I have, quite unexpectedly, been given the task of managing an
outbound telemarketing operation. We are doing outbound sales to get
mortgage applications. I have no questions on compliance issues and
the like as I am confident that we are covered. However, I have no
experience with the metrics of call center performance. I would like
to know:

Using a 96 line predictive dialer with 22 to 28 agents dialing from
8am to 12pm and 5pm to 9pm...

What should my average 'answer rate' and 'sale rate' be, assuming
talented agents and quality data?

How many calls should my dialer send to my agents per hour on average?

What should be the overall sale rate for a block of data/campaign?

How many applications per hour should I expect on an ongoing basis from my agents?

How many times should I call a given phone number before I count the
number as dead?

How many numbers should I expect to be inoperable or wrong for a given campaign?

Good luck with yur call center.  Since the advent of the do not call
list, that has been become a tough way for mortgage loan officers to
generate mortgage leads.  Most mortgage brokers have moved to using
direct mail postcards to generate their mortgage leads.  if your
company is interested in postcard mailing campaigns specificly
designed for mortgage brokers, check out
http://www.wayoutmarketing.com as this is their specialty and the
prices are great.  Typical response is about 2% which is great for
direct mail postcards.

You should contact the staff at Profit Centre for help with predictive
dialers and call center operations. They are in Atlanta 678-749-7315
and provide leased telemarketing management and hardware. On the Web
they are at www.profit.pricesearch.org, they have over 10 years in
dialers/ operations/ management in various telemarketing from home
improvements lead generation, bus ops, mortgage lead generation, and
more.