[Progress] A Deaf Guy Starting a Telemarketing company

[jpanarra]

Hey guys, JP here

I know I’ve not been so active as I’ve been on here but I’m going to share with you a journey I’m setting myself on today.

Me, as a deaf person. One of my biggest struggles that I’ve done in the past year was cold calling and cold outreach. Even if I pushed myself to my best, I was still at the mercy of the sign language interpreter and how she/he would translate my words. I also was at the mercy of the technology I was using ending up having delays in conversation. This would turn off the cold client especially if I interrupted their day.

This was a problem, so in the grand scheme of MJ’s teachings… I already had failed at the CENTS formula. I have a gap of control over my sales process. Then it dawned on me after a few people mentioning some solution ideas and how I can improve this process. I started with hiring a sign language interpreter to ‘sell’ for me and then I would train the said interpreter via videos on prospecting and sales concepts.


Then over time, with some suggestions I’ve seen, I started to realize that this might be a solution that doesn’t only apply to me but to many other deaf entrepreneurs and business owners that are trying to start up their own businesses and are faced with the barrier of trying to sell to the public.


The idea is to establish a telemarketing company that handles from prospecting, cold calling and to facilitating the meeting to help the client close sales. What I’m thinking so far is a subscription-based system that leads to the final meeting where the ASL Sales Specialist has an opportunity to facilitate the meeting and get a compensation share of the sale if it closes. The subscription-based section will be primarily prospecting and cold calling, which will be pretty much available to the public. Because I’ve seen people on here and the facebook groups I've been active on struggling with cold calling and initial prospecting.


Now the plan for me now is to research and build a business plan because I intend to get some heavy hitting investors. I have no clue how to do this, but I’ll share my journey with you guys.

Right now, I want to get a feel of the reception of the idea. Hence this post and I’m working on a type form survey that I will be posting on social media and on the outside of this thread to validate the idea a bit more and maybe finds a clear direction where people need help the most.


I’m not sure what the status is on posting surveys on here in the forum, so I’m gnna reach out to the mods and see if its ok.

 

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[Scot]

Following for sure!

 

[jpanarra]

Following for sure!

Thanks man!!

 

[Greg R]

Thanks man!!

Yea, can't wait!

Good to see you back.

 

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[jpanarra]

Yea, can't wait!

Good to see you back.

I never left Just not as chatty as i was lol

 

[socaldude]

Me, as a deaf person.

Don't mean to sidetrack but just curious, how did you become deaf? Congenital or acquired?

 

[jpanarra]

Don't mean to sidetrack but just curious, how did you become deaf? Congenital or acquired?

From birth! Genetic

 

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[Fox]

Following, you got it J!

 

[jpanarra]

Hey guys! Jp here,



I got a good number of responses from the survey and some interesting results that will be able to drive my buisness idea forward, Here's a brief summary on this link. I'm going to be as transparent as possible without revealing too much selling point. The only thing I won't be sharing is the open ended questions because there's a ton of good selling points that I will be using for the copy of my website.



Survey Results here



This gives me validation that it is a need for people/businesses that struggle to cold call and build up a warm lead client base.



I have a pricing bracket and everything set up. I brought on a friend of mine to work on this project as well, he's a communications specialist and systems guy that has a very strong network in the corporate world. I'm a type A personality and I struggle to stay focused on the little things so I offered him an even split in the equity of the business. When I pitched the whole idea and he came on board quickly because the numbers line up to be a sustainable and has a good potential to be really profitable. So we've decided that he'll be focused on the operations and system of how we will implement this and I will work on the growth and marketing for the time being.



Speaking of marketing, digital marketing for businesses is my thing at the moment so I'm working on a solid landing page that will be able to collect emails and am going to look up how to build a email list. So I can keep people updated and market to a larger audience. I hope to finish up the landing page today along with the copywriting and SEO, and work on the email list during the week.

 

[MattR82]

Good luck! Following for sure. You're onto something.

 

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[AgainstAllOdds]

Best of luck @jpanarra.

