Telemarketing Companies in South Africa
Telemarketing can be a powerful way to increase revenue for your business and when Australian businesses use telemarketing companies in South Africa, it can be a great way to save on your telemarketing campaigns, while still achieving comparable results from running the same telemarketing campaigns in Australia.
When you engage telemarketing companies in the South Africa, just like in Australia, it usually refers to calling customers via the telephone to introduce a product or service with the intention of making a sale.
Typically, telemarketing involves contacting new prospects or former or current customers to whom you would like to sell a product or service.
To obtain a list of prospective customers for telemarketing, search specialist list suppliers. But telemarketing can also be a great way to re-engage with old or former customers with a special offer to entice them back, or an upselling campaign to generate more revenue.
The most common forms of telemarketing are:
- B2C - Business to Consumer (your business selling products or services directly to consumers)
- B2B - Business to Business (your business selling products or services to other businesses)
Types of Telemarketing from South Africa
Call centre telemarketing is normally defined using three key terms:
- Cold Calling - Cold calling is when you don't have any prior relationship with the customers.
- Warm Calling - They may have been a previous or existing customer, so there will be some awareness of your brand when the call centre agent makes contact.
- Hot Calling - This is best defined as when a customer has specifically requested contact with the intent of learning more about the product or service to purchase.
Is Telemarketing right for your Australian business?
There is no question that telemarketing can produce results, but it's also not easy with a range of factors that can contribute to a successful telemarketing campaign, including the quality of the customer data, the skill of the agent, the perceived value of the product or service.
Using specialist call centre telemarketing companies in South Africa can help improve the odds of your telemarketing campaign being a success.
Just a word of caution though - many businesses seeking telemarketing solutions are looking for a 'commission-only' model where the telemarketing provider will only be paid on sales.
Unfortunately, this is a very high-risk strategy for the telemarketing business. Most telemarketing companies will require a trial period on a fixed-price model/hourly rate to determine the expected conversion rates before agreeing to the commission-only models.
Tips for using Telemarketing Companies in South Africa
If you are going to consider telemarketing in South Africa, some key points you may want to consider:
- Data is expensive, so you need to make the most of it.
- There are also different quality levels of data - ringing random phone numbers will provide a far lower conversion rate than a highly-targeted telemarketing list.
- Whilst offshore call centre labour is cheaper in South Africa, the telemarketing conversion rate will ultimately determine the best result. As a general rule, onshore (i.e. from Australia) produces better results; however, given the high cost of labour, it's often prohibitive. Being cheaper, enables you to try with a lot less financial risk.
- Where possible, use BPOs in South Africa that have experience dialling into Australia and understand our local rules and regulations.
- Location matters! If you're going to be visiting your call centre outsourcing/telemarketing company in South Africa, the location can be an important consideration to make the commute a lot easier. Cape Town and Johannesburg are home to the majority of the call centres.
- Telemarketing doesn't always provide a good return on investment, regardless of the location from which the calls are made. As a general rule, if the product you are selling is low in value and has a limited profit margin, it's harder to achieve an ROI.
- There is no industry average on conversion rates.
How much does Telemarketing from South Africa cost?
An Australian telemarketing company will invoice around $450 - $600 per agent per day at a minimum, assuming you’re working with an hourly rate model.
Outsourcing to South Africa is certainly cheaper than in Australia, so you can expect to pay around $15 to $20 AUD per hour per agent per day if they have experience in outbound sales calls/telemarketing (and even less for less experience).
If you were looking at a commission-only model, they would seek a lot more money for an equivalent hourly rate (as it’s a higher risk). There are many ways telemarketing companies charge for their services, including:
- Straight hourly rate
- Lower hourly rate with a higher commission
- Higher hourly rate with a small commission
- Commission only
- On-costs can include call costs, provision of data, script development, supervision, agent training, compliance checks, quality checks, etc.
What is the typical conversion rate for telemarketing?
Whether your telemarketing is conducted from Australia, New Zealand or the Philippines, ultimately, the conversion rates typically come down to five things:
- The value proposition of the product or service (the best telemarketing company in the world can't sell water at $100 per litre).
- The skill of the call centre agent in both communication and sales skills.
- The script (or parameters the telemarketing agent has to work within).
- The efficiency of the technology (dialler, CRM tools, etc).
- The quality of the telemarketing list data.
As a rule, reasonable telemarketing conversion rates from South Africa typically vary between 2% and 6%.
Search Telemarketing Companies in South Africa
Below is a list of all the telemarketing companies in South Africa, so reach out directly and have a conversation!
You may also want to use the filters below to search for other specialist outsourcing functions in different countries or in the similar categories listed below.
