I once met a printer who had a small print shop. He built his business over twenty years with one employee working the shop and his wife doing graphic design and working with clients. He managed the business and was the only salesperson. He told me over the years he had attempted (on several occasions) to hire a salesperson to grow his business with very limited success.
Some took him for a ride receiving a salary and not producing. Others built their client base and started their own print shop taking his customers, so he gave up on growing his company with a team of salespeople to build his business one customer at a time. As a consequence, decades of hiring reluctance left him no sizable year over year growth and 70-hour workweeks to keep the bills paid.
His hiring reluctance cost him years of frustration and unnecessary hard work. Work smart, not hard. When building a business where you need to take your product to the market, you likely find that hiring a professional salesperson is the most logical start to growing your business.
But when you are a start-up, you don’t have the resources to manage the complexities of a person you don’t see every day. It is recommended you outsource sales management to someone with these skills to manage their activities.
A good outsourced sales management firm will provide the following structure to your salesperson:
Help with recruiting
Employment testing
Building a sales plan
Identifying your target market
Lead management
Monitoring daily sales related activities by using tools such as CallProof
Weekly calls with sales staff and management
Suggestions and light sales training or recommendations for improvement
The beautiful thing with outsourcing sales management is that there are professionals who are highly qualified ex-business owners and corporate executives with decades of experience who love sharing this knowledge with green sales people. They are either underemployed or retired executives who work from home several hours a week to supplement their income.
Strange things happen when you hire someone with this level of experience. For example, your salespeople do things for these managers you could never get them to do. A good outsourced sales management firm will hire the right person who will understand that they are a coach and not a boss. While you will help with proposals and training your sales staff on products your company markets, your activity coach is focused on making sure the sales plan is being followed by your salesperson.
Outsource Sales Management
Outsourced sales management firms will offer suggestions to owners on who to hire and fire. The number one reason sales people aren’t successful is that lack of activity. With a sales management tool like CallProof outsourced sales management firms can see real-time activities from the sales staff.
See phone calls from salespeople to clients and prospects in real-time
See appointments being run as they happen
Manage Leads (make sure they are being worked)
See where the team is on a map via real-time GPS locations reported from phone
Manage pipeline of deals
Listen to recorded marketing calls from salespeople (quality management)
