Just like the saying "How long is a piece of string" nobody can say with any degree of certainty how many calls it will take to any individual or organisation in order to make a calling campaign successful. 

We all have to start somewhere. The good news and the bad news is this: The greater the number of calls you make, the more effectively you separate yourself from the crowd. The "crowd" in this case will be anyone and everyone that has given up on ever speaking to someone after one, two or three calls.

#4 in our series of blogs about the excuses people make when it comes to outsourcing sales, increasing leads and freeing up their own time.

We don't outsource our sales because…

I don’t want to lose control over the sales function, and surely this is inevitable with Outsourcing.

Good communication lies at the heart of a good outsourcing service, and when you are in discussions, this should be one of the core issues that you should investigate.  

Continuing our series of blogs about the reasons people say that they don't want to outsource their sales to a telemarketing compny, here's #3:

 I want to build my brand and not the brand of the Outsourcer.

A good outsourcer will help to build your brand. 

They will take time and trouble to get to know your company and the products and services that you need promoting. 

They will also assume your corporate identity, and introduce themselves as being part of the company – they will even have a company email address. 

It's amazing the misconceptions people have about outsourcing their telemarketing and sales – we've written about it before, but in this series of blog posts I'm going to address a few of the obstacle we come up against, and explain why I think they're wrong (feel free to disagree in the comments!)

We don't outsource our sales because…. #1

… We’re going to recruit our own in-house sales team

Really? 

Good sales people can earn large salaries and even larger commissions, simply because selling is very skilful, hard work and not many people have the aptitude for it. 

Telemarketing is one of the most effective methods of push marketing. It's an positive way of selling which gets high response rates. However, to make the campaign successful you need to gain the interest of your caller within the first 8 seconds. It's only when they're interested that they'll actually listen to what you have to offer them.

So you need to have a well rehearsed and strong elevator pitch. This pitch needs to capture the recipient's imagination within 8 seconds, otherwise the phone will simply be put down and you've missed out on a sale. If you go on for more than 8 seconds the recipient will get bored and possibly stop listening.

If you're running a telemarketing campaign or you're thinking of starting one soon then you need data. Quite simply; data is the information that fuels the telemarketing campaign. The names and phone numbers of businesses and people you're going to call. The only thing is; how reliable is the data?

The source of your data can be the difference between a successful campaign and a wasted effort. This is because phone numbers on your calling list might be registered under the Telephone Preference Service. The TPS is a register of opt-out numbers that do not wish to receive telemarketing calls.