Jobs / Sales and marketing / 41-9041.00

Telemarketers

Solicit donations or orders for goods or services over the telephone.

US jobs
58,430
Median wage
$35,450 a year
Job family
Sales and marketing

Can agents do the work of telemarketers?

We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Sales and marketing:

  • Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from 2025. On Salesforce's CRMArena-Pro, which tests sales, service, and configure-price-quote requests inside a CRM, the best recorded agent succeeds on 58.3% of single-turn tasks and on fewer multi-turn tasks (Gemini 2.5 Pro, May 2025). No newer results are published.
  • Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes sales managers among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests running a campaign or a sales pipeline over weeks.

Benchmarks for the job family

These cover work in sales and marketing, not always this occupation's tasks.

  • CRMArena-Proby Salesforce AI ResearchTask level · Single-turn task success (B2C org)
    58.3%gemini-2.5-pro (ReAct) · 24 May 2025
    Emerging
  • GDPvalby OpenAIProject level · Wins plus ties against experts
    84.9%GPT-5.5 · Apr 2026
    Strong
  • GDPval-AAby Artificial AnalysisProject level · GDPval-AA Elo
    1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026
    Unrated

Typical tasks

From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.

  • Contact businesses or private individuals by telephone to solicit sales for goods or services, or to request donations for charitable causes.
  • Obtain customer information such as name, address, and payment method, and enter orders into computers.
  • Explain products or services and prices, and answer questions from customers.
  • Record names, addresses, purchases, and reactions of prospects contacted.
  • Maintain records of contacts, accounts, and orders.
  • Answer telephone calls from potential customers who have been solicited through advertisements.
  • Deliver prepared sales talks, reading from scripts that describe products or services, to persuade potential customers to purchase a product or service or to make a donation.
  • Telephone or write letters to respond to correspondence from customers or to follow up initial sales contacts.
  • Adjust sales scripts to better target the needs and interests of specific individuals.
  • Obtain names and telephone numbers of potential customers from sources such as telephone directories, magazine reply cards, and lists purchased from other organizations.
  • Schedule appointments for sales representatives to meet with prospective customers or for customers to attend sales presentations.
  • Conduct client or market surveys to obtain information about potential customers.
Other job titles for this occupation (28)

Call Agent · Inside Sales Representative (Inside Sales Rep) · Telemarketer · Telemarketing Sales Representative (Telemarketing Sales Rep) · Telephone Sales Representative (TSR) · Telephone Service Representative (TSR) · Telesales Representative (Telesales Rep) · Telesales Specialist · Call Center Agent · Call Center Operator · Call Center Representative (Call Center Rep) · Call Center Sales Agent · Call Center Telemarketer · Contact Center Agent · Direct Sales Agent · Donation Worker · Inbound Call Center Agent · Inbound Telemarketer · Independent Sales Representative (Independent Sales Rep) · Marketing Processor · Outbound Sales Agent · Outbound Telemarketer · Scheduling Agent · Solicitor · Telemarketing Representative (Telemarketing Rep) · Telephone Sales Agent · Telephone Solicitor · Telesales Agent