Do you use call centers for a sales?

Discussions
#1

Hi there,

I’m a freelance web designer/web developer and I’m making websites and e-commerce solutions for small businesses. I’m not that of a phone sales guy, so I thought about hiring a call center to make call the initial round of prospects.

Does anyone use call centers for calling potential clients? Does anyone have experience with that and how well it works?

#2

No.
But, I’ve investigated a services that calls a specific demongraphic, validates they are a good prospect then schedules a call back. It was crazy expensive (in the thousands for setup)

Have you ever gotten a cold-call for something you actually WANTED?

I think one of the most important aspects of Sales is QUALIFYING the LEADS. A cold calling call center can’t do that. And the services that DO vet the prospect are crazy expensive in my experience (and require setup fees, etc.)

How do your potential clients find a developer/designer?

How about if you offered a free “site review” ?
You spend 10 minutes and point out 2 or 3 obvious issues with their site. This has several benefits:

  1. It’s a warm-up introduction.
  2. It’s “pull” marketing rather than “push” (you’re putting out an offer that THEY respond to)
  3. It’s appealing to exactly your demographic: site owners who think their site could be better.
    Think about how many awful sites there are out there that are awful b/c the owner thinks it’s good enough.
  4. You Establish credibility.
  5. You differentiate yourself from any old guy who can say “I’m a web developer”
  6. YOU get to VET them. You may find that they would be a lousy client (demanding, cheap, etc.)
  7. You establish trust before trying to sell them anything.
4 Likes
#3

Thanks so much Clay. This kind of feedback is really awesome. I will go for this plan, because as you said: there are a lot of companies out there with shitty websites.

Thanks :slight_smile:

#4

BTW, is your focus:

  1. New sites
  2. Site REDO (where they have a site, but you’ll start all over)
  3. “Facelift” (where you just modify what’s there.

I HIGHLY recommend having some before/ after pictures of sites.
If you also had STATS (conversion stats) that would help with your more analytical customers.

If you can, I’d position yourself not as “web developer” but as “I make your Site Sell”.

-Clay

2 Likes
#5

Once I see a provider that actually sent companies how their site looks like on a mobile, a screenshot or emulator in where people could actually see how shitty their website are.

I would choose a niche and have a VA search for sites within that niche that hasn’t been updated in a while and reach out to them -> Sell the problem!

3 Likes
#6

Thank you! That’s a great idea.

#7

Just a bit of warning: Be very careful here.

I run a moderately successful site, and I used to get 10-15 emails a week offering to do a “free” analysis of my website. They would help me fix my SEO, reach top of Google, make sure I worked on mobile devices! Just call them on Skype!

The thing was, these weren’t automated spam messages. They were sent using my contact form. Someone was sitting there, filling out spammy forms on hundreds of websites. The problem went away when I installed Jetpack, used their contact form which combines with Akismet.

They go straight to my spam folder.

A few things about these spammy emails:

  1. They were all very generic. It was sure they hadn’t really looked at my website. Like many warned me my site was not optimised for mobile, when I know for a fact it is. They were just copy pasting the same lines to everyone.

  2. They offered miracles. Top of Google! SEO! Magic! Now, I know for a fact that many non-tech types are very impressed by this. Just look at the number of job postings on Elance/whatever it’s called now saying I want you to make my site Number 1 on Google or something similar. But to me, it sounded fake.

  3. They had no idea who I was, or what I did, or if I even was looking for a site redesign.

You can avoid these problems easily by being genuine, but keep in mind: The pool has been peed in, so you will be viewed with suspicion. Just act as honest as possible; better to send 1 really targeted email a day, than 10 generic ones.

1 Like
#8

I tried a call center (cold-calling company). They called very specific people in my niche. They seemed pretty legit (they cold-called me and their pitch and manner was good enough I wanted to give them a try). $6K and many months later they had setup exactly two phone calls for us to follow up on (really three, but the third guy didn’t want to talk to us). Got nothing out of it.

So definitely not a good investment. Could have had MANY clicks with that $6K.

What’s irritating and enlightening is they keep calling me asking if I’d like to try their service, without apparently remembering our history.

2 Likes
#9

LOL!

#10

The thing was, these weren’t automated spam messages. They were sent using my contact form. Someone was sitting there, filling out spammy forms on hundreds of websites

This is off the thread topic, but: these were automated spam messages. The web is infested with bots whose job is to fill out contact forms on every site they can find. Especially WordPress sites. So no: they hadn’t actually looked through your site at all :slight_smile: