While the new breed of telemarketing consultant may not answer your phones, they can do just about everything else. These small fish in the huge telemarketing sea will consult on whether companies shouldhandle calls in-house or outsource them, supervise the construction of in-house call centers or help companies that already have call centers improve the way they function.

Most high-level telemarketing professionals work for the large service bureaus or run their own call centers. But the small group of telemarketing consultants across the country can help companies that are unprepared to run a telemarketing operation, as well as companies that are in the telemarketing business alone.

“The biggest reason for failure is companies don’t have the internal resources to build or manage the process,” says Stephen Riddell, a managing partner of Global Performance Corp., a Spring, TX, consulting firm. “They think it’s as simple as buying a computer and getting a phone, but it’s much more sophisticated than that.”

Before launching a telemarketing operation, a company first has to decide whether to do it in-house or outsource or perhaps combine the two. A recent survey by DGY Associates, an Irving, TX, consulting firm, found that the overwhelming majority of companies have internal call centers, but those that outsource are more successful. The company surveyed Fortune 1000 companies and found that 67 percent answer all calls in-house, 1.3 percent outsource all calls and the rest do both. In measuring the success of their telemarketing operations, DGY Associates looked at changes in the companies’ stock prices. The biggest increases were by companies that outsourced or combined in-house and outsourcing. “Companies who have completely outsourced their call center functions have realized a greater 10-year average return to investors, a higher average 10-year annual growth rate and a larger percentage change in earnings per share,” DGY Associates reports.

While most companies handle calls in-house, the number that outsource is growing at a rate of 50 percent per year, according to Russell Young, chairman/CEO of the Chrysalis Group, an Irving, TX, consulting firm. Young says that when telemarketing isn’t a core business, companies should outsource. “If it’s not part of the profit-producing picture, it’s part of the cost-producing picture,” Young says. “If it’s done in-house, it takes too much time away from all levels of management who focus on something that doesn’t generate the bottom line. But if they outsource, they get the benefits without having to spend lots of money and management time and energy.”

John Calk, vice president of marketing of APAC Teleservices in Chicago, which recently merged with ITI Marketing to form the largest service bureau in the country, agrees that outsourcing is best because “there’s no huge up-front capital investment.” Estimates of the cost of building an in-house call center range from $1.5 million to $5 million, depending on the location and the number of seats.

Such large service bureaus as APAC are actually willing to build independent call centers for their clients, if they commit to a three- to five-year contract. Large clients can have the benefit of their own call center while letting telemarketing professionals from the service bureau run it.

Despite the benefits of outsourcing, most companies will continue to use in-house call centers, creating a wealth of opportunity for consultants and companies that use them. Consultants do everything from planning and building call centers for their clients to helping them run in-house centers that already exist.

Riddell, who has set up in-house call centers for five major corporations, including Compaq, Zenith Data Systems and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Virginia and Oklahoma, says the benefit of an in-house call center is that companies have “complete control over the process. But the downside is they don’t run them very well.” Riddell helps by planning them effectively from the start.

Riddell and Dean Manuto, president of Teligent Training & Consulting, Drexel Hill, PA, have worked together on some call center jobs. They recommend that companies first build their own call centers by establishing a business plan and writing a request for proposal (RFP). The business plan is a critical analysis of cost and revenue to determine the return on investment the company seeks. The RFP goes further, with details on the call volume the company wants to achieve, the technology and staff needed to do the job, the vendors who will supply the hardware and software and the time frame for building the center. Riddell says it takes only 90 days to set up a call center, once the facility is secured.

Building the facility is of course a major undertaking. For starters, companies must choose the site. While many companies place calls from their headquarters, large call centers are often stand-alone operations in locations far from company headquarters. “Call centers pop up in places you don’t recognize, like Rapid City, SD,” says Manuto. Companies should build them in low-cost areas where they will be able to hire a staff of qualified reps.

As for the technology needed to run a call center, as telemarketing becomes more sophisticated and high-tech, more options come on the market. Initial equipment includes a phone switching system, a PBX system, a voice response unit, a digital taping system, an automatic call distributor, a predictive dialer and a variety of call center software. Also, a computer for every seat, along with desks and other furniture. Riddell says the cost of the equipment is $1.5 million for a 72- to 100-seat call center, but the complete cost of the call center will be higher if you have to build from scratch.

After selecting a site and installing the technology, the next important step is staffing, which becomes the major cost and most important element since it will determine the success of your call center. Before hiring individual reps, you must hire a management team to run the operation. Managers should have call center experience because “managing a call center is different from managing other operations,” Riddell says. “You have to measure performance both hourly and daily, and most managers don’t have that experience.”

After hiring the manager, they must find phone reps, preferably with inbound and outbound calling experience, and train them, which Riddell says “is the key to long-term success.” Training must include “product knowledge, sales and customer service so they have the ability to move goods and services over the phone.”

Bill Bergeron, senior vice president of operations at ATC Communications, an Irving, TX, consulting firm, built a call center in San Francisco for Pacific Bell last year. Pacific Bell leased two floors in a building on Hawthorne Street, and ATC sent engineers to the facility to set up the center. The most important part of the construction job was to design a system that would give reps access to all the information they needed to handle calls. The phone system built in San Francisco was linked to ATC’s Texas facility so reps could access and transfer information to both locations. When the call center was completed, reps could access customer information from the Pacific Bell system and send orders to the system at ATC, which records the sales and tracks their fulfillment. “The system is tied to three or more computers across the country,” Bergeron says.

He says the way the system was designed is key because “the biggest challenge today is to provide as much information to the workstation as possible. You want to be able to tie together the various things the rep is doing.” An ongoing challenge: to make the different systems, some much older than the others, work together.

While consultants can help companies build their own call centers, they can also tackle such smaller jobs as helping companies that already have call centers operate them better. That’s what Sandra Steen Associates, a San Antonio, TX, firm did for a company it declined to name. The company was trying to sell consulting skills to physicians and wanted to reach them by phone to set up appointments.

Sandra Steen, the company president, says she was hired to design a call center to run the program. She started by determining what the success rate would be, the information they needed to get from the physicians and the type of rep they’d need to hire to reach their goal. They purchased a software program that would capture names, addresses, phone numbers and comments. They went to a recruiting firm to find reps, including highly skilled ones who would be able to conduct high-level conversations with physicians, then hired a manager and six reps. Steen developed a training program they could use to learn about the product and how to set up appointments with the physicians.

If your company needs help building or improving its telemarketing operation, contact a consultant from the list below – Bergeron and Steen are two examples of telemarketing consultants who can help.