Commission Only Telemarketing

Many businesses (typically startups or companies that have financial issues) do ask about commission only telemarketing.

Popular comments would be:

'If they are as good as they say they are, then surely they would be willing to put their money where their mouth is'

'If they are confident in their ability to sell, then why not take a risk; they could make more money'.

There are hundreds of telemarketing companies in the UK, however none do commission only selling as a business model - for a reason.

The role of telemarketing is to generate meetings/market for information/generate sales enquiries not to produce guaranteed results.

Marketing is not cut and dry, it is not predictable, it is subject to variables that constantly shift.

The role of the telemarketing company is to generate enquireis and information; the client is the responsible for the 'selling'; small companies do not want the risk and look for others to share it, when it is not really their responsibility.

Indeed there is an itch - people are looking for guarantees with their marketing, however it is not being scratched (marketing companies do not want to have this risk element).

There is also the perspective that if there are companies in the UK that are willing to pay money for telemarketing without a commission element - then this is more attractive and they work together.  Unless the whole UK stopped and said 'we will not pay day rates or monthly rates - only on commission' would things need to change, but since there are people willing to pay the asking price, things will not change.

The Importance Of Questioning

You or I would consider questioning to be, well, just questioning.  However with telemarketing is the life and sole of their roll.

Without good questioning skills; a telemarketeer will be nothing.  Their calls will not be successful and they will get demotivated.

It is therefore very important for telemarketing companies to train their staff in the importance of having up to scratch questioning skills.

Questions are used throughout a conversation from a caller - to fact find, objection close and generally lead the call in the desired direction.

If a telemarketing does not teach good questioning; the calling will not be efficient.  The wrong sort of questions will be asked and the wrong question types used (it is not what you say it is how you say it) causing calls to be closed without success.

Sales training companies offer courses on questioning, how to use questions, what sort of questioning to use and how to use questioning in closing business.  If (as a telemarketing company) you have not put your staff through rigorous training for questioning - then you are really letting your telemarketing team down and really should organise one.

Is The Telephone Becoming Obsolete?

As technology moves on, so to does the way we communicate in marketing.

Telemarketing does get some bad press for being intrusive; someone calling you up to interrupt your day and try to 'sell' you something (that you probably do not need in the first place.

As marketing has moved more social, so to has communicating a marketing message.

Instead of 'I will give you a call' it has moved from 'I will send you a text' to 'I will drop you a facebook message'.

More and more companies are taking stronger views of telemarketing and going onto no call lists, TPS (telephone preference service) and instructing secretaries to say 'no' - making it harder for telemarketers to get through.

There is also the time element to be considered also, one can have several conversations an once 'electronically' but when talking on the phone you are more or less tied into that conversation for the duration of the call.

Where is telemarketing going - is it fading out or will it keep going for another 20 years?

Telemarketing for Solar PV

There has been an increase in enquiries for telemarketing into Solar PV recently as the solar energy industry has grown and competition has become more fierce.


Solar PV stands for Solar photovoltaics and is the technical name for the solar panels that we know from the calculators we used in school (if we had calculators in school) and the panels that are starting to make more of an occurrence on peoples house roofs.


More and more supply companies have been looking for lead generation support into this growing industry to sell domestic solar PV panels into homes.


This is a hard task, as it would involve cold calling residential houses and asking a couple of simple questions:

1. Do you currently have a Solar PV system
2. Would you be interested in the costs of a Solar PV system
3. Can we come and give you a free demonstration of Solar PV

Hard work, as B2C telemarketing is generally more difficult than calling businesses.

3 Reasons Businesses Outsource Telemarketing

Many companies will outsource their telemarketing to an external telemarketing company; however why would they do this - surely keeping things in house is better?

There are a number of advantages that businesses outsource telemarketing to professional telemarketing companies, here are 3 top reasons why:

• Staff Costs

It costs a lot of money to recruit for new staff, train new staff and retain them.  Consider a business that needs 100 good enthusiastic motivated staff working on the phone 8 hours a day and the recruitment and training costs spiral upwards.  This is not including a HR department to look after all the staff, payroll sickness, holidays.

• Office Space And Calling Facilities

A large amount of hardware resource goes into telemarketing.  Desks, chairs, computer systems, integrated e-mail, network support, computer support, antivirus, computer licences, IT team.  Space needs to be given as well as green space, kitchen and bathroom facilities.  The more staff that are needed, the more office space, recreation space, IT resources and HR resources are needed.

• Training

All staff need training whether it is for basic call handling, or lead generation, appointment making or fault finding.  Many companies (especially the larger ones) will have rigid training programs, so may require staff to go through weeks or months of training before doing live calling (depending on the technicality involved with the product or service.

If your business are considering outsourcing telemarketing then one thing to bear in mind above all else is the pick up period.  If you outsource work to a telemarketing company that is already set up and ready to go, they can hit the ground running (as opposed to you going through the process of recruiting staff, training staff etc.

Inbound Telemarketing - What Is It?

Many businesses around the UK will make use of telemarketing companies to handle their incoming calls, from retail companies, service companies, insurance or car dealership.

Think of any large company that you may use:

• Utilities
• Car Insurance
• Computer Supplier
• Retail Companies

All of these businesses will be using inbound telemarketing call centers to handle calls from their customers.  Any time you would call an 0800 number, or an 0845 number, chances are it would go to a call center that is handling the call on behalf of a client.

I used to work for a business in Leeds many years ago, and one of their contracts was from Celnet (now O2 the mobile phone handler); they were contracted with handling customer support calls, technical support and billing queries.  Cellnet did not handle the incoming calls themselves, they outsourced them to a telemarketing company to handle them for them.

Of course you will not know this when calling up, as the phone is answered in the clients name, the operater has access to all of your accounts and information as it you were talking direct.

Many government departments will outsource their calling work to specialist telemarketing companies due to having thousands of members of the public calling up to query tax codes, VAT etc.

It is far cheaper for companies (and they do tend to be the larger companies such as O2, Next Plc, HMRC and any larger company you could think of that you would need to call up for support, help or billing) to outsource inbound telemarketing to a telemarketing company rather than handle staffing, setup, training etc.

Does Lead Generation Work?

As the world moves faster, and more adverts get sent through the waves, is lead generation dying?

For years now, telemarketing companies have been churning out calls to businesses across the UK - however are we getting used to it.  Everyone is now used to the call out of the blue from the recruitment company, or someone asking about office insurance, SEO companies or really anything whether it is related to our business or not.

Does it work though?

Have we just become so used to the 'cold calls' that they are shrugged off and told to go away.  Some businesses are plagued by cold calling from telemarketing agencies and keen businesses.

One could argue that if it is still going on, then it must work.  There are hundreds of telemarketing agencies around the UK ranging from small telemarketing companies up to large call centers.  Telemarketing and telesales are now accepted as being viable forms of lead generation.

Different lead generation companies are using more and more creative ways to get past the out defences of companies and get through to MD's, directors and senior managers ranging from 'urgent calls', cost savings and good timing.

There are however, very different forms of lead generation around, so it would be a case of appointing the right agency for the task.

Generally the most important thing is experience - if the lead generation company has a knowledge of your market place and the way your competitors function - this will give them a better chance of securing results for you.