Want More Sales?  Check Your Email

By Peter DeHaan

December 3, 2008

If it's your job to obtain clients for your call center, I have a secret technique to increase your closing ratio and success rate: check your email.  Seriously.  I suspect that there's a better than even chance that you are missing leads, spurning prospects, and losing sales - all because of email.  If you don't believe me, I have proof.

On the Connections Magazine website, I list teleservice companies (outsourcing call centers).  There is an expanded version of the same information on the Find A Teleservice Agency website.  All the data listed has been directly submitted by the call center themselves, be it the owners, marketing managers, or sales professionals.  [Add your call center.]  The one thing they have in common is that they are all eager to receive leads and make sales.  Once the information is submitted, I review it, verify that the information is relevant, and then post it on both sites. 

The information stays listed until one of three things occurs: 1) the call center who submitted it asks for it to be removed (which happens infrequently - usually when they exit the industry), 2) the call center's website stops working for more than a month, or 3) the contact person doesn't respond to my annual email requests to review, verify, and confirm their listing.

I recently sent out the annual verification messages.  The lack of response - and the slowness of response - was appalling.  Emailing sales contacts at 188 call centers, only 48 (25%) responded to my first email message, while 21 (11%) of the addresses generated a failure notice.  The majority of those responding did so the first day, but many trickled in over the next week.

I sent a second email message to the remaining 119 non-responders.  This time 16 (13%) responded, with 4 (3%) generating a "delayed" message, eventually "giving up."  One third of the responders did so within one day, with the rest taking up to five days.  A third and final email was sent out to the remaining 103 call centers.  This time only 5 (5%) responded, with the same 4 email addresses again being "delayed."

You may be wondering if I am partially to blame for the poor response.  First, recall that the people submitted their information because they wanted to be contacted.  Next, each email that I sent was personalized.  It included the contact's name in the subject line.  The message greeted them by name and included their call center name.  Thirdly, the message complied with CAN-SPAM and followed email best-practices, avoiding wording that might flag it as spam.  Lastly, I recently had an audit of my emailing practices and outcomes, passing admirably.  So I am reluctant to shoulder any of the blame.

Someone might assert that sales inquiries take precedence over my verification email, but does this somehow justify not responding?  That is unacceptable.  Remember, if my verification request is ignored, they lose their listing and all subsequent inquires from that lasting.

In summary, only 37% responded at all; 13% had non-working email addresses ("failures" or "delayed"); an entire 50% were seemingly received but ignored.  Furthermore, of those responding, only about half did so on the same business day.

If your call center marketing strategy and sales staff relies on email inquiries for lead generation, prospecting, and sales, then these are indeed sobering numbers.