What telesales is, what makes a team convert, and when to outsource it
Telesales is selling over the phone: the rep's job is to close a sale or book the meeting that leads to one. Telemarketing is the wider term for any marketing by phone, including surveys, lead qualification and event invitations, where nobody expects a sale on the call.
This guide covers inbound and outbound sales and the six things a team that converts has in place. Then the numbers to watch, the calling rules in Australia and the UK, and whether to build your own team or outsource.
Serkan Honeine, Co-founder, CoSauce
Published · Last updated
Telesales vs telemarketing
Plenty of telemarketing companies sell both. The useful difference is what the call is measured on. A telemarketing call is measured on reach or information: did we speak to the decision maker, did they qualify, did they agree to receive a proposal. A telesales call is measured on revenue: did they buy, upgrade or sign.
That changes who you hire and how you pay them. Qualification work suits careful, curious people paid mostly on base. Closing suits people who are comfortable asking for the sale, paid partly on what sticks. B2B telemarketing often sits in the middle: a rep qualifies a business and books a meeting for an account executive, which is close to what a sales development representative does.
Inbound and outbound sales
Inbound telesales takes calls from people who already put their hand up: they rang the number on an ad, filled in a form or asked for a callback. Conversion is higher because the interest is already there, and the main risk is slow answer times. Outbound telesales calls people who didn't ask, from a list. It needs better data and a sharper opening, and it's what the calling rules below mostly cover. An outbound call centre often does both, with outbound reps also calling back inbound leads that weren't reached the first time.
What a team that converts has in place
| What | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Clean data | The right person's direct number, a reason to think they might buy, and no numbers that should have been washed out. |
| An offer worth a phone call | Something the person can say yes to on this call or the next: a trial, a booked demo, a better plan. If the offer is weak, call quality won't save it. |
| A script used as a guide | An opening, the questions that qualify, answers to the five or six objections you hear every day, and the close. Reps who read it word for word sound like they're reading. |
| Coaching from call review | Someone listens to recorded calls every week, picks two or three moments per rep and works on them. |
| Pay tied to results | A base plus a variable part paid on sales that stick, with quality checks so nobody is rewarded for pushing a deal that cancels next month. |
| Live numbers | A dashboard the sales manager and the client can both see during the day, so a bad list or a broken offer shows up by lunchtime. |
We saw most of these at work with DStv, the pay-TV service run by MultiChoice. We built a sales team that works only on DStv campaigns, across more than 13 African markets. Agents are paid on results, with quality checked so conversions don't come at the cost of bad sales. DStv watches campaign performance, agent numbers and conversion funnels on live dashboards. Against the incumbent vendor on the same campaigns, the team got 203% better conversion. Campaign by campaign it looked like this (from our DStv case study):
| Campaign | CoSauce | Incumbent |
|---|---|---|
| DStv Premium Upgrade | 34% | 11.13% |
| DStv Compact Plus | 41% | 13.55% |
| DStv Access Retention | 18% | 5.91% |
| DStv Reconnection | 13% | 5.56% |
Same campaigns. What changed was the team, how it was paid and how closely the calls were watched.
The numbers to watch
Track each step of the call so you can see where it leaks. We're not going to give you benchmark rates: they swing too much from one list and offer to the next, and your own first month is a better baseline.
| Measure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Dials | Calls attempted. Measures effort. On its own it rewards the wrong thing. |
| Connects | Calls a person answers. A low rate usually points to the data, or to calling at the wrong time of day. |
| Conversations | Connects that get past the opening. A low rate points to the opening line. |
| Conversion | Sales or booked meetings divided by conversations. This is where coaching and the offer show up. |
| Revenue per hour | Revenue from sales that stick, divided by hours on the phone. The number to pay for. |
Here's a worked example. The numbers are made up, to show the arithmetic. A rep spends six hours on the phone, has 30 conversations and makes three sales worth $400 each. That's a 10% conversion rate and $1,200 over six hours, or $200 an hour. If one of those sales cancels in the first month, revenue per hour drops to about $133. So pay on sales that stick. Dials on their own tell you little.
The calling rules in Australia and the UK
In Australia, telemarketers can't call a number 30 days after it goes on the Do Not Call Register, unless they have consent or are exempt. So wash your list within 30 days of calling (ACMA, Do Not Call Register). Calls are allowed 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, and every caller must say who they are and why they're calling (ACMA, dealing with telemarketing). In the UK, B2B calls are screened against the Corporate TPS and the TPS, plus your own do-not-call list (ICO, B2B marketing). Our guides to the Do Not Call Register and the Telephone Preference Service cover the detail. This is a summary, not legal advice.
In-house or outsourced telemarketing
Keep telesales in-house when the sale is long and complex, or the reps need product knowledge that takes months to build. Keep it too while you're still working out the offer and want to hear every objection yourself. Outsourced telemarketing makes sense when the offer is proven, the volume is steady or seasonal, and the hard part is hiring, keeping and coaching enough good reps.
If you outsource, ask these before you sign:
- Will the reps work only on your campaigns, or share their day with other clients?
- Will they work in your CRM?
- How are reps paid, and does the variable part depend on sales that stick?
- Who reviews calls, how many each week, and will you hear the recordings?
- How do they wash calling lists against the Do Not Call Register or the TPS and CTPS, and how often do they do it?
Our own telesales and outbound teams are in South Africa and work in your CRM. South Africa is about eight hours behind Sydney, nine in Australian daylight saving, so we plan Australian calling hours around that, and the time difference suits UK calling. If you're selling into Britain, see how we work with UK companies, and how we set up and review a team.
Questions
Is telesales the same as cold calling?
Cold calling is one kind of outbound telesales, calling people with no previous contact. A lot of telesales is warmer than that: calling back web leads, renewing or upgrading existing customers, or winning back people who cancelled. The people on those lists already know who you are.
Do the calling rules apply to B2B telemarketing?
Yes, in different ways. In the UK you screen business numbers against both the CTPS and the TPS. In Australia the Do Not Call Register is mainly for personal numbers, but the identification rules and calling hours apply to telemarketing calls generally.
How long before an outsourced team is selling?
Our teams usually go live in about four weeks. The first weeks go on fixing the script and the list, so judge the numbers after that.
Next step
If you're thinking about a telesales team, book a call with me. Bring your offer, who you sell to and what a sale is worth to you. I'll tell you whether outbound calling is likely to pay for itself, and if it isn't, I'll say so.