Outsourcing Sales

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

Hello everyone, I wonder if anyone has some advice for me. I have a product and a service that I am trying to sell. I'm looking to outsource the sales, so I can concentrate on delivering the service.

Does anyone have experiance of doing this? Does anyone here do outsourced sales? It's a small business without a massive budget; I dont mind spending money but I need results for it to work.

Thanks in advance.

[rog007]

If you’re looking to outsource sales, the key is finding someone who understands your niche and can prove there’s actually a market for what you’re offering, unless you’ve already conducted your market research and have confirmed a level of demand.

A few small businesses belonging to folk I used to know had success with freelance boutique agencies that specialised in early‑stage sales. It’s worth starting with a short trial period so you can see whether they can generate real opportunities before committing long‑term.

It also depends on your geographical coverage. If you’re only working locally, that will need a different approach to whether you’re working nationally or internationally.

[LooneyTunes]

Chainsaw Rebuild said:

Hello everyone, I wonder if anyone has some advice for me. I have a product and a service that I am trying to sell. I'm looking to outsource the sales, so I can concentrate on delivering the service.

Does anyone have experiance of doing this? Does anyone here do outsourced sales? It's a small business without a massive budget; I dont mind spending money but I need results for it to work.

Thanks in advance.

I have looked at this in some detail in the past. It is fraught with difficulties.

The main challenges stem from:
- Alignment of interest
- Duration of interest
- Style and values
- Motivation
- Dealing with mismatches in the above.

There are outfits out there that will happily "dial for dollars" but what you need is someone who will sell your service in the right way: not go "off piste" and promise the moon on a stick in order to get through whatever commission trigger there is without really giving a damn about what happens thereafter.

The biggest issue I always found was finding a way to get outsources sales moving at a pace that generated (and maintained) enough interest for the party doing the selling without going too slowly/fast in the early stages. (too fast can be an issue if insufficient time is allowed to refine the pitch and product, if things take too long then sales folk can get bored easily)

It's not just a SME thing either: have encountered the same issues with partnership sales efforts with very large corporates.

It's potentially still worth trying but you probably need to focus thinikng on how do you sucesfully scope a trial of such an approach - broad enough to be useful, but without contaminating your entire audience.

[StevieBee]

Yes, I have gone down this route several times with both success and failures.

Rog and Looney have already touched upon the key things to consider.

The other is cost.

The best options are the most expensive to the point at which it runs close to the cost of employing someone and keeping it all in house. But external may still be a better option as it gives you flexibility that you don't have with an internal resource - in other words you can turn the tap off every now and then if needed.

You say Product and Services - are the two connected, as in part of the same 'offer' or are they two independent commercial strands?

[bennno]

Chainsaw Rebuild said:

Hello everyone, I wonder if anyone has some advice for me. I have a product and a service that I am trying to sell. I'm looking to outsource the sales, so I can concentrate on delivering the service.

Does anyone have experiance of doing this? Does anyone here do outsourced sales? It's a small business without a massive budget; I dont mind spending money but I need results for it to work.

Thanks in advance.

What’s the product / service? is it consumer or business focused? what’s the average sales value / engagement duration?

Are you wanting somebody to deal with inbound leads, or to identify and approach potential customers?

So many variables here…..

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

Thanks for the inputs everyone. The product is a training course and the service is the client can outsource their compliance to us. Perhaps a bit like how you outsource book keeping and accounting.

The course and the service are related, the first generates records that are handled as part of the service.

We are in transport management compliance, specifically school transport.

Edited by Chainsaw Rebuild on Thursday 13th August 22:22

[ExBoringVolvoDriver]

Given the nature of the service, my view would be that outsourcing sales would not be cost effective.

It wouid appear to be relatively niche/specialist and ideally you would want a sales person to have the required knowledge of the product to give the best possible chance of a sale.

Maybe telesales might work for the initial cold calls but in my experience of a relatively specialized product, even that can fall down since the person making the calls (even with some training) does not have the same success rate as an employee.

I would be inclined to bite the bullet and employ someone, maybe at a low level with the right attitude, to train them up with the offer of some good bonuses and progression if they are successful.

[DSLiverpool]

You don’t need to outsource sales you don’t want to outsource sales you need to outsource lead generation which is very common.

If you have any sort of budget for this, let us all know and there’s a lot of people on here who can tell you where to go next but you’re not outsourcing sales.

[bennno]

So a bit like what ITC do for the automotive trade?

I’d have a chat with somebody like Periphas who would set meetings up for you with decision makers in target companies.

The first step would be to identify a list of target companies.

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

Thats helpful perspective, thank you all. I'm going to think about the direction I want to go over the weekend.