We have learned that there are many ways to “skin this cat.”  A method that works for one company may not be right for another.  That’s why CSG offers services covering all the different ways telephone sales can be effective:

CSG is well known for improving sales in our client’s call centers – we have been doing it since our founding in 1993.  CSG consultants are experts at observing, diagnosing and improving results in client call centers. Read on to learn how CSG works to improve telephone sales for other scenarios.

To facilitate the growth of these programs and to maintain the tight management that has always made us successful, we created a 35-seat operation in our Denver office and have already launched half a dozen new programs in 2006.

Our new sales center also allows us to provide deep, hands-on assistance from highly experienced call center managers and consultants.  CSG provides the salespersons, supervisor, facilities, computers, consulting and programming to make these campaigns work.  Our Denver operation is best suited for small, B2B, high value products or services.  Clients use us to prove the viability of telemarketing as a sales channel, and sometimes to run small to medium campaigns that benefit from continued, intense management.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of prospective customers look for high value products on the Internet.  Many of them leave contact information, but only few are converted into sales.  The problem is many never receive anything back, or if they do, it is just an email, or it’s too late and they have lost interest.

Paradoxically, this is more of a problem with high value sales that require skilled salespeople.  Such skilled salespeople are seldom available to make prompt call backs to prospects – they are busy with the multiple contacts required to close one of their previous opportunities.  Also, it is very difficult to get skilled salespeople to pound the phones on lead lists where most dials result in non-contacts.

For example, a large CSG client that offers financial services to its customers retained CSG to address the problem of these lost opportunities.  Working together, CSG tripled the contact rate with prospective customers.  The key was having a lower-skilled, lower cost agent making the initial call to the prospect

within a few minutes of the web form submission.  Once the third party had the prospect on the phone, they asked a few, brief qualifying questions, and transferred qualified, live leads to the high-value closers at our client’s site.

The program has proven to be such a success that it has been expanded, continued for over 18 months, and is now fundamental to their sales strategy.  CSG developed the script, list, testing plan, and offers that led to high transfer and conversion rates.  CSG also located the vendor, negotiated the contract, developed and conducted the agent training, and then managed the program on a day-to-day basis.

After the program was stable and successful, CSG was asked to concentrate on training internal resources to take over daily management.  This engagement typifies our approach to consulting:  we do whatever the client needs that they cannot do or haven’t the time to do themselves.  Once they can go it alone, we work ourselves right out of a job!

CSG pioneered telemarketing Internet advertising for its clients in the very early days when most business owners did not know what the Internet was.  In 1998, CSG created and managed a program for one of the largest yellow page companies in the US and generated nearly 20,000 paying advertisers.  At the time, this program had more paid advertisers than any other in the world and CSG continues to lead in this highly competitive field. 

The key to growing the program quickly was outsourcing the sales work to an established 3rd party telemarketing vendor.  CSG has managed dozens of such vendors on behalf of our clients over the years.

Back in 1998, the challenge was that few prospects knew much about the Internet, and many of those that did thought that it should be free.  Today, the challenges are more that all prospective buyers are solicited dozens of times every year, and they have already made up their mind about Internet advertising.

A Similar Challenge Moved Into Our Call Center

Recently, another major Directory approached CSG with the challenge of duplicating its early success for this industry. 

time and learning curves, and a process that can be monitored, managed, and continuously improved.
  
Our overall success in telemarketing sales is not magic, even though our typical result of quadrupling previous performance can seem like it to our clients!  The huge performance delta stems from two causes:

		We are generally better at each of the seven factors of success.
		We don’t fail outright at any of the seven, so no one factor ever kills overall performance.

Please call us to see how we can create or improve a telemarketing program for your company.