Lead Generation Lacks Follow-ups

Some unsuccessful lead generation companies across the world are falling short in one primary, common area: they are not following up on their telemarketing leads. As a result of this initial delay, the leads cool off and the outbound call center agents cannot reap any benefits out of these cold leads. It’s very important for the call center agent to try and keep the leads warm till they are ready to be converted into sales.

Seminars on sales lead generation have also pointed out that leads don’t really convert into sales because the agents are not willing to do the required job of backing up their own efforts. Once the lead is generated, then not following it up means undoing the good work that you did yourself.

A good way to do that is to use non-voice means of keeping lead generation warm. Send out emails to your prospective customers and clients with information about products/services, along with details of your company and business. These emails from the outbound call center desk are meant to keep the presence of your brand alive in their minds. They would like to connect with your company at any point in time. The emails can act as vehicles to bring their message to you. You can also follow up on them through telemarketing calls, if that’s what is suitable for the occasion.

Call Center Jobs Proliferate

The number of jobs in the call center sector will go up in the coming months. The last quarter of 2010 will see a surge of BPO jobs out in the market. With the recession officially out of the way and the economy finding itself back on its feet, the call centers are getting better projects. To meet the demands of those projects, they will be hiring answering service and telemarketing agents.

That would mean that the business process outsourcing sector will be swelling up in terms of manpower. That is always a good sign for the industry as a whole. It means that the growth opportunities for the telemarketing services will bring in greater amount of revenue.

The number of jobs has always been higher in the call center industry than in the others. It goes on to prove that BPO firms have projects on their hands, as opposed to what the detractors are saying. There are always those who think that the answering service projects are time-bound in some way and one fine day they will disappear from the face of the earth!

Such fantastical ideas repel many young people from joining as a telemarketing agent. The growth of real jobs in the business process outsourcing industry is like a reminder to them that their gory prophecies have no base. And it’s time for the youth to think of telemarketing services as a serious, regular career option.

Learn Lead Generation Lessons

Lead generation lessons are necessary for the growth of the lead generation companies. Insiders of the call center sector say that sales lead generation is one service that improves with experience. When you handle some of the telemarketing projects, you get a hang of it. Then you know what sort of an approach will be ideal for the project.

Clients are bound to come back to you if you can show them how you saved money for them and how you optimized the BPO resources you had at your command. Clients these days are looking for BPO service providers who are adept at doing something new and experimental without being too loose with the costs.

When the lead generation company has handled a project similar to the one they have at present, they can easily use that experience. In such a scenario, they know the hurdles on the way of sales lead generation. So, they can combat the obstacles on the way through superior call center planning. It also saves a lot of resources for the BPO unit.

The process that you use to carry out telemarketing services is as important as the telemarketing itself. You need to protect the brand image of the client company and also pull in results. Once you tap into your experience pool or just study the call center services of other units, you can strategize your options better.

Telemarketing Violations Continue Unperturbed

Violations of the telemarketing rules are continuing without any hindrances. There is hardly any authority that can enforce the penalties that have been levied on the call centers. The Canadian companies have had it really tough. Thousands of dollars are waiting to be realized in terms of payments. Of the 22 telemarketing services units that have been fined, only 4 among them have bothered to pay up.

The USA laws are facing the same problem. The call center services that have violated the Do Not Call (DNC) list have been penalized. Because many of these BPO units are based outside the country, it is difficult for the ruling authorities to actually realize the penalties. And because of this same reason, the business outsourcing units can also get away with the violations.

Citizens who have registered with the DNC list and still been made part of telemarketing campaigns have complained to telecommunication authorities and failed to get some action done. Assurances are not going to be enough anymore. The call centers need to be forced to pay up by legal means. For every telemarketing company that is fined and made to pay, there will be many others that will learn a lesson.

When examples are set, there will be that extra caution on the part of the telemarketing services providers to quit calling those numbers listed on the DNC. Every authority across the globe needs to come up in arms to fight this gross violation of rules of privacy.

Telemarketing Drives Profit in BPO

Statistics coming in from assorted studies have showed that telemarketing contributes to the major chunk of a BPO’s earnings. The telemarketing services were the most hired among the call center services. This was largely the idea of call center experts for years down the line. However, of late, web marketing and help desk services have made some significant cuts in the percentage of contribution made by the telemarketing business.