And one thing to keep in mind: tonality. Look up Jordan Belfort's book or course on the topic. Tonality is one of the keys to conducting successful sales calls.

Make sure you figure out a way to properly train and manage the tonality that the salespeople are using. It'll be difficult as a deaf person, but with the right team, definitely doable.

 

[jpanarra]

Best of luck @jpanarra.

And one thing to keep in mind: tonality. Look up Jordan Belfort's book or course on the topic. Tonality is one of the keys to conducting successful sales calls.

Make sure you figure out a way to properly train and manage the tonality that the salespeople are using. It'll be difficult as a deaf person, but with the right team, definitely doable.

Yep, I'm going to focus on my sales team and their training will be of a high priority for me. I want them to be as personable as possible even if its a first time interaction.

I've been looking around at the competition, on the digital marketing side. this industry isn't really that impressive and they're not really geared towards younger generations but rather corporate environments and giving off a bland vibe. I will start out this venture geared towards freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses that all have the intention to scale... If I'm able to scratch their back by giving them good qualified leads, then they will have more capital to reinvest back into my business so they can grow even more.

I did a lot the past 2 days. I built the infrastructure for the email marketing campaign. I worked on the landing page, i would say its 85% done and just requires copy which my partner will work on. He wrote up a full comprehensive business plan to establish direction and whether or not if we need to look for an investor to build capital to hit the ground running.

 

[jpanarra]

Hey guys,



JP here,



The start up cost to actually open up and hire a few people to make the phone calls are pricy and wayy out of my comfort zone which means I will have to get an investor to foot all of the operating costs. Now I've thought up a few solutions for this which isn't' going to line up with my vision at the beginning but it should be profitable allowing me to expand and build towards my ideal enterprise.



The first thing is that I need to get a proof of concept and a few clients before I move onto an investor. I cannot call and perform at the level I hope to sell my product at. This means I will have to outsource the services for the time being, once I get confirmation that the price point is satisfactory for the client and the services are ideal. I will have to eat the costs of outsourcing no matter what.



Two different things can take place, If outsourcing remains profitable I can drive growth and focus on expanding the clientele by continuing to outsource until the scales tip and I'm able to afford to hire/train my own sales team which allows me to keep more equity and will be a slower growth than the other option. The other option is to give up some equity and bring an investor on board that might have a network that we can tap into which will allow us to build a sales team immediately and start servicing people at full capacity.



So my mission right now is to get the marketing out there and get interest going before the full business launch. I hope the site will go live tonight or tomorrow and I plan on having the option sign up for the plan and having the site notify them that "we are working on expanding our resources to take on more clients" and have them sign up on a waiting list. That way I might gauge the willingness of the marketing all the while of bulding up a email list.



I'm open to ideas and feedback.. I really am jumping into the deepend and I have NO IDEA what I'm looking into here.

 

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[jpanarra]

Solid progress in the past few days.

The Mailing list integration is done, we used MailCheat(Chimp) plugins for the site. Also, we wrote a business plan so we have a clear vision and objective approach to how we are planning to do things. We also wrote up a target market analysis and who exactly we will target. This will help us develop a digital marketing plan and find where our clientele will be on the internet and elsewhere.

Right now we are working on a PDF write up which will be a Free Guide how to "Close a Sale" to convince people to sign up for our news letter so we can build a email list.

We are thinking about offering access to an course and forum once they sign up for our calling services that will have support how to make a warm lead turn into a close. Our product only gives people a warmed up lead, but its up to them to close. However, we want our client base to be happy so if we give them training tools on how to finish the last 10% of the race. I believe that we will be regarded in a positive light.

This market summary will be included in our pitch if we need to get in front an investor. I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on it.


The telemarketing industry is quite fragmented with companies that vary greatly in size, scope, services offered, and market share. Many companies are generally advertising agencies that offer telemarketing services along with a wide range of other consulting services. Very few, however, are solving a genuine need in the marketplace.

Rivalry among telemarketing agencies is intense. The industry as a whole is mature with long-term moderate growth. However, marketplace apathy is the one major disadvantage to existing companies. They are either no longer seeking or transitioning slowly to transform the means in which they provide and market their services.

