Of course, many telemarketing companies answer this question by just quoting a daily rate, or you can look at the many services online that will take your details and then sell them on to 4 or 5 hungry telemarketing companies who will pester you for days to give you a quote when all you really want to know is "how much is a telemarketing campaign going to cost me?"
If you could just get a sensible, grown-up answer to that question you could decide whether it's worth considering further.
So, we thought we'd take a different approach and actually try to answer that question in a way that not only makes sense but actually provides you with an idea of return-on-investment (ROI).
You see, telemarketing costs are only part of the picture.
What you really need to consider is "what can a telemarketing campaign deliver in terms of revenue".
Now, the answer to that depends on a number of different variables, ranging from your target market and the brand equity you have within it, through to how many sales you can convert from meetings and what is your average revenue per sale.
Lots of things to consider, eh?
So, to help you, we've developed a simple telemarketing budget calculator in Microsoft Excel.
Once you open the excel sheet, all you need to do is select a number of variables, such as "What size of business you are targeting?", "What is your approximate budget?" and "What is your average revenue per sales value?" and the calculator will tell you what ROI you should expect for a given telemarketing budget.
You can adjust the budget (as well as the other variables) to change the ROI.
Is it perfect? Does it work for any telemarketing scenario?
No.
It's based on our experience working with business-to-business product and services companies who are targeting new business.
Generally, new business is as tough as it gets for telemarketing. If you want someone to call existing or lapsed customers then you can expect a higher return than our calculator will produce.
Also, most of our clients are not well-known brands. We have worked with a few big names and I can tell you that is makes telemarketing so much easier. So, again, if you're Microsoft, Accenture or IBM, you'll certainly out-perform our calculator in terms of ROI.
However, if you're looking to use telemarketing to generate new business in a competitive but targeted market then our model will be accurate enough for a sense-check on budget.
Also, in some circumstances the calculator shows a negative ROI.
Well, guess what... telemarketing probably isn't for you.
For most companies with a medium to high-value business-to-business sales proposition telemarketing still remains one of the most predictable and consistent methods of opening doors and generating new business.
Why not download our Telemarketing Budget Calculator and see if telemarketing could work for your business?
Labels: b2b telemarketing, new business development, telemarketing ROI