The easier conclusion is that the telemarketing company enjoys more revenues on a yearly basis than their non-voice counterparts. In fact, the findings not just validate the importance of the telemarketing calls, it also confirms something else.

Contrary to the belief that other forms of lead generation like websites and email marketing is still waiting to catch up with the good old telemarketing! But you cannot really write them off. Sales lead generation through other non-voice means have come up strongly from being relegated to the sidelines.

If you consider the fact that telemarketing calls were around for decades while the others are almost infant in terms of years of usage, you have to say that the telemarketing business has a challenge on their sleeves. It remains to be seen how long telemarketing services continues to hold fort as the highest-earning BPO service.

Future of Telemarketing

It’s not enough to have the lead generation team to work for a list of qualified leads. That’s just half the job done. Converting those leads into actual sales is important, too. That is where the lead generation companies are falling short of expectations. The telemarketing calls are getting them the leads, but those are not converting into profits or sales. That is leaving the sales lead generation hopelessly in the lurch.

The conversion of the telemarketing leads into sales requires stringent monitoring and following up on those leads. More often than not, the leads are not tended to or nurtured. As a result, the leads cool off and all the efforts of the outbound call center team leads to nothing more than dead leads.

It’s a mystery why the lead generation companies don’t really follow up on the leads that they have bagged! All it takes is a phone call or an email regularly to keep the leads warm. This is a competitive field. After your sales lead generation call, the same person must have received tens of telemarketing calls, probably with better offers and rebates and bonuses.

You cannot expect the person to remember you in spite of the offers flowing thick and fast. He/she will do so, if you care to correspond regularly. This is truer for B2B lead generation. Here the outbound call center guy is dealing with a business head. The busy professional will not remember you unless you gently nudge the lead from time to time.

Sri Lanka Taking Telemarketing Seriously

The Sri Lankan government is taking their call center services seriously. They are approving plans for the development of a world-class telemarketing sector that can handle telemarketing services from a global clientele. The island of Sri Lanka has the same advantages that you would expect from a developing country – they have cheap establishment costs to house many a telemarketing company, they have a strong English-speaking population to provide them with a manpower and they also have a lot of talent that can be exploited by the business process outsourcing sector.

Moreover, the island has not had many call centers. So the competition is much shallow for the newbie in the field to make an impression, not to mention the cost cuts.

Recent reports tell us that the Sri Lankan government is helping a private player set up a call center in the war-torn city of Jaffna. The idea is to inject some development in the city through the help of telemarketing services. The employment factor is a major reason why the government is ready to invest time and even money to build up a better telemarketing sector.

They want to have a share in the ample business process outsourcing pie. They want to cash in on the many advantages that they have as a business outsourcing destination and turn those into earnings for the country.

Answering Service Hires Handsomely

The answering service division of Verizon will be hiring about 250 call center employees in the coming weeks. Their answering services unit in the Cedar Bluff Road will be expanding their phone answering unit at this location. The customer service call center of Verizon was recently moved from their Kingston Pike location to this area.


At present, there are 63 employees working at this venue. The office space is a sprawling establishment of 13,000 sq. feet. The Cellular Sales Director of the company assured the business outsourcing world that Verizon will be employing hundreds more so that they can take on larger projects and finish them off fast. Deadlines are a concern in the telemarketing world today.

Most telemarketing services are expected to deliver the goods well before the usual time. The clients and business firms who hire the telemarketing company generally desires that the call center put in extra efforts to ensure that projects are finished before time. The answering service operations for Verizon may be in-house, but they will still need to bow to the demands of the BPO industry.

The aim is also to make Verizon the best in terms of customer service call center. The hiring will not just take place at the phone answering desk. They will also hire supervisors, managers and customer service representatives.

Call Center Makes Bogus Calls

A yet-unknown call center in Winnipeg is making fake calls using the name of the Fire Department asking for donations. The BPO agents making those calls say that they calling on behalf of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs. They are collecting funds for the development of certain things that do not really exist! The campaign is offering telemarketing services that are not registered with the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS).

The telemarketing calls are claiming that they are but actually are not. That is why the fire department has decided to use a public warning against the perpetrators. The declarations of the fire department are unambiguous: the calls having nothing to with them or the WFPS.

