the goose

I should really read the rest of the Four Hour Work Week. Since getting about mid way through I was so filled with enthusiasm that I pretty much threw everything else aside and started re-organising my life. Chief motivation for this was my darling belle. Me being a bit old and world-weary and her been a young slip of a thing – there had always been a certain tension in our relationship. She was keen to see the world and I was more interested in building a ‘business’.

It wasn’t until I read the 4HWW that I realised that I was wrong and she was right. I didn’t really want to hire anyone, do tax returns, network and sell my time for the rest of my life. What I wanted instead was to lead as interesting and rewarding an experience as possible. Something Tim Ferris seems to personify.

I digress.

Key to Tim’s world view is that it is crazy to work forty odd years of your life in the hope that you will be around to enjoy 5 – 10 years of useful retirement. ‘Useful’ in this case refers to a retirement where you don’t need 3 nurses to help you keep the colostomy bag fresh.

Instead he posits that you should practice your retirement. That is what we are about to do. Last year we spent 3 months in South Africa largely subsidised by the generosity of Priscilla’s parents in putting us up. As the recession looms, rather than take refuge in my usual bolt hole (whoaring myself as a java contractor) we have identified a year long ‘retirement’.

Most retirees have to make do with less money. We are no exception. We haven’t built up the online businesses to afford the same level of lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to in Dublin. Instead we started looking around for places where we could survive (while not giving up our red wine and steak habit) on less. That place turned out to be Argentina- or at least we hope it will.

There is a lot of uncertainty about this whole experiement.

1. Will our existing customers abandon us now that we’re living it up in Buenos Aires?
2. Has our modest success been as automated as we think it has?
3. Will it turn out to be more expensive than projected?

These are all concerns. We are however willing to give it a go. Our plan is to go for a year.

Telesales is a tricky subject.  It has an awful reputation.  If you haven’t been called by an eircom representative at 10 at night in an attempt to woo you back  – you will hear from one soon.  It does however – work.  Irrespective of whether or not you think people should be allowed to solicit for work over the phone – there are a couple of occasions when you should at least consider it.  When …

• Your market doesn’t live online:  Despite what you might read – the vast majority of businesses and consumers are not online.  While the kids might have badgered Mum into installing a broadband connection, most Irish people don’t spend any meaningful time online.  You can blog, tweet and even email newsletter you little heart out and you still won’t reach these guys.  Direct mail, TV and radio may/may not work – but telesales definitly does.
• You work in a niche: Piehole serves a total Irish market of about 600 people.  That means that we can offer a laser focused offering.  It also means that we can’t afford to leave much on the table.  We have to get as much of the market as possible.  While giving away free accounts might yield a 1% conversion rate, our email marketing efforts gives us about a 2% return – pretty much anything else we try is outstripped by the 7 – 10% we expect from a telesales campaign.  In a market of 600 – we just can’t afford not to use the most effective marketing tools available.  If you are in a small market – you might not be able to either.
• You have a simple proposition: In Ireland, the traditional role of telesales has mostly been for appointment setting.  This means that people hit the phones in the hopes of getting an appointment with a MD in order to sell a big ticket item such as a group insurance scheme or consultancy services.  In our case we have a simple value proposition: “we’ll help you find voiceover work”.  You don’t need to be web-savvy to understand that.  In part this is why it is so important to deploy non-web based services.
• You can demonstrate credibility easily:  You need some way to demonstrate credibility.  In Ireland we are reasonably well known but in the UK we are not (yet).  To get around this we published a book including tips on getting more voiceover work.  The book is fairly slim but packed some of useful tips on finding work and what you can expect to be paid for that work.  Perhaps an even more impressive demonstration of credability would be to ring people up offering them work that you had already found.  I’ve seen this in action recently and it is something I’m keen to mimic.

Having decided how that it is right for you – here is how we go about running a campaign.

1. Allocate a budget (including hours, printing / postage costs etc) to your campaign.  We typically work on a 32 hour campaign.  We might run it over a three week period.
2. Set a sales target.  As a rule of thumb a 1 in 10 hit rate is one to work with.  About one in every ten people you call should sign up.  If it is more than this – look at your offer again.
3. Decide on a tactic.  We try different approaches with different campaigns.  We might ring them up to offer them a free copy of our e-book or an actual physical copy.
4. Write a script:  The script will no doubt go by the wayside but it acts as a good touchpoint.  It also helps with the post match analysis.  It is very hard to decide what worked and what did not if each call is unique.  Writing and following a script helps you to identify phrases that help you to get your point across best.  It also helps in scaling your effort to the rest of the team.  In our case these scripts normally boil down to ’standard answers’ to common questions such as ‘does your website work’ or ‘how much does it cost to join?’.  Key answers like these can make all the difference to your RoI.
5. Fill your campaign with leads.  How you get the leads is up to you.  Ideally the warmer the better.  We use our email newsletter, free downloads and contact forms to solicit contact information.  Remember to use collected contact information in a manner consistent with that lead’s expectation.  If someone gave you a number so that you could call them – don’t start sending them text messages – or vice-versa.  We would get through about 150 leads in a campaign.
6. We work on a 3 call basis.  The first call is to demonstrate value in some way – either by posting out the book or some other offer, the second is primarily aimed at closing once the book has been received and a third is to tie up lose ends such as callbacks and collecting payment details.  We make a point of trying to close on each call if there are the right buying signals.  Buying signals include someone asking the price or asking about terms.
7. Make the calls:  This is the hardest part!  Just get your head down.  The good news is that the vast majority of people are happy to take your call so long as you have something that interests them.

So there you have it.  How we run our telesales.  We don’t actually do a lot of it.  We are somewhat limited by the number of leads we can generate.  It is however an excellent way to driving sales especially if you are looking to hit a month end target.