Q: Why should you outsource telemarketing with us?

A: We can help you reach you save money and reach your sales goals.

How?

Cutting Costs

First and foremost, we can help your company reduce expenses. This is one of the primary benefits that leads our clients to outsource. By outsourcing telemarketing with Hit Rate Solutions, many associated expenses will be eliminated, such as:

Recruitment

As you know, recruiting new employees can cost you and your staff time and money. We can eliminate the direct and opportunity costs associated with placing ads, dealing with recruiters, setting up interviews, follow ups, etc.

Office Space

Once you hire a new internal employee, you would need to allocate office space to the new hire. This can mean either expanding your current square footage, or partitioning off an area that could be used for other purposes. Outsourcing can help you avoid these exorbitant overhead costs.

Equipment

Additionally, your new employee would require expensive equipment to get started. This can include costly items such as computers, telephones, headsets, desks, and chairs. We can take these expenses off your hands.

Software

Once you’ve hired a new telemarketer, set up office space, and purchased a computer, you’re still not done. In addition to the computer, you will face software expenses. This can include Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and CRM licenses.

Phone & Internet

Telemarketing campaigns are naturally highly dependent on large call volumes. If you’re running large campaigns, your employees will surely rack up large phone bills, and eat into your internet bandwidth. We’ll handle these expenses should you choose to outsource with us.

A Brief History Lesson

In 1898, US president William McKinley signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Spanish-American War, and annexing the Philippines as a US territory. In a written statement, McKinley addressed the burgeoning opportunity:

“Incidental to our tenure in the Philippines is the commercial opportunity to which American statesmanship cannot be indifferent. It is just to use every legitimate means for the enlargement of American trade; … In view of what has been stated, the United States cannot accept less than the cession in full right and sovereignty of the island of Luzon.”

In 1900, President McKinley sent the Taft Commission to the Philippines with a mandate to legislate laws and re-engineer the political system. The result was a bicameral legislature, Supreme Court, and governmental system similar to that of the United States.

In time, the Philippines reaped massive economic rewards from its relationship with the US. Foreign trade had amounted to 62 million pesos in 1895, 13% of which was with the United States. By 1920, it had increased to 601 million pesos, 66% of which was with the United States.

Improvements in health care reduced mortality rates, and the rule of law limited criminal activity. The educational system was modified, and English became an official language of the islands.

During World War II, the US military presence in the Philippines led the country to become a Western front for Allies battle with Japan. Filipino and American soldiers fought side-by-side, endured the tragedies of the Bataan Death March together, and ultimately helped citizens of the Philippines establish an enduring bond with America.

On July 4th, 1946, the US ceded sovereignty to the Philippines, and the country became and independent nation. The Philippines Independence date is not insignificant. The date illustrates the shared connection between the Philippines and United States.

Today

Many vestiges of the Filipino-American relationship continue to exist. Nearly all Filipinos are fluent in English, enjoy Western culture including music, television, and idolize athletes like Kobe Bryant of the NBA. The cultural immersion has left Filipinos versed with American slang and dialect, comfortable with the language, and experienced in dealing with Americans.

The growth of broadband and internet technology over the last two decades has enabled US businesses to tap into the low cost and Americanized labor force of the Philippines. Offshore call centers have sprouted up on numbers of islands, and customer service agents, virtual assistants, and telemarketers interact with American customers virtually every second of the day. As a result, the Filipino call center industry is growing at 25 to 30 percent a year in the Philippines, compared to only 10 to 15 percent in India.

Outsourcing now represents 4.5% of the Philippines’ overall GDP, and young professionals aspire to land relatively lucrative jobs as call center agents. The enthusiasm for the profession isn’t the only thing that differentiates Filipino agents from their American counterparts: Filipinos take pride in, and enjoy, helping improve customer service in the United States.

For your practice to be successful, you will need to perfect methods of bringing in new patients.  While there are multitudes of marketing options from which to choose, telemarketing is a tried and true method of getting your name and message out to the masses.

Chiropractic telemarketing is a highly specialized operation.  If handled alone, this aspect of your practice will occupy much of your waking moments.  If not properly executed and planned for, your efforts may fall short.