This is another instance when a call center is making fake calls to collect money. This is a serious issue all over the world. There are tons of telemarketing calls being made that collect money for non-registered or unverified causes. Several of them are telemarketing campaigns that claim to sell products/services that are not existent. They push forward for money deals to be made by the customers and then you don’t hear from them anymore.

Since a majority of the call centers are based overseas, legally you are at a loss to do something. The only way out of this trap is to be discreet. Be careful about the telemarketing company you are dealing with.

Indian Answering Service Challenged

The Indian answering service industry looks suitable challenged. After dominating the call center market for years, the monopoly of the Indian call centers when it comes to outsourcing work is set to be seriously threatened, if not overhauled. The challengers are the BPO units in countries like the Philippines and those in Latin America. These business outsourcing destinations are offering cost cuts that India cannot.

They are also matching up to international quality these days, probably the only reason why they could not break open into the business process outsourcing scene earlier. But from the look of the statistics and how much of branded clients they have handled lately, it seems like they are serious contenders for the top slot.

The Indian answering service needs a different business model to retain their place. They need to exploit their BPO resources in a better way, optimizing them to the fullest. The purpose of business outsourcing has not strayed from its original premise. It is still cost cuts. But the Indian call centers have hit the glass ceiling when it comes to slashing their prices. A prime reason is the inflation.

Another is the salary of the call center agents. While entry-level players get the same money, the higher-ups are being overpaid. The reason is simple: there is not enough supply of capable new recruits who can handle the responsibility of working at a business process outsourcing unit.

Call Center Hub Stalled in Nairobi

A call center hub was supposed to be set up at Sameer Business Park in Nairobi. However, the project got stalled due to the unavailability of funds. The government of Nairobi was expected to provide with the money for the installation of the call centers, along with infrastructural settings. The funds required were allocated but the ones who will be building it up never got the money. So the process has been stopped.

The BPO hub is important for the creation of jobs in the Nairobi market. The IT Ministry feels that the delay in the project will hurt their plans to make Nairobi a hot-bed of business process outsourcing projects. The negotiation of the IT Department with the Treasury is now at a stalemate.

The call center hub at Sameer Park in Nairobi is expected to be the house of many old and new call centers. The aim is to bring all of these segregated BPO units under one roof. It will make the industry stick together and also make it easier for facilities to be built around this hub.

The IT ministry plans to make business process outsourcing a revenue earner for Nairobi. Several African nations have reaped the benefits of a thriving call center services wing. The contracts of handling projects for developed countries always earn that all-important foreign exchange currency!

Cost Cut Challenge for Call Center

Call centers are facing a strange challenge these days. The call center planners know that they need to cut down on costs. But they can’t decide which department will bear the brunt of the cost cuts. It cannot be the answering service team. You take one inbound call center agent out and you find the entire team working under pressure.

The call volume is unevenly distributed, putting the phone answering agents in a spot of bother. They were coping hard with the work pressure as it is. With downsizing, the agents have to address the issues faster than they would have liked to. This reflects badly on the customer care service that they have on offer.

It cannot be the lead generation team. That’s because the outbound call center agents do the main bulk of the telemarketing job. Shedding weight here would mean lesser revenue earners. You can talk about optimizing the BPO unit but you can do just that and nothing more.

Your primary aim would be to make sure that the call center agents are not overworked because of the cost cutting measures. Employee attrition is a rising problem and if you burnt out employees think of quitting, it won’t be long before you will be spending more than you intended to save!

Telemarketing Budget Cuts Worries Call Centers

Financial crunch in most business firms means that they are cutting down on their telemarketing expenditures. This has become a cause of worry for the call center. BPO units have already sliced down their prices to grab more projects. Studies have revealed that the number of projects have gone up for the call center units since they brought down their prices.

The business outsourcing units are somehow breaking even by taking on more work and the telemarketing agents are overworked. But that does not seem to enough! Business firms just out of a depressing economy are unable to pay for the answering service that can take them to greater profits.

Business firms still think of telemarketing as a non-core business entity. That is why customer service outsourcing comes lower down on their list of expenditures. With the financial leash around their neck, the telemarketing services expenditures got displaced from their list of priorities. However, the business firms have to understand that this is not the proper way to cut down costs. They must look for other areas to save costs.

