Lead Generation, Appointment Making

One of the key reasons a company sets up a tele-marketing team is to generate leads or appointments for the outside sales force.

The thinking is usually that it is cheaper to hire someone for $10 bucks an hour than to have a salesman on the phone when they should be out in face to face situations.

Right AND WRONG. That person who is making those calls deserves the same training, both phone sales and product training, as your outside sales person.

Besides the individual making the calls, there is the market/list that you chose, the planning for the results and the actual quality of the appointment that all go into the mix.

The average rate of appointments sits tight at 1:4 true contacts. BUT what about those that you do not convert to appointments. Do you have a plan for handling those?

What is the conversion rate, what does it need to be to justify these kind of percentages and costs?