What sort of response rates should our telemarketing efforts generate?

Ratios do differ across industries!

If it’s a product with a widespread demand, ratios tend to be better as you hit on a lot of people who will inevitably have problems with existing suppliers or who want to use the product more.

On average 1 appointment from 15 dials is a very respectable ratio.
2 interested people [not necessarily appointments] from 10 calls is very good.

People don’t always track accurately and it’s important that they report an average i.e. over at least a 5 day period rather than results from individual days.

Companies also need to look at closing ratios; sometimes the appointment makers are expected to work miracles while the salespeople limp along with pretty poor ratios.

The ratio to look at is Appointments: Prospects: Sales (A:P:S)

This should be at least 10:5:1 but a reasonably able salesperson should be hitting 7:4:1. (Also, the salespeople often complain about the “quality” of appointments which roughly reads “s/he didn’t buy when I turned up, so it must be the poor quality of the appointment”).