Determine Marketing ROI

Undeniably, you should set in place goals well before you can scale it up. You really should fully grasp the value of your patients.

Ask yourself the following questions:

How many prospects become patients?
How many become repeat customers?

Put simply, you really should try to determine the return on investment you, or your outsourced campaign, is achieving before ramping up.  For marketers, the main issue to keep in mind is the cost of new business.  Once you fully understand the details, you will understand what each new patient means to your bottom line.  This is essential knowledge to have prior to outsourcing telemarketing, as it will help you determine the maximum amount of money you can spend while still boosting your profit margins.

Messaging

It can be a challenge to get a consumer’s attention, and convert them into a client.  People are busy, and aren’t always expecting a call.  How can your message effectively get their interest for that initial consultation?

Apathy is the enemy of telemarketers.  Your telemarketing script must address potential health concerns the customer is facing, and provide a brief explanation as to how an appointment with a chiropractor will solve their problems.  Is there a problem you can help stop, and if so how bad is that pain?

Your telemarketer won’t have all the answers.  That is what you have been trained to address.  But, if your caller can identify potential customers, and schedule appointments or follow up calls, you are one step closer to helping the consumer alleviate pain.

By preparing your marketing message, and understanding the value it provides, your practice will be well on it’s way to building a loyal patient base.

United States enterprises are increasingly delegating essential attributes of their business to offshore providers in an effort to slash expenditures and upgrade capability. Offshore providers can even at times deliver better value than domestic providers.

Yet, don’t take it for granted. Designing, setting up, and the continued handling of an outsourcing strategy involves a little elbow grease. Quite often, the rewards won’t be achieved instantaneously, and from time to time, the financial savings won’t be as sizeable as projected.

Consultants in the emergent niche of offshore call center outsourcing will tell you that firms often fall into similar pitfalls while arranging, completing, and sustaining an offshoring approach.

1. Underestimating Intricacies

Many corporations will not invest an adequate amount in the continuing administration and supervision of the relationship and take too lightly the time, cash flow, and people it normally requires to properly supervise overseas activities. The financial savings won’t be as lucrative, but businesses should make an investment in overseeing the relationship for the long haul. This includes creating a dedicated staff of individuals, on both sides, to certify compliance and conformance to pre-determined assistance standards.

2. Miscalculating Cost Reductions

Employment and various other rates are less in countries such as the Philippines, but corporations need to give some thought to inflation. Wages in international countries are moving up, and quickly.

3. Selecting a Nation First

Before deciding on a country or agency, first pinpoint the cost of performing your business model processes and exactly what your desired goals may be. If your services and costs are currently affordable, it probably won’t seem sensible to contract out. Prior to making a final decision, review the skills of every potential collaborator, taking into account distance, rates, national and speech boundaries, communications models, and taxation.

4. Gauging Call Centers

Price tag is often a consideration but you should not make it your prime means of valuation. When looking at a offer ask yourself if it handles your explicit specifications and precisely how the call center will tackle them. A specialized plan will run-down precisely how your objectives will be met.

The offshore call center market has evolved over the last ten years. Today, multitudes of companies in countries like the US and United Kingdom rely on business process outsourcing and customer service operations to handle basic functions.

Some of the fastest growing capabilities of offshore call centers is customer service and outbound telemarketing. Additionally, call center outsourcing is attracting the attention of many corporate executives as a way to reduce costs of business processes such as customer care, billing, appointment setting, data entry, and various other functions that allow them to focus on core competencies.

At the same time, call centers in developing countries are becoming increasingly adept at handling higher-end back office functionality such as financial services and accounting. The size and quantity of offshore providers is also growing, driving down and maintaining low prices.

Call center services can generally be broken down into two categories – inbound and outbound.

Inbound call center services include:

• Customer Service
• Direct Response Order Taking
• Overflow call handling
• Help Desk
• Technical Support
• Answering Services

Outbound services often include:

• Telemarketing
• Appointment Setting
• Lead Generation
• Polling / Surveys

Business process outsourcing services can reduce the cost of operations, infrastructure and investment. By outsourcing to an offshore call center, First-World organizations can increase profitability by freeing up resources to focus on the core business of the organization.