Not hiring a call center for their answering service needs would reflect disastrously on their revenue earnings. The inverse is also true. Once the BPO firms get to work, the earnings will improve not just to validate this investment, but also make provisions for the bottom-line to go up.

Awareness Drive for Government Call Centers

This is a primary concern in many developing countries. The governments of these countries run many call centers to help the citizens in times of emergency, like medical aid or security. However, most citizens don’t even know that such a phone answering service exists!

Lack of publicity and awareness drives makes the answering service facilities rust unused. If there are any calls at the inbound call center desk, they are mainly undeserving of the money and resources being spent in maintaining those telephone answering numbers.

The meager number of calls does no good for the government coffers, especially in the tourism sector. Governments can earn a fortune if they can fine-tune their call centers to handle the tourism calls and offer help tourists on their way in the country. The tourism market is primarily saturated with private players. That is somewhere the government can make inroads with quality answering service.

As of now, they are busy promoting their call answering services numbers that will make it easier for the citizens to get in touch with the concerned authorities when they are in need of help. Having a state-of-the-art phone answering service reflects well on the image of the government as well. It shows that the authorities are concerned about the citizens and their well-being.

Cebu Lacks Quality BPO Manpower

Cebu may just need more than what they are doing at the present to lift up their BPO division. The call center community out there is more concerned than ever. They are investing in an MBA school to train the telemarketing agents. They are helping the administrator of Cebu build a state-of-the-art infrastructure that can compete with the best in the world.

Cebu, like the other towns of Philippines, needs their business outsourcing industry to thrive and get them revenue. The Managing Director of Cebu Investments and Promotions Center (CIPC), Joel Mari S. Yu, said that despite their best efforts to pull up the quality of their telemarketing services, there was no doubt in the fact that the call centers of Cebu lacked quality manpower.

The statement of Mr. Yu clearly speaks out that all is not well with the BPO world here. There are ample scopes of training for a budding telemarketing agent. There are free courses and tutorials. The training infrastructure is so detailed and easily accessible, there can hardly be any doubt that the authorities are serious about the answering service business.

They are leaving no stone unturned to keep the business firms interested in the telemarketing services of Cebu. Whether their efforts may not be enough will be clear in the coming months. Incidentally, the recent future looks tough for the business outsourcing world on the whole.

Telemarketing Makes Comeback after Exile

Telemarketing as an industry was facing an existential threat. Consumers were tired of outbound call center agents hounding them with products/services. A telemarketing company would go to great lengths to try and sell their wares without turning the eye of the telecommunication authorities onto themselves. B2B telemarketing was completely ruled out at a point because no business could be conducted over the phone, thanks to emails.

Business heads wouldn’t even come in to talk to you on the phone. In such a situation, the telemarketing call center was frantically searching for ways in which they can carry on making telemarketing calls without coming across as pesky or pushy. Finally they decided to try out targeted telemarketing services.

In targeted telemarketing, the outbound call center does not go to town calling anyone and everyone. In this approach, you know the statistical data before making telemarketing calls. Does the person fall under the income group that can purchase the product/service? Does he have an outstanding loan that he’s yet to pay?

These are answers that you can parse from the data you have. Base your telemarketing services on these data. Once the telemarketing company knows how to segment the market and then call, there will be a cork on wastage. Only relevant consumers will get calls. That would be the ideal use of telemarketing business services.

Telemarketing Firms Tap Down Under

Telemarketing firms are now looking Down Under to spread out their network. Yes, I’m talking about Australia and New Zealand. These areas are a treasure-trove of answering service talent. The biggest advantage that they have is that they speak the language of the American and European customers without having to bother about the accent!

The call center units Down Under have the potential to offer quality BPO services and give their Indian and Singaporean counterparts a run for their dollar and pounds. But you cannot have an area lying untapped if there is potential for housing business outsourcing firms!

The call center bug has bit the economies of Australia and New Zealand. They are more focused than ever to build up their economies through telemarketing firms and hubs. As a matter of fact, the Malaysian BPO firms are now eyeing the markets in Australia and New Zealand. They are sending across delegations to talk to the authorities of Australia to help them build business process outsourcing hubs in the country.

The telemarketing services will definitely pull the Australian economies out of the tight spot they are in right now. As for the business outsourcing world, adding on a new horizon would definitely spice things up! The Malaysian delegates going Down Under feel that it’s time for their country to go global and this is their first stop.

