Has Anyone Used a 3rd Party Appointment Setting Service?

[vrracr]

I've been considering trying this out. Anyone have any experience? I get solicited by companies every now and then and last week, I got an email from a company based out of the Philippines experienced in generating commercial P&C leads/appointments. Person works for you full time for $1,000/month. I have a call set up with them next week and wanted to know what i should ask.

 

[Aram Fingal]

I've found that most of the "leads" I get from appointment setting companies that make calls for you are pretty terrible. Half the time the people have no idea what you're talking about when you call them. However I've only ever used the ones that you pay per lead. If you are paying a set monthly fee, and there aren't any monetary incentives for them to essentially fabricate leads, you might get a lot better quality. However there is always the chance that the person actually making the calls is required to produce a certain number of leads or get canned, so you might still end up with garbage...

It's an interesting concept though. I would be very interested in hearing how it works out for you if you decide to do it. It might be a good replacement for hiring high school/college telemarketers which seem to be harder and harder to find (at least ones willing to actually work and effective enough to be worth their cost).

 

[vrracr]

thanks for the feedback.

these guys claim they are experts in this business and do this for various industries in the US.

will keep you all posted after i have a conversation with them.

 

[steveadlman]

I would recommend you consider paying a telemarketer by the hour plus an additional amount for each lead they generate. I have found that if I pay per lead the quality of the leads are not very good.

 

[Josh]

At the price you'll be paying it's unlikely you'll be satisfied with the results. The best success I've had is when I've hired them to work directly for me and paid them closer to U.S. wages.

You should ask them what type of phone system they'll be using and ask for recordings of the telemarketers. You can find filipinos that will work for almost nothing, but the problem is they aren't really qualified to do the job. Odds are they're paying the telemarketer less than $4/hr, maybe less than $2/hr, which is not enough to get a qualified telemarketer, even over there.

 

[JrGuru]

I've found that most of the "leads" I get from appointment setting companies that make calls for you are pretty terrible. Half the time the people have no idea what you're talking about when you call them. However I've only ever used the ones that you pay per lead. If you are paying a set monthly fee, and there aren't any monetary incentives for them to essentially fabricate leads, you might get a lot better quality. However there is always the chance that the person actually making the calls is required to produce a certain number of leads or get canned, so you might still end up with garbage...

It's an interesting concept though. I would be very interested in hearing how it works out for you if you decide to do it. It might be a good replacement for hiring high school/college telemarketers which seem to be harder and harder to find (at least ones willing to actually work and effective enough to be worth their cost).

I hear this alot, I have dealt with just about every preset appointment and call service company out there. "the person didnt know why I was there" ..ever ask yourself, if they did know why you where there (to sell them an annuity) would you be there at all, these companies do what they can with what they have to get you IN the door. Its a flawed system I know, but can be effective, I know I have the experience to speak off and have seen sales from it.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

Any service is bunk out there. Are there good ones? Sure, but they are all booked up from agencies that order by the large amount. It doesn't pay to start a service up for an agent unless they are buying at a couple of thousand dollars per month (atleast).
Go to odesk or elance, and prospect for yourself. Get voice samples from each prospective caller. Look at their portfolio. Chances are they won't know anything about insurance, so you will have to educate them in order to act intelligently when prospecting an the prospect throws them a question.
For pay, I recommend either $10 an hour or a sliding scale of hourly wages that depend on lead flow (and pipeline leads too). Scale it up, and have it act retroactively for all leads for the week. Give bonuses out if you hire for $5 an hour, and paying by the lead is fine as long as you give a bonus so the telemarketer has impetus to want to give you quality leads.

Here is an old training primer for a telemarketer if you want to use it. I have updated that but its on another computer, but this one should be fine, I also included a script analysis, a lead sheet, and a pipeline call back script. And a mojo dialer primer based on my outcome categories.
Hope this helps!

 

[PatrickJoseph]

Any service is bunk out there. Are there good ones? Sure, but they are all booked up from agencies that order by the large amount. It doesn't pay to start a service up for an agent unless they are buying at a couple of thousand dollars per month (atleast).

I agree....you need to order in bulk when purchasing leads. only because when you purchase in large amounts, you get the price per lead at it's lowest price and the company VALUES your business. They aren't going to choose to sell the lead to 5 other agents when you are buying enough leads for them to make a profit. As a company, you would much rather work with one person in an entire area than have to work with 5 or even 10 other people. The problem is coming up with the funds ... if your not in the position to spend 2-3 grand per month, then what do you do?

 

[Justin Bilyj]

I agree....you need to order in bulk when purchasing leads. only because when you purchase in large amounts, you get the price per lead at it's lowest price and the company VALUES your business. They aren't going to choose to sell the lead to 5 other agents when you are buying enough leads for them to make a profit. As a company, you would much rather work with one person in an entire area than have to work with 5 or even 10 other people. The problem is coming up with the funds ... if your not in the position to spend 2-3 grand per month, then what do you do?

Hire your own like my posted suggested, cold call yourself, theres a script, or do some other marketing method, direct, online, walkntalk b2b...

 

[Justin Bilyj]

Can we erase this spammer?