One of the biggest challenges businesses face when they begin to scale their sales is replicating the same results as your team grows. What was once easy and predictable suddenly is challenging and uncertain.
You’re hired a new team and began to invest more money into marketing and resources to support your sales. Everyone has told you, this is going to be easy and you’re going to get a return on your investment quickly. But it’s just not happening as you’d hoped.
There are leads coming into your pipeline and your sales team look busy, but the numbers just aren’t showing the results you need them to. It’s frustrating, because you know what you were able to achieve without having all these resources.
Everyone you talk to has a different opinion as to why the results are the way they are and what you need to do about it (This is part of the problem, but we’ll talk about this later)
Right now, your sales team is costing you money which is the exact opposite of what it should be doing. I call this the false start and it’s something we’ve all experienced at one point of time or another.
So how can you set yourself up for success and execute on the strategies which can boost your sales, scale faster and increase your profit margins? We talk alot about how vital it is to have a solid foundation in place before you start to scale your sales which you can read more about here. (Insert link to DIY Course)
Once you’ve got the foundations in place I’d start by hiring a Virtual Sales Development Representative (V-SDR) This is building your sales team from the bottom up, as opposed to the top down. Compared to hiring a sales director or manager who could easily command $200,000 per year or more as a retainer, a well trained V-SDR is going to cost you under $7000 US per month.
A V-SDR working within the right systems (which you’ve built through your foundations) can perform all the tasks necessary to generate leads, book appointments and follow up on opportunities.
If you’re a founder who is still primarily responsible for selling, all you need to do then is engage and convert with qualified prospects and manage the process. What this does is allow you the time to perfect your systems before you incur any major expenses. It’s not the perfect solution and you do need to have someone else owning and managing your sales functions for you to really scale your business.
With this approach you are transitioning out of the sales functions in a few steps which ensure money is still flowing in while you are perfecting the systems which are required to deliver the predictable and profitable results you’re after.
Within a couple of months you should have the process dialed in with one V-SDR and are generating a consistent flow of leads which you are converting at a predictable rate.
You’ve got all the scripts, templates, presentations and processes working and a set of benchmarks you can use to measure progress by. Now you’re ready to hire your Sales Team. Don’t be in a hurry to expand too quickly at this stage, start with one Closer of Business Development Rep. Work with them closely, monitoring their results against your benchmarks for the next couple of months. This will help you identify the training requirements you need to replicate yourself.
It won’t take too long before you are replicating (or coming close to) the same results with your agent as you are. Now, you’ve got a fully documented repeatable process which has been proven to deliver you results. You’ve been able to achieve this in a few months at a fraction of the costs of the alternative path, now’s the time to scale, growing your team with more Sales agents and V-SDR’s.
The other advantage of this strategy which may not be immediately obvious is the increased productivity your sales agent has because of the leverage gained through your V-SDR and the supporting systems.
Because you have your V-SDR managing all of the time consuming, repeatable tasks like prospecting, data collection, following up on prospects and reporting, your sales agent has a lot more time to engage with qualified prospects and convert new business.
More time spent with qualified prospects is always going to result in more closed sales.
I’ve found that processes like this can increase the results generated by a salesperson by 50% or more.
This may not be the sexiest strategy around, but my experience is it’s always going to get you further down the road, faster with less risk while delivering real results.
Great Success! Mat Boyle
