At LeadJen, we work with a lot of SMB’s that have 0 – 2 sales reps. Typically, when we talk through an engagement the cost can be a shock because it is slightly more than hiring a rep in-house. This is often seen as a turn-off for companies, but what many fail to realize is the amount of fine tuning that is put into hiring, maintaining, and growing a good sales representative.
LeadJen provides a variety of services that add value to our sales services, including a database, tools, management, and a host of other additions that many companies do not initially have. In addition to value we provide outside the actual rep, an element of our value that is always overlooked is our sales culture. While this may seem trivial at first, consider what goes into selling a product, and the kind of people that are drawn to that role.
If you have a small sales team, culture is not something that you can simply hire or buy. It is something that is formed around strong and motivated leaders. Sales culture means understand what motivates people to excel in their sales role, knowing how to celebrate their victories and nurture them when things don’t go to plan. It means knowing what tools need to be implemented to ensure their success, and providing them with thorough and honest feedback. Simply put: it isn’t something that can be improvised – it must come from a knowledgeable source.
Supporting a Sales Rep / SDR requires more than simply hiring a rep, providing them with a list, putting them in a corner and saying “Go Nuts”. Careful planning and preparation must go into a successful campaign. Starting from a base of reasonable expectations, a sales rep needs strong product knowledge, and must have the personality and prerequisite experience to successfully manage these calls.
If you don’t have a good sales culture, or an experienced, autonomous sales rep, then the probability of your rep churning after 6-12 months is very high. Sales representatives operate under a different time table and mindset than more technical or administrative positions – they operate with the long term objective of continuous improvement and the short term objectives of making deals.
An engineering culture makes most sales reps run for the hills. Can you imagine making cold calls in a quiet, small Software Development shop? I’ve done it. It’s not fun. And it’s intimidating. Engineers function at a very different pace than sales representatives, focused more on the technical aspects of their work. More, they are often a poor match for the personality that sales representatives bring to their work (high energy, talkative.)
Unless you plan on hiring a team of 3+ sales reps, then outsourcing your Sales Culture probably makes sense. While on paper paying more for outsourcing sales representatives may not look like a smart move, consider the tools that they will need to excel at their role and the culture that they need to excel. Having to find new sales representatives every six months when a people keep quitting a position will end up costing more in the long run, and cause fatigue for recruiters looking to hire for your company.
When our clients work with LeadJen, we put their rep in a sales culture. We have 120 Reps in our offices. The layout in our building has TVs everywhere that are connected to Hoopla (Sales Motivation software) to we can celebrate each other’s wins. We have a monthly bonus pool for Rep’s that hit quota. We have a sales training program for new reps and weekly training for continuous improvement. We have a President’s Club for Top Performers (Last year we went to Mexico!) These incentives encourage a healthy work environment that keeps people working at their best, ensuring outstanding results.
Typically, when I go into detail around our Organizational set up, the light bulb goes off for Clients. They immediately think “there’s no way I can build this out”. When you are outsourcing sales, there is no need to even consider that – we have everything build out, all we need is your permission to go. By understanding the internal processes of your company, we can customize what we already have to match your needs, and select representatives that are best suited to sell your product.
That’s the beauty of outsourcing your sales. You are responsible for your business and managing what goes into the details of your product. Leave the Sales Talent Management to us, and let your product sell itself with our proven expertise.