Why is outsourcing productive? What benefits exist for your corporation to do so?

By outsourcing to an overseas call center, you do not have to find premises, purchase work stations, or manage a team of workers. There’s no need to pay for heat, air conditioning, internet, and phone service. The firm you choose will already have these frustrating tasks and charges under control. The will simply focus on the task at hand, and allowing you to focus on maximizing productivity.

Be Prepared

An appropriate strategy begins with developing a crystal clear appointment setting process. Up front preparation will set your campaign on the right track. Understand and be clear about what exactly it is you are trying to accomplish. For example, define decision makers or people with whom you’ll accept an appointment. Establish daily and weekly appointment goals, as well as the nature of data you wish to collect from prospects.

Your telemarketing approach should depend on what actually transpires during your appointments. Your script and questioning should address your agenda head-on. Foreshadowing what you plan to discuss during the meeting will help you get the most our of your appointments when they actually take place. After all, the point of your b2b campaign is not the appointments themselves, but the sales you hope to achieve from them. If honesty decreases the number of appointments you set, you’re better off anyway, because the prospect would probably have been unlikely to become a buyer in the first place.

Appointments are necessary to success – but remember, they are only a means to an end, not the ultimate goal. Your goals for types of meetings is equally as important as your goal for daily appointments. If your prospects think that they are only getting together for lunch, you could end up wasting your valuable time. The key to successful b2b appointment setting is to schedule meetings or conferences with decision makers who are actually interested in becoming customers.

In conclusion, quality is more important than quantity. Don’t be afraid to develop a script that asks tough questions. Be honest, straightforward, and informative. You might find that meetings become more valuable, your free time more abundant, and client acquisition easier.

However, virtual assistants do more than simply take messages.  Virtual employees will reply to customers, answer their questions, and resolve their issues, all the while giving customers the impression that they are speaking with someone locally.  Additional duties can include data entry, live chat support, social media management, as well as telemarketing and appointment setting.

Effective time management is essential for small businesses looking to get an edge on competitors.  As a small business owner or an executive specialist, you cannot try to do everything. Many company owners have been prosperous because they have realized that they must leverage their time and energy better by outsourcing.

Your success as an entrepreneur also depends on your ability to effectively manage expenses.  A Filipino virtual assistant can be a necessary component of your office team that you require, but would otherwise be too expensive to enlist on a full time basis.  Virtual assistant outsourcing services make it easy for your worker to work from a remote setting in the Philippines, and there are no overhead fees accompanying their services.

There is good reason that the Philippines is a tremendously popular location for call center outsourcing.  Call centers in the Philippines implement strict requirements for aspiring virtual assistants.  Most call centers provide remote monitoring that will allow you to observe your VA – if you choose.  Observation and communication can make your virtual employee seem like she is in a cubicle around the corner – not on the other side of the world.

The Philippine education system is affordable, of high quality, and a large portion of the population has access to this educational system.  Filipino virtual assistants are all proficient in both spoken and written English.

Additionally, the majority of of the commercial workforce is experienced. Since many other jobs may pay lower wages than those at call centers, the best employees typically work for outsourcing companies.

Telemarketing outsourcing can be an critical piece an accountant’s marketing approach if used correctly.  By effectively outsourcing your appointment setting you can assure that every meeting set is with a consumer who is truly interested in accounting services, and fits the client profile you are looking for.

Whether your goal is B2B or B2C appointments, outsourcing can help you increase face-to-face sales time, as well as time spent handling traditional CPA services such as payroll and bookkeeping.

By increasing the amount of time your practice becomes available to prospects over the phone, consumers will have considerably more opportunity to ask questions, and your staff will have more time for accounting related activities. The additional clients you secure can help offset the price of outsourcing your appointment setting.

Additionally, telemarketing can help your practice both expand and diversify.  For instance, accountants specializing in business audit services, can reach out to individuals in need of gift and estate planning.  A firm specializing in payroll assistance can target companies searching for review and compilation services, etc.

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Executing a successful accounting telemarketing campaign:

1. Consider monitoring call recordings to assess the quality of the calls.

2. Use CRM software or Google Docs to properly track your campaign.  If you are currently considering accounting management and billing software, check to see if it supports telemarketing and appointment setting campaigns for multiple users.

