The latest stats show that nine out of ten startups will fail. With the reduced barriers to entry into online businesses or tech start-ups, entrepreneurs need to be realistic about their strategies and to work smarter and harder than ever before.
In the beginning, the founding team might scrutinize over every detail to make sure everything is in order. From the office set up, accounting, logistics, to customer queries and feedback. But as each start-up begins to scale, the responsibilities of ongoing product development and administrative tasks will leave the team with less time and energy to actually sell their products.
The key to sustainable growth in any business is sales. Though start-ups can look towards more funding and investors, giving up equity in your company is not the only route. Startups that are wanting to build a solid foundation for growth need to have sales.
So, how do you achieve sales? Do you hire in-house or outsource?
Here are two questions to consider if you are thinking about outsourced sales for your startup:
Is there someone from the founding team that can do sales, or at least manage a small sales force?
What are the current roles for everyone in the current team? If development is coming to a slow with a finished end product, can members from that team move into sales? Would that require extensive training that someone on the team could manage?
Anyone in a startup knows that demands are ever-changing and never-ending. Marketing and sales can often be the first to be overlooked and pushed back until a product “is perfect”, but valuable time is lost in the process of iteration. Outsourcing sales could leave your core team to focus on managing core competencies.
Do you have the funds to hire an in-house sales team?
Having full-time, experienced salespeople can be very expensive and risky for a start-up. It’s important to keep in mind the full cost of bringing on a sales force, like if you will be doing the recruitment, hiring a recruitment agency, managing the on-boarding, training, as well as any retention costs as salespeople develop within the company. Recent studies show even an $8/hour employee can end up costing a company around $3,500 in turnover costs, both direct and indirect.
Outsourcing sales for startups can be a great option for start-ups looking to increase speed to market and reduce initial in-house sales team investments. If you’ve decided to look further into outsourcing sales, here are some important first steps to take with your outsourcing partner:
So, you’ve decided to outsource sales, implement key tools immediately to set up an efficient sales pipeline
Efficiency is key when you’re working at a start-up and there’s a million things to do all at once. Your outsourcing sales partner will be able to immediately share the valuable tools needed to grow your pipeline like sales content, database access for targeting specific markets, CRM implementation and reporting tools to help measure your progress. Setting these key tools up quickly will enable a solid foundation to sales processes to build on as your start-up begins to accrue more customer data.
Get ready to go-to market with your outsourced sales for startups firm
An outsourced sales for startups firm will not just create the strategy, they’ll execute and manage the entire sales process. From staffing the sales reps, database managers, and automation experts, they have the people power to grow a full sales system. Once you have your team assembled, it’s time to get ready to go to market.
Most start-ups that haven’t gone to market will have no historical data on customers, or target demographics. An effective sales strategy will have to be iterated as the firm begins to grow and achieve actual sales. The ideal outsourced sales firm should be able to help build plans, strategies, and forecasts based on their best practices and track record of previous clients in the same industry.
Finding the right outsource sales company
With all the benefits you stand to gain by choosing SFI, the question you really need to ask is “How soon do I want to outsource my sales?” Get started today. Contact us to speak to a knowledgeable representative about your sales needs and be ready to launch your new start-up sales plan in less than two months.
