The decision as to whether or not to outsource your outbound lead generation versus hiring your own staff is not a ‘one size fits all’ one. Every situation is different and in some cases it is not a one or the other decision at all.

Many clients come to us having already tried their own in-house team. After all the time and expense of recruiting and training they have not achieved the results they wanted so are looking for an alternative.

The reason is outbound business development is a tough job. Very few people have the right personality, experience and desire to stick at this job for the long term, which means managing your own team internally is difficult.

We only hire highly skilled and experienced agents who have excellent conversation skills and we teach them to get past the gatekeeper and engage the decision maker. Our agents love picking up the phone, they’re able to handle rejection professionally and politely and they don’t let it get to them!

We attract and keep great people because we offer flexible work arrangements and create a fun and stimulating environment. We celebrate each agent’s success and agents share ideas and strategies to develop their skills. Agents rotate among different campaigns best suited to their expertise to keep them focused and challenged.

Our agents are not distracted by other sales functions. Making calls is their ONLY duty so it is their first and only priority.

Campaign and agent results are reviewed at the end of every shift and weekly and are compared against expected targets. We are able to quickly identify if a campaign or agent is not hitting the expected outcomes. The campaign structure, agents assigned to the campaign and training can all be reviewed and changes implemented to ensure we get the best results possible for our clients.

The outbound lead generation campaign is our only focus, which means we are 100% on top of it and not distracted by anything else that is a part of the day-to-day running of a business – the buck stops with us.

Successful telemarketing and lead generation campaigns rely on a consistent, ongoing program run over several months. However, the initial step is to demonstrate over a period of a few months that our telemarketing and lead generation strategy delivers the results you are looking for. Our aim is to build a long-term relationship with our clients by demonstrating the effectiveness of this strategy so that it extends into an ongoing program that provides a strong return on investment.

With prospects at so many different stages of the buying cycle, our advice would be to go into any outbound sales and marketing activity with the expectation that you can only truly measure its effectiveness after 12 months.

That said, you will start to see results from the first week. Appointments will start to be booked in from the first week (in many cases the very first shift) and many of our clients have seen fantastic results from our telemarketing and lead generation campaigns over a very short period.

Sales cycles vary dramatically and so the answer to this question will also be dictated by the length of your sales cycle.

You also need to consider that while a comprehensive lead generation program will also approach those prospects who are looking for your product or service, most prospects will not be at this point yet. Many will have not yet identified that they have a problem – they are just experiencing frustrations. Those who do realise they have a problem are unlikely to have done anything about this, or started to identify who can help them solve their problem. In other words, they are often at a very early stage in the buying cycle.

Working with an experienced lead generation partner can ensure warm leads are quickly separated from those that are not interested. They should also nurture and develop relationships with prospects over time and only pass leads over to you when they are ready for a more detailed sales conversation.

Every campaign is different and the number of phone calls we can make will depend on the length of conversation required and how easy it is to reach your target decision maker. The more successful the campaign, the more (and longer) conversations we are having and therefore the lower our call rate will be.

As a guide, we will make between 15 and 25 calls per hour on an average campaign and will present to a decision maker on around 25-33% of those calls.

Over the course of an average pilot campaign, our agents spend 128 hours on the phone and you can expect us to make between 1,900 and 3,200 telephone calls and present your company and product or service to between 500 and 1,150 decision makers.

Some clients like to view this looking at what happens each day. In a day of calling you can expect the following:

8 hours of work – over two 4-hour shifts. We may split this time over multiple days, to maximise productivity and best contact times.

An average of 120 to 160 calls (numbers dialled) per day, depending on the strategy, length of conversation required and contact rates achieved.

An average of 30 to 60 conversations with decision makers per day of calling, depending on accuracy of data, level of seniority and target industries.

These expectations are based on the campaigns we have operated to date, and the majority of campaigns fall within these ranges. However, every campaign is unique and results do vary. We can give a more accurate estimation, specific to your campaign, as we build your campaign strategy in the set-up process.

The results vary substantially across campaigns and will depend on the outcome required, the level of decision maker we are trying to reach, the industry, your product or service offering and the geographical area you are targeting.

For an easy-to-understand product with a great (and unique) offer, we could set up to one or more appointments per hour. However, at the other end of the scale, for a complex, intangible or expensive service it could take much longer.

Once we understand your campaign and take a brief from you, we can give you an indication of how many appointments you could expect to see based on previous experience with a similar campaign.

FMG will only take on appointment-setting campaigns when we are confident that we can deliver results.

