What outsourced telesales really costs

The short answer

Outsourced telesales means that a telesales agency, an outside company, calls prospects for you to book sales meetings or qualify leads. The agency quotes a price per dialing hour, per booked appointment, or a monthly retainer plus a bonus. The first two pay for something other than what you need, and the third pays for it only in part.

What you need is an accepted meeting: a meeting that takes place and that your sales rep confirms meets the qualification rule you agreed in writing. A booked appointment is only a promise. Some booked appointments never take place (no-shows). Some meetings that do take place do not fit (unfit meetings), and each of those also costs your sales rep time.

So compare agencies on cost per accepted meeting: the monthly bill divided by the accepted meetings. Three things set it:

• What the pricing model pays for: time, bookings or accepted meetings.
• The drop: how many booked appointments end as accepted meetings.
• Who decides: who says that a meeting counts.

In the example month below, the agency with the lowest cost per booked appointment has the highest cost per accepted meeting. Before the first call, write two things into the contract: the qualification rule, and the acceptance step, where your sales rep decides whether a meeting counts.

The example numbers in this guide are invented to show the arithmetic. They are not DRING data, market prices or industry data.

From dials to accepted meetings

The people at the agency who make the calls are the agency staff. They call the prospects on a contact list, the list you agree they will call. Their work moves through five steps, and each step is smaller than the one before. Here is Agency A's month from the example later in this guide (example, not real data).

• Dials: call attempts.
• Conversations: calls where agency staff speak with the right person.
• Booked appointments: meetings placed in your sales rep's calendar.
• Meetings held: booked appointments where the prospect turns up.
• Accepted meetings: meetings held that your sales rep confirms meet the qualification rule.

Two more terms name what falls away between the last three steps:

• No-show: a booked appointment that does not take place.
• Unfit meeting: a meeting held that is not accepted.

The qualification rule is the written list of criteria a meeting must meet to count, agreed before the first call. For example: company size, the prospect's role, a current need and a time frame. After each meeting held, your sales rep checks the meeting against the rule. That check is the acceptance step.

In Agency A's month:

• 400 of 2,400 dials become conversations (1 in 6).
• 32 of 400 conversations end in a booked appointment (8%).
• 24 of 32 booked appointments are held (3 in 4).
• 16 of 24 meetings held are accepted (2 in 3).

So accepted meetings are half of the booked appointments: 16 of 32. An agency usually reports its results as booked appointments. The agency report shows 32 booked appointments; your sales pipeline gets 16 accepted meetings.

The monthly bill is everything the agency charges for the month. Two costs follow from it:

• Cost per booked appointment = monthly bill ÷ booked appointments. This is the number closest to an agency's price list.
• Cost per accepted meeting = monthly bill ÷ accepted meetings. This is the number to compare.

What each pricing model pays for

Agencies that sell B2B telemarketing services quote one of three pricing models, or a mix of them. Each model pays for something different.

An Hourly contract pays for time: every dialing hour is billed, however few accepted meetings the hours bring.

A Per appointment contract pays for the booking. Unless the contract says otherwise, a no-show is billed at the same price as a booking that becomes an accepted meeting.

A Retainer plus bonus contract ties part of the bill to accepted meetings, so the contract must say who decides at the acceptance step.

If an agency offers a mix, such as a lower hourly rate plus a fee per appointment, ask what each part of the bill pays for.

One month, three agencies

Example, not real data. The three agencies are invented for this guide, and their prices are illustrative, not market quotes.

Suppose three agencies work for you in the same month. Each one calls an equal share of the same contact list, with the same qualification rule. Your sales rep decides at the acceptance step for all three, so accepted meetings are counted the same way.

• Agency A, Hourly: €25 per dialing hour for 160 dialing hours, one full-time seat.
• Agency B, Per appointment: €120 per booked appointment, with no base fee. No-shows are billed.
• Agency C, Retainer plus bonus: a €1,500 monthly retainer plus €125 per accepted meeting.

Per booked appointment, Agency B looks cheapest: €120, against €125 for Agency A and for Agency C. Per accepted meeting, it is the most expensive: €480. That is 2.4 times Agency C's €200, and 1.92 times, almost twice, Agency A's €250.

Only 26 of Agency B's 40 booked appointments are held (65%), against 24 of 32 (75%) for Agency A and for Agency C. Of Agency B's 26 meetings held, only 10 are accepted, about 4 in 10.

Agency A and Agency C send the same monthly bill, €4,000. They book the same 32 appointments and hold the same 24 meetings. The difference shows at the acceptance step: Agency A has 16 accepted meetings of 24 held (2 in 3), and Agency C has 20 of 24 (5 in 6).

Agency C's bonus is paid only on accepted meetings, so that part of its bill pays for the same thing you need. One month of invented numbers does not prove that the pricing model made the difference. It shows which number to watch.