Filipino Call Centers Appeal against USA Bill

The call centers at Philippines have decided to stage a protest against the anti-offshore BPO legislation. The delegates of the call center association in the Philippines spoke to Senator Kristen Gillibrand, another exponent of the bill other than Senator Charles Schumer. The appeal of the call center services representatives was clear: they want the bill to be revoked or the economy of Philippines would be greatly hit.

A major chunk of money that drives the Filipino economy comes from call center outsourcing. In case the flow of projects stop, the economy will spiral out of control and the unemployment level would shoot up sharply.

The Philippines want the American legislators to bypass this anti-offshore BPO bill. The representatives want the legislators to try out something else, like tax evasions for business firms that do not outsource to a customer call center outside the country.

The Filipino representatives urged the senators to take into account the image of “Big Brother” that America has in the eyes of the developing countries. The bill, if passed, would go directly against this image. However, the decision for the senators will not be easy. It will be difficult to choose to remain a “Big Brother” when the unemployment percentage in the country is sky-rocketing relentlessly.

Exposure Matters in Call Center Business

Exposure to the clients in countries like USA will work wonders for the domestic call center sector. That’s what the BPO insiders in countries like Kenya feel. They are right in their assessment. The answering service abilities of these countries need to be displayed to the clients out there. It’s only by the process of exposure and networking can they hope to be in contention when phone answering projects come up for grabs.

As of now, most call centre units in Kenya and other countries of Africa are content with help desk solutions and data entry jobs. It’s true that many of the business outsourcing firms vying for projects don’t really have what it takes to handle high-octane projects.

Making a humble start is the thing foremost on the minds of these BPO pioneers. They know they are representing the call center facilities of their respective countries. Allegations of unprofessionalism or inability to provide quality call center services will not just jeopardize their chances of bagging projects. It would also throw a shadow of doubt over call centre units functioning in these countries.

That is like too much on stake for these business outsourcing players. Come to think of it, the pressure can also make them crumble. Experts of business process outsourcing advise them to just do their job without the pressure to perform. It remains to be seen if they can keep the national flag flying high.

Tussle over BPO Calls Persist

The tussle between the ruling government and the BPO units continue! Yes, the two warring parties are still locked in a struggle over the do-not-call list. The list, as many of you are aware, forbids outbound call center agents from making lead generation calls. The ones who sign up for this list have to be struck off the telemarketing list because if you call them, you are actually violating telecommunication rules.

However, because many of the call centre units are based outside the country and does not fall under the jurisdiction of the state, the law continues to be violated. Cumbersome judicial procedures stop many of these irritated targets from going to court. Several public litigations filed against many call center services have again brought up this issue for debate.

The authorities this time have a different approach to seal off pesky lead generation calls. They are planning to order a blanket ban for outbound call center on all phone numbers. Only those who sign up for a list will receive telemarketing calls and text messages. It will be a do-call list that call center agents have to abide by. They can make calls to only numbers that are on the list.

The do-not-call list did not work for the phone answering service regulators because people were not aware about how to sign up or if there is such a facility at all. Only time will tell how BPO companies combat with such a stringent regulatory method.

Telemarketing Swindle through Chimneys!

If you are living in Southern Maine, you’d be careful about telemarketing agents offering to clean up your chimney! The call center agent is more likely to be working for a scam company. Can’t say about your chimney, but the job will definitely clean you off your purse! So here’s how it goes. The outbound call center agent calls you with an offer to clean your chimney for $50. You jump at the offer because you don’t really get a chimney job done at anything so less. You agree.

The fraudulent telemarketing agent sends over mechanics to do the task. Then they suggest you need a new chimney liner. It’s obvious that you are more likely to agree to the call center guy because you have a chimney but don’t really know everything about it. You give them the green signal. The work gets done and you bless your stars thinking that the outbound call center call just saved you a huge expense. That’s a delusion that lasts till you get the bill. Yes, the figure reads $2,400!

Beware of Lysco Contracting! That’s the name of the company that is asking the telemarketing callers to make those calls. They claim that because they conduct numerous chimney cleaning jobs in the same area, they can justify the paltry cost that they are charging. The law at Maine says that for any contractual job, the customer and the company have a 3-day gap to back out. Lysco dismisses it saying the law doesn’t hold for emergency cases!