We understand that you may have concerns about committing to an appointment-setting campaign without knowing what results will be achieved. To help you through the decision-making process, FMG offer a guarantee on our appointment-setting campaigns. If after 20 hours we have not produced a minimum of three qualified appointments, you can cancel the campaign at that time and we will refund the unused hours. This guarantee covers even the most difficult campaigns and usually we achieve far beyond the guaranteed minimum.

Your brand is in safe hands with our mature and experienced sales agents who specialise in opening conversations and identifying business opportunities. We don’t just generate leads, but help to enhance your reputation and deliver a positive experience with every conversation we have.

At FMG our focus is on generating high-quality sales leads, ensuring your sales team are supplied with qualified prospects who are most likely to convert into sales.

We have many systems and processes in place to ensure that we protect our clients’ image and enhance their brand with every call:

• We only recruit mature, motivated and experienced sales people and provide them with ongoing training and support to develop their abilities. Many of our agents have been with us for several years, creating a stable, high-performing team that deliver consistent high-quality results for our clients.
• Our agents are all briefed by our clients and trained by our Sales Team Trainer. As we act as an extension of your sales or marketing team, we take a great deal of time at the start of a campaign to ensure we have a complete understanding of our client’s product or service and their business in general.
• Our clients are usually in our office for the first shift of a campaign to ensure we are representing their company correctly and that our agents are able to handle objections and address questions in an appropriate manner.
• Our Account Managers regularly listen into our agents’ calls to monitor their professionalism and results.
• Our clients are welcome to come into the office and listen in on calls at any time if they have any concerns over our representation of their company, or even if they just want to hear what we are saying.
• Our quality control process identifies any inaccuracies and ensures agents correctly represent our clients. We provide additional training if required.
• Our agents generally stay with us for the long term and every employee is committed to our high ethical values and professional sales approach that enhances our clients’ brand and delivers consistently high-quality results.
• For each lead, we provide a booking sheet that includes a feedback section where our clients can rate the accuracy of information, quality of lead, likelihood of converting into a sale and any other comments.

Every campaign is different – from the product or service on offer, through to who the decision maker is and how easy they are to reach. Therefore, costs for campaigns will also vary dramatically.

We generally start with a pilot campaign running for between three and six months and the aim of this campaign is to demonstrate over a period of time that our lead generation strategy delivers the results you are look for. Our aim is always to build a long-term relationship with our clients by demonstrating the effectiveness of this strategy so that it extends into an ongoing program that provides a strong return on investment.

Once we understand your campaign and take a brief from you, we can give you an indicative cost for different levels of campaigns, allowing you the flexibility to choose what you think will work best. Of course we will provide guidance but the final decision is yours.

That being said, our long-term clients have seen fantastic results from our telemarketing and lead generation campaigns. Each year we survey our clients to assess the effectiveness of our telemarketing campaigns – in the 2016 survey our clients expected that for every $1 spent with us they would receive $18.22 in revenue.

In short, the answer is no.

We understand that you may have concerns about committing to a new sales and marketing strategy without knowing the exact outcomes expected, so to give you confidence to partner with us, we offer you the following:

If after 20 hours, we have not produced a minimum of three qualified leads, you can cancel the program at that time and we will refund the unused hours. At any stage after this and for any reason, you can stop your campaign with two weeks’ notice and without any financial penalty at all, and we always refund any unused hours.

Outbound lead generation requires specialist skills to get past the gatekeeper and engage with the decision maker. All our sales agents are selected for their conversation skills. They are experts at starting conversations and uncovering opportunities. They view every phone call as a new challenge and don’t get disheartened when faced with rejection.

We invest a lot of management time to train, mentor and support our agents to develop their skills. We have created a fun and results-focused environment, which constantly encourages our agents to improve and achieve great results. Our agents work together sharing ideas and strategies to help each other develop and succeed.

Our agents have experience in a vast range of roles, companies and industries, giving us the ability to assign agents to campaigns best suited to their skill set.

We celebrate each agent’s successes and they are rewarded with performance bonuses. Targets and bonuses are weighted according to the difficulty of the campaign so there is always a level playing field. Each agent’s results are announced daily, creating a competitive culture that recognises individual achievements.

Campaign results are reviewed after every shift and weekly to monitor KPIs and to ensure we are achieving the best results for each client. If we are not achieving the results we expect we will contact you to discuss possible reasons and suggest changes to the campaign structure to improve the results.

We are focused on creating long-term relationships with our clients and understand this can only be achieved by consistently providing our clients with great results.