Should You Employ Your Own People for Cold-calling or Use a Telemarketing Agency?

Cold-calling is a proven many for many small businesses to generate leads.

But, for many businesses, there’s always the question of who actually does it.

Even for larger companies with dedicated sales teams this is a valid question: should you use your own people or turn to a specialist telemarketing agency?

Let’s put aside how to find a good telemarketing agency, and focus on the question of whether you should use internal resource or outsource through a telemarketing agency.

For many companies, there are three compelling reasons to use a telemarketing agency:

1) Focus

2) Capabilities

3) Cost

This article examines these three reasons and suggests why, in many cases, it makes more sense to use the services of an external telemarketing agency.

1) Focus

Firstly, a strong reason for using a telemarketing agency is that they will focus on the task of generating leads for your business. Many companies, when using an internal resource, will hand this over to either an admin person or expect it to be done as part of their sales role.

But, let’s be honest about what really happens in most businesses: they find something else to do.

Unlike a telemarketing agency, which employs people who cold-call day-in, day-out, your employees have other duties to perform. And, believe me, they will find anything else to do rather than telemarketing. The same goes for if you choose to hire your own people “just to cold call” rather than use a telemarketing agency. After a few months, I guarantee, they will be doing something (anything) else rather than telemarketing.

Larger telemarketing agencies that recruit raw telemarketers have huge problems with churn. If you think that you can recruit and retain someone to do the role long term, think again!

Using a telemarketing agency means that you have a resource focused on telemarketing. By using a telemarketing agency you ensure a continual effort to generate leads, not the reluctant, ad-hoc approach you will get form your own people.

2) Capabilities

Hand-in-hand with the issue of focus is that of capabilities. By working with a telemarketing agency you will access people who are far better at telemarketing that your own people. Even if you have dedicated sales people they often won’t match a good telemarketing agency when it comes to cold-calling.

An external telemarketing agency also brings capabilities around data acquisition, segmentation, collateral development and “pitch” development which your own people will lack. Think about it; a good telemarketer working in a small telemarketing agency will pitch around 100 prospects in a week. Given that the best telemarketers have been in the game for at least five years, that’s over 20,000 pitches. That’s experience you will only get by working with a telemarketing agency; you’ll never get it from an in-house employee.

3) Cost

Finally, another reason for many companies to consider using a telemarketing agency is cost.

When comparing using your sales team, or even yourself as the owner of a small business, against the cost of a telemarketing agency, the costs are pretty compelling. A telemarketing agency will charge, on average around £250-300 per day for a telemarketer. That’s attractive even when you compare it against the cost of your sales people. But when you consider the cost of them not being in front of prospects and actually closing, the cost justification stacks up in favour of the telemarketing agency.

When comparing a telemarketing agency against an admin person making “a few cold calls” the costs need a little more study but they still make sense. Usually, the best approach is to consider two factors: a) the cost per lead and b) the opportunity cost.

When looking at the former, the telemarketing agency, which is always more efficient, typically wins. In addition, when you think about the opportunity cost of not getting new leads into your pipeline and the resulting lost new business growth, it’s usually obvious that using a telemarketing agency is the best investment.

So, in summary, when thinking about whether to use your own people or a telemarketing agency, consider the total picture of how much focused your own people will be, how good they will be, and what is the real return on their costs.

We believe that, taking all these elements into account, a telemarketing agency is the most attractive route for many businesses.