[Scott Taylor]

Hi, Has anyone used a telemarketing/lead generation company before and if so was it successful? Yes i could do it myself but i'm very busy and its time consuming and a numbers game. Any thoughts appreciated. It was for commercial cleaning. Thanks.

[Mark Weedon]

Hi Scott

We are based in London, I paid a company 300 a day to set up quotes for us. Total waste of time. Not one job from it. You could argue that the company I used were rubbish, but that's my experience of them.

We currently use a virtual pa charging 15 squid an hour. Her latest project was gaining and building database of 50 property managers emails to follow up on. It's cost £120 so far. So that may be a bit more cost effective.

Mark

[Carpet Dawg]

Mark

So out of those 50, how many have asked for quotes/lead to work?

There is/was a carpet cleaning business in my area (not sure if they are still in business and not sure if they where from my area but defiantly operated in it). They used to cold call people from the phonebook with their carpet cleaning sales pitch. Their main hook line was that they'll be in your area/street next week or had a cancelation, so would you like to take advantage and get 20% off  (or what ever) a first time clean.

I only know about this because several people have told me about it. I have done work for several people that had been called by them. They seem to have over booked themselves all the time and only done the most profitable work that particular day, as according to those people I cleaned for said they never showed up!

Cant remember their name, think it was a generic cleaning business name. A woman was doing the cold calling.

So I think it would work as long as you had a good sales person on the phone. Would be good for commercial work.

[wynne jones]

If you really must do it I would do what Mark suggests. Get someone to ring just to identify the decision maker for commercial jobs, then ring them yourself. The chances of getting anyone with a brain who will be any good at selling appointments for quotes is extremely low.

[Scott Taylor]

Thanks for the replies. I think it would work with commercial work. The telesales staff just need to call sme's ie small business's and ask if they would like a free no obligation quote for doing their carpets. All i want is the name of company and who they spoke to with tel number and ill do the rest. £300 sounds a bit steep. I wonder what they charge you for say a few hundred calls. Will look into it.

[Mark Weedon]

To be fair,

this is a on going project.

50 reads like this 2 separate quotes, one accepted.

we have coded them green amber and red. Green want to chat, receive pricelist, amber just pricelist, red not interested.

15 OR SO GREENS, SAME AMBERS 20 REDS (ROUGHLY) cant be bothered to count exact numbers for this post, my point is this, we have gained email addresses for all green/ambers, so i can then follow up with emails, and try to build relationships. This cost £120-00 rather than paying telemarketing for cold calling.

Read any direct mail book, and they will tell you you need to find the name for the decision maker, whether that be facilities manager, property manager, md, office manager...etc

mark