Each unfit meeting also takes your sales rep away from selling. Suppose one meeting held takes 45 minutes, including preparation. Then unfit meetings cost your sales rep 6 hours a month with Agency A (8 × 45 minutes) and 12 hours with Agency B (16 × 45 minutes). With Agency C, they cost 3 hours (4 × 45 minutes). No-shows cost preparation time too, but this example leaves them out.

Now change one line in Agency B's contract. If Agency B billed only meetings held instead of booked appointments, its bill would be 26 × €120 = €3,120. Its cost per accepted meeting would be €3,120 ÷ 10 = €312.

That is still above Agency A (€250) and Agency C (€200), because Agency B has only 10 accepted meetings. This is a "what if the contract changes" comparison, not a price for any provider.

Twelve questions for a telesales agency

If you are comparing several telesales companies, send each one the same questions in writing. Ask for numbers where you can, and put the answers side by side.

Price

1. What is the pricing unit, and what exactly counts as one? A dialing hour, a booked appointment, a lead, or a retainer plus bonus. For a dialing hour, ask whether breaks, training and time between calls are included.
2. Do we pay for a no-show, and for an unfit meeting? In the example month, Agency B bills 14 no-shows: 40 booked appointments, 26 meetings held. That is €1,680 of its €4,800 bill.
3. Which extras are charged? Setup, contact list data, script changes, CRM entry and reporting. Get a price for each one and add it to the monthly bill.
4. What is the minimum term, and the notice period? A meeting booked late in a month may be held in the next one, so allow time to count accepted meetings before you decide.

Quality

5. Can we write the qualification rule into the contract, and does our sales rep decide whether a meeting is accepted? Also agree how soon after each meeting held your sales rep decides, and what happens when the agency disagrees.
6. Who supplies the contact list, and who pays for wrong numbers and contacts who left the company? With Hourly pricing, a poor contact list uses up paid dialing hours before agency staff reach anyone.
7. For campaigns like ours, what ranges of dials, conversations, booked appointments, meetings held and accepted meetings did you see? Ask for ranges from past campaigns, not a promise for yours.
8. Can we listen to call recordings, where the prospect agreed to recording, and read the call notes? Recordings show how agency staff present your company.

Control

9. Do we get a record of every call in our own CRM, with the outcome, the reason and the next step, not only a monthly summary? With a record of every call, you can count your own funnel instead of reading the agency report.
10. How do you handle opt-outs, calling hours and do-not-call lists in each country you call? This guide is not legal advice. Get the answer in writing.
11. Who are the agency staff on our campaign, which languages and markets do they call, and how are they trained on our product? These are the people your prospects will hear.
12. How fast does a change to the script or the qualification rule reach the calls? Until the change is live, agency staff keep booking meetings by the old rule.

When an agency is a good fit

Outsourcing telemarketing can make sense for cold outbound calls into a new market or language where you have no team yet. You get dialing hours and language skills before you hire your own team.

It is a weak fit for leads who already contacted you or bought from you: a form on your website, a quote request, a past customer. There, speed and follow-up matter more than an outside team's dialing hours. Our guides to quote follow-up and reactivating dormant leads cover those calls.

The answer does not have to be the same for every kind of call. Our guide to choosing between an AI agent, outsourcing and an in-house team scores each call type on its own.

Where DRING fits

DRING is not a telesales agency, and it does not supply human staff. It runs AI agents that call your own lists. In outbound sales campaigns, they call new leads as the form lands, and they qualify, reactivate and follow up on CRM lists and dormant leads.

The qualification rule you would write into an agency contract can become the questions the agent asks and the fields after-call analysis returns for every call. For example, each criterion of the rule can be its own field. The fields come back through the API, your CRM, the dashboard and reports, so every call has a recorded outcome.

Your sales rep still decides at the acceptance step after each meeting held. When that is recorded in the same CRM, you can measure cost per accepted meeting from your own records instead of an agency report.

Reach places the calls inside the calling windows you set, retries by outcome and stops at the attempt caps you choose. Ready buyers go to your sales rep with the notes already in the CRM. HubSpot is the reference CRM implementation. Other mainstream CRMs, for example Salesforce, follow the same logic, with the exact objects and fields confirmed during onboarding.

In DRING outbound campaigns across three unrelated sectors, about one in ten reached conversations qualifies as a lead. That is a lead qualified on the call, before any meeting takes place. Your own share depends on your list and your qualification rule.

Every DRING agent runs 1,000 to 10,000 simulated conversations, built for your company, before the first real call.

If you are comparing agencies, or already pay one, request a callback. Have last month's agency report ready, along with the accepted meetings your sales rep counted, so the call can start from your own numbers.