it was pretty easy to financially justify cold calling.