How To Keep Cold Calling Companies Honest
I clicked on an ad that appears next to one of my articles for a lead-generation company that will be happy to do your cold calling, for a fee.
The company seems fairly run of the mill.
As a rule, they do everything they can to tilt the deals they get in their favor and to shift all risk to you, the buyer.
For one thing, you must pay them up-front, 100% of their fees and costs.
If they let you down, you’re out of luck and your cash reserves have been tapped.
The second thing that jumps out is how they try to sweet talk their way around offering a performance guarantee of any kind.
You have to wonder how they get any business if they’re absolutely 100% NOT accountable.
Can you get away with this in your field? Are you paid in advance and excused from offering any assurance whatsoever that your products or services will work, will deliver the quality or quantity of results they are supposed to deliver?
This is quite a lopsided bargain they’re striking, when you think about it.
Why would any company be able to stack the deck this way?
Experience tells me clients as well as the conventional salespeople they employ are so intimidated by cold calling that they’ll pay anyone nearly anything under any circumstances if they can avoid making their own calls.
My suggestion is to NEVER contract with a cold-calling, lead generation, or appointment-setting company that refuses to meet minimal standards of performance.
For instance, if you’re buying appointments that your field sellers can run, insist on being delivered a certain number of solid meetings. Break this number down by calling hour. If you purchase 100 calling hours and you believe, based on the performance of your in-house folks, that one-half of an appointment can be set each hour, insist of receiving 50 by the end of the campaign.
Make sure the initial campaign takes place over the course of four weeks. After week #1, if you aren’t delivered 12-13 solid appointments, be able to cancel the program without penalties or to pay only for the value of the appointments received.
Ask your vendor up front, “In your experience, how many appointments per hour can I expect to get from you if I’m selling life insurance?” If they can’t respond with an informed estimate, pass on using them. Seek a firm that has already done what you do, and is willing to stand behind their claims of expertise.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman is the best-selling author of 12 books and more than a thousand articles. A frequent expert commentator on radio and TV, he is quoted in prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. President of Clientrelations.com and Customersatisfaction.com, his seminars and training programs are sponsored internationally and he is a top-rated faculty member at more than 40 universities, including UC Berkeley and UCLA. Gary brings over two decades of management and consulting experience to the table, with the best academic credentials in the speaking and training industry. A Ph.D. from the Annenberg School For Communication at USC, an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management, and a J.D. degree from Loyola, his clients include several Fortune 1000 companies and successful family owned and operated firms.
He can be seen on CNBC at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=417455932# and reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com
