9 Reasons Why Companies Outsource Telemarketing

Companies are increasingly choosing to outsource their cold calling programs to overseas or domestic call centers that specialize solely in live lead generation. While the quality of these programs does vary significantly, one thing remains true of the outsourced telemarketing industry at large: It isn’t going anywhere. That’s because, for many if not most businesses, handing off call center operations to a specialized company poses dramatic benefits for both the success of in-house telesales operations and the bottom line of the organization as a whole.

We’ve listed some of the top explanations for this growing trend, demonstrating why thousands of leading executives across a broad range of industries are actively choosing to outsource their cold calling operations.

1. Finding qualified telemarketing agents is next to impossible. There are very few people who are qualified to generate leads over the phone. If you’ve ever tried to hire for this position, you already know that. Memorizing a script, dealing with objections (and rejections), and turning a cold lead warm takes serious training, ability, and labor. Above all, it takes time—and that’s not something you should be wasting when it comes to your in-house closers (more on that in a minute). Identifying and hiring qualified, courteous, articulate, reliable, and non-accented telemarketing agents may be one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks your sales department faces. And thanks to outsourced options, it’s become unnecessary.

2. Retaining telemarketers is even harder. As difficult as it is to hire qualified telemarketers, it’s even more challenging to retain them. Many professionals find themselves in a grueling hiring cycle due to the inherently tough nature of the role. To put it bluntly: Telemarketing is tough, and it’s taxing. Even if you do find that elusive skilled agent, you’re always in danger of losing them to burnout or to a job that offers a more rewarding opportunity for their sales abilities. It’s genuinely a chronic problem for sales professionals; and if you’re already in the game, you know that. When you outsource your telemarketing department, both the hiring and the retaining of good agents becomes someone else’s problem. You just get to reap the benefits.

3. Inexperience is audible, and it kills leads. Say you decide to subvert the problem of finding and keeping uber-qualified telesales experts by opting for inexperienced or unskilled lead generators. You’re now working with a team of folks who simply aren’t qualified for better opportunities. This may solve your hiring problem, but it’s going to kill your sales. Inexperience is audible, and it does nothing to convert calls into warm leads for your closers. This turns into a vicious cycle when the demoralizing experience of constant rejection leads to an even less confident presence on the phone. Not to belabor a point, but the reason why so many executives are opting to hire outsourced telemarketing agencies is exactly this: You go from unqualified employees to an entire fleet of highly trained, specialized, and experienced telesales agents just. like. that.

4. All that hiring and firing gets expensive. If you’ve crunched the numbers, the picture could look pretty scary. Finding, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and training agents has a big impact on your bottom line. Dealing with a constant hiring and training cycle is a major drain on your time and financial resources as a company. Many executives are realizing that when it comes down to the math of running their own in-house telemarketing department or outsourcing to experts, there’s simply no comparison: Outsourcing wins every time.

5. Your office is not a good environment for cold calling. Telemarketing is tough, and your busy office is a difficult environment for it. Have you ever tried to cold call someone? It’s not easy to do in any scenario, but it’s especially tough with an audience. If your telesales agents are having to deal with a loud and distracting office environment, surrounded by other professionals with different roles in the company who have no concept of how tough cold calling is, it’s basically a recipe for failure. Outsourcing to a completely telemarketing-focused call center means you’ll be working with select agents surrounded by a team of likeminded professionals and managerial support. They have all the resources and teamwork they need to succeed in an environment catered to their success—i.e., your success.

6. Running a telemarketing department requires major overhead. Not only are you dealing with payroll, HR, benefits, etc. for a whole department, the technology and equipment is a major expenditure. From a quiet designated room to individual work areas to headsets, automated dialers, computers, and all the other equipment that comes with a telemarketing team, this is another major opportunity for cutting costs and headache by outsourcing—and another reason why working with an outside telemarketing agency could ultimately increase your ROI.

7. Reduce strain on your closers. If you have a team of excellent sales reps, it’s important to value them and to protect that investment. Hiring an outside firm for lead generation reduces stress, raises morale, and decreases burnout for your key sales team.

8. Training is a time suck. You invest a lot of time and energy into training your telemarketing agents, knowing that proper training is integral to the success of your sales efforts—and by extension, your business. That’s a lot of pressure. Outsourcing would mean relinquishing the training of your telemarketing agents to experts who focus completely on best practices, regulatory compliance, sales improvement, and effective strategies in the field of lead generation.

9. Outsourcing makes it easy to add seats, or remove them. At times, you may be looking to boost your company’s sales—at others, you may need to temporarily cut back your sales volume due to low capacity. You may have a seasonal business or other factors demanding flexibility. One of the drawbacks of in-house telemarketing is the natural rigidity. Outsourcing allows you to adapt your telemarketing efforts to the needs of your company, putting resources where they are most needed. For example, Avatar & Echo Telemarketing uses short-term contracts so you have the option of adding or removing seats without being locked into long-term contracts, while still maintaining total control of your agents and sales scripts, managing your telemarketing agents as if they were in your office.