Our key opportunity lies within its ability to escape the limitations of bland corporate appeal and attract younger professionals, start-ups, and small businesses through modern digital marketing methodology.

In addition, we understands that there is an untapped market of consumers that the services of these companies do not meet, Deaf and Hard of Hearing business owners.

We believes that there is an enormous market opportunity in transforming the design of the telemarketing industry so that it is made personal, accessible to everyone and market-friendly.


I'm welcome to any criticism of this.

 

[jpanarra]

Hey guys, JP here!



The site layout is now currently up and its open to the public since I'm asking for feedback for the time being. I still need to find better graphics and images to replace the images that are currently there. I want to get rid of the 'pink' color, the site will be blues/yellow. But feel free to take a look and I'm open to feedback, the price at the time being is theoretical based on the pricing I found online and is still not the final price, which will be calculated once we have everything in place.

Timafy - Save Your Time by Getting Qualified Leads Today

The email newsletter system is in place. I'm using MailCheat(Chimp) at the moment and all of the forms work. I still have to get the copy-writing for the autoresponder email written up. The goal for the autoresponder email is to have a 'confirmation' link that will refer to a hyperlink on the page that is being watched by my analytics account so that way I can keep track of how many people sign up and easily calculate the website's conversion rate.



The Lead Magnet PDF is currently in works, there will be a sales guide that is 'frankensitened' from tons of sales books and resources online bundled together and designed nicely by someone on fiverr. I hope this will get people to sign up and giving us their emails so we can build a solid email marketing campaign.



The copy for the site for the most part is complete, but right now I'm doing keyword research to try to find our ideal marketspace on the internet. What we are thinking at the time being is focusing on 2 markets, one is the deaf entrepreneur which is somewhat the low hanging fruit. Then we hope to move onto the general start-up entrepreneur or freelancer that doesn't have time to cold call or look for prospects. The service we hope to give is to save their time on this time consuming process and give them warm leads at the end of the day that they can focus their energy on and feed their momentum.



Speaking of the prospecting and cold calling services, me and my partner are now looking at different places online that we can outsource portions of our service to and sharing our expectations of the quality of service and how much we intend to pay them. This is a critical step and cannot be rushed because we need quality work that meets our ideal budget that we've calculated for an ideal margin for the first year of this business.



So, for this week I hope to achieve,

• On-page SEO done
• Reach 3-5 business that will help us provide our services, discuss our expectations and get a price.
• Get Flat UI images and replace the images on the site.
• Built Lead Magnet PDF
• Autoresponder Copy-writing complete

 

[jpanarra]

Hey guys,



We reached out to a number of contractors and agencies that can work with us. Now, we have a good estimate on how much It'll cost us to hire them to provide our services. The good news is in the beginning we might be at around 40-50% margins which is a very solid start.



Right now we are currently looking for our first clients, we are looking through twitter, reddit, and other social medias for people that are 'complaining' about the challenges they have with cold calling or selling. We hope to target small to mid tier businesses that struggle with selling and offer them an solution that we will write up a buyer persona, build a target market around that persona, then prospect with a certain number and cold call them for their leads. We also will be writing the cold call scripts for the client and trying to convert them to warm leads.



We hope to do this more of a hands on/manual approach to get more clients hopefully we will be able to work on the relationships and get referrals instead of trying to drive traffic by website and hope people will land in our laps. This way we will be able to work with people and fine tune our process to make it into a better experience and product.



We might be operating at a low cost for the first 10 clients but this will give us the proper feedback to get our product fine tuned and see how our system works and work out the kinks.



So our goal for the remainder of February is to get our first sale, and get to 10 clients!

 

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[jpanarra]

Hey all,

Website is DONE, all of the coding, copy and systems are in place. The only thing left for the site is actually the PDF Lead Magnet and we've dropped the money onto fiverr to someone that has a solid portfolio to do that for us.

Now we are digging through the mud to find the first batch of clients. One at a time!