Outbound and telesales

Why leads are left sitting

In the organizations where I built outbound, there were nearly always enough leads. They still were not called enough. The reasons were the same two every time.

Without a dialer the time goes into dialing

Dial by hand, wait for the ring, reach an answering machine, note the follow-up somewhere. Out of an hour of working time, little talk time is left, and after two weeks nobody knows who is due for another call and when.

As a side task, outbound loses every day

Calling leads is often added as a side task for a team that already handles inbound, correspondence or administration. Then there is a good reason every day why today is not the day. The annoying part is that every one of those reasons is true.

What helped

The same thing every time: a dedicated team responsible for this and nothing else, and a dialer so that the time goes into the conversation. After that it comes down to how the calling is organized. Lead age, call order and the times when people can be reached decide a great deal before the first word is spoken. Only then does coaching make a difference, and then it makes a big one.

Insourcing

In one case the entire lead qualification sat with external providers who were performing below what they could do. We brought it in-house within six months. With a dedicated team and a dialer, we then booked three times as many advisory appointments with fewer people. To me the case shows how much depends on deciding which part of the chain belongs outside. Price per minute does not answer that question.

Technology

Dialer, contact center software and the connection to the CRM. I led the selection and owned the rollout, including the uncomfortable transition in which old and new systems run in parallel.

Pay models

Telesales pay can quickly reward the wrong thing. Pay only for the booked appointment and you also get appointments that never take place. So the pay model should take into account whether the conversation actually happened.