3. If you are staffing multiple telemarketers, consider utilizing an automated dialer.  Autodialers dials a new number as soon as the previous call ends, and can increase outbound call volume.

4. Take the time to personally train your appointment setters to understand the nuances of your practice.

5. Keep up to date with how other accountants use outbound telemarketing to grow their business. Read industry and trade publications, as well as the web to uncover tips and ideas for scripting and client targeting.

6. Study and understand the metrics surrounding your telemarketing campaign. This can include total number of dials, connect rate, and connection to conversion ratio.

The bad news: Reaching these customers through telemarketing is a time intensive operation. Getting good leads and setting appointments with cold leads is definitely an exhausting and grueling exercise to salespeople and small businesses.

The good news: You can easily engage a call center to perform a lot of of the grunt work. An outsourced call center service can easily be contracted to deliver personalized outbound phone calls to clients who have been screened to guarantee that they conform to your particular qualifiers. In addition, the outbound call center service can collect advance details, market your organization, and ensure that the consumer is eager to hear more before transferring the contact to you.

Live Transfers

You can provide the call center with a list of prospects such as current property owners, or a list that contains contact info for first time home buyer prospects. Telemarketers can quickly and easily call through the list, and transfer the calls with interested parties directly to you. You can opt for the pre-qualifed lead to be transferred to your office, cell phone, or any other number you choose to complete the application process.

Telemarketed Leads

Many mortgage brokers and loan officers would rather handle outbound calls than to receive inbound call transfers. In this case, the telemarketer can enter the lead into your CRM or spreadsheet, and email the leads to you as they come in.

Either way, mortgage telemarketing can give you the best of both worlds. You can ensure that your time is spent talking to qualified and verified prospects who are serious about buying.  And, live call center representatives are greeting and speaking to prospects.

The shift is on.  Last year, the Philippines overtook India as the global leader in call center outsourcing.  The trend is expected to continue as the Philippines offers educated, experienced, and US-friendly virtual agents.  While most Americans immediately think of Manila when the topic of the Philippines arises, numerous other cities have become international outsourcing hubs.  Here are the top 10:

1.  Manila

Manila is the most densely populated city in the World.  Transportation is easy and affordable, as the Ninoy Aquino International Airport can be reached directly from around the world.  Universities in Manila include the University of Santo Thomas, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and the national, University of the Philippines Manila.

2.  Cebu

Cebu has become a popular location for companies opening call centers, foreign investment, and tourism.  Cebu City’s attractive geographic location has helped it develop a major call center, commercial shipping, and educational system. Government incentives have also played a significant role in luring foreign capital and boosting growth.  The Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry has its sights on helping Cebu become a top software and technology hub in the region.

3.  Quezon City

Quezon City is technically considered the largest city in the Philippines, but it is part of the metropolitan Manila area.  Home to the reputable University of Philippines Diliman, as well as Ateneo de Manila University, the city is rife with talented workers.

4.  Bacolod

Bacolod is attractive to call centers due to the low operating costs involved, educated populous, and friendly atmosphere.  After all, it is considered the “City of Smiles”.

5.  Davao

Located on the southern island of Mindanao, Davao has become a central location for enterprise, investment, and tourism.  Davao is a good destination for data entry outsourcing and virtual assistant services as the city boasts one of the highest literacy rates in the Philippines, at 98.5%.

6.  Iloilo

Iloilo is located in the Western Visayas and in close range to Bacolod and the beautiful island resort of Boracay.  Often overlooked as a call center locale, Iloilo shares many of the advantages of low operating costs and friendly residents with Bacolod.

7.  Dumaguete

Dumaguete can be an intriguing location for companies looking to establish call center operations.  Perhaps the greatest advantage to selecting Dumaguete is the city’s educational system.  Dumaguete is home to the reputable Silliman University, which attracts students from throughout the Visayas and beyond.

8.  Alabang

Alabang is a business-first city.  In fact, Alabang came into existence only after the Ayala Corporation entered into a joint venture real estate development deal with the Madrigal family.  Commercial sites such as the Alabang Commercial Center have sprung up with attracting business from the surrounding areas.

9.  Makati