[Rogue Trader]

I am looking into setting up a telesales service setting meetings with companies whose cleaning contracts are coming up for tendor.
How much do you think i should charge a cleaning company for a meeting with say a 2 x floor office with 100/200+ staff?
I am thinking about charging a flat rate per meeting regardless of whether the tendor is won or not.
Or a flat rate as well as well as a small percentage of contract.....
What would this service be worth to you guys?

[GeoffDerby]

Hi Mat, what experience do you have in this market? how have you obtained your list of cleaning contracts up for renewal and contact details. I have 3 or 4 calls per week from companies selling similar services, the appointments are not always good, and potential customers are just taking the appointment because the telesales person is incentivised to get appointments, and has said things like well why not see the sales person, you have nothing to loose the appointments are oftern with the wrong decision maker and there are no business incentive to move supplier other than cost. I have wasted time and effort attending appointments like this before.

Now if you had a diferent service model and sold information to cleaning companies this may be worth more to me than an appointment, and easier for you to collect, IE Contact Details, Service details, Costs, timeframes, issues and concerns. This takes the dilema away from you getting an appointment and me wasting time, I can decide if I want to chase low or high value business and if the potentail client fits into my business model. If you are forwarding OJEC business I can build a relationship befor the tender and potentially influence the tender to reflect services I provide.

Now to costs and worth, If I did this myself what would it cost.
Telesales person making 20 calls per hour
Accomidation and MIS Costs
Depending upon volumes I would expect to be paying arround .50p to £1.00 for qulaified information depending on who else the info is being sold to or about £10.00 per qualified appointment
Hope this helps and good luck if you decide this is where you want your business to be
Geoff

[Rogue Trader]

Hello Geoff,
My experience is mainly having done this service before for other industries eg marketing/advertising agencies and financial advisers, the money that they are willing to pay me for an appointment is as. I was thinking about marketing my services as an alternative to employing a telesales member of staff..... i have seen plenty of cleaning companies advertising for a cold calling telesales person and i wonder how they could justify doing this if the industry value of info/appointments is as low as you would be prepared to pay..... any ideas?

[GeoffDerby]

Hi Mat, I used to spend £10 per hour for external telesales working from home, to include there bills, or £10 per qualified appointment. (Assume one appointment per hour working) The issue was with the knowlage, external telesales keep the knowlage, I have used home telesales and provided a PC to sync the data daily, but in the end went for a mix of external and internal telesales. My external get more leads but internal get better leads

I would expect to pay more for experience and quality leads but remember we are a low margin industry

[Rogue Trader]

Absolutely right, but there is no way you could set  1 decent  appointment per hour, probably more like 1 appointment per day

[W C R Ltd]

All depends on your experience in the telemarketing industry, and the good quality call lists. saying 1 good appointment per day is worthless to any business using a service like this.

[Rogue Trader]

very true WCR but it all depends what you are going after .....

[dg-cleaning]

got to say I would steer clear myself.

[Rogue Trader]

All depends on your experience in the telemarketing industry, and the good quality call lists. saying 1 good appointment per day is worthless to any business using a service like this.

Rather than you worrying about my proposition dont you think that your time would be better spent in fulfilling your own customers requirements that you have yet to meet (Darren) or maybe dealing with your Ebay mis-demeanors