Any Freelancers Here Who Use A Sales Person To Land Accounts?

AngryFiver

AngryFiver

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Nov 14, 2014
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I haven't been doing this myself as I can't currently afford to hire someone, but I'm curious as to if there's a way to outsource this shit so I don't have to do sales myself...which I don't like doing.

- What would you pay someone for this task?
- Are you responsible for getting the leads to call or is this their responsibility?
- Where do you get the leads?
- Is the sales person responsible for writing the script?
- What kind of a return would you expect on his part?

Interested in hearing from those with experience.
 


you can always hire someone to do sales for you
what you pay them depends on a lot of things among them being if the sales person is responsible for getting their own leads or not.
Since it's your product you probably knows it best but a good sales person will know how to sell it better, best thing is to write the script as a colaboration of some sorts.
I would expect to set a sales budget with that person, If it's a freelancer you really dont give two fucks about how much time he spends on the sales as long as he keeps getting them in.
I would suggest though that you don't just hire the cheapest in sales especially quality costs
 
This wouldn't work for a lot of tech jobs out there, or at least not for me. The entire sales process is initial consultation, proposal & budget phase, so the potential is asking loads of technical questions about how to move forward with the project. They're basically getting a feeling for you, to see whether or not you know your stuff.

How would a sales person answer these questions, or put the proposal together? And if they did know all the technicalities behind it, why wouldn't they just take the job themselves? Probably pays better than whatever they're making at sales.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
This wouldn't work for a lot of tech jobs out there, or at least not for me. The entire sales process is initial consultation, proposal & budget phase, so the potential is asking loads of technical questions about how to move forward with the project. They're basically getting a feeling for you, to see whether or not you know your stuff.

How would a sales person answer these questions, or put the proposal together? And if they did know all the technicalities behind it, why wouldn't they just take the job themselves? Probably pays better than whatever they're making at sales.
Click to expand...

Tech sales bro. Tech sales. No one talks about those guys in SV.
 
I provide web development, app development services. I have a few "sales guys" who get the work and then pass it to me. Technically it may be called outsourcing, but generally speaking it is basically the same. They get a gig, agrees with the customer on lets say $2000 and pass it to me for $1000. Pockets 50% as "commission".
Sometimes it is even more than 50% for the "sales guy".

Although I am still struggling to find someone who could bring steady 2-3 jobs a month.
If someone has a way to acquire clients, of if someone has too many projects to handle - PM me and we could set something profitable up.
 
I think you have a better chance in setting up a landing page and advertising it. Get some leads and then send some emails every week or so. Having an intermediate person, I don't know, I think most clients would avoid that. It's like in real estate, at least in my country, you prefer to talk to the owner and avoid the scum who's only job was to post a freaking ad on the internet and wants 50% commission for that.

Having a company outsource you work is a whole other thing, sometimes the client doesn't even know if the company does the job or Mr. Prashid Kumar from a third world country. I get lots of work being outsourced to me from marketing companies and is way easier to deal in this way, rather than finding clients on my own. If communication is good everything works well, they deal with the talk, I make sure to get the job done.
 
I have an arrangement with a guy that's sort of like this. He's awesome at sales, and he had a company that did a lot of email marketing for brands - so I started talking to him about offering other services to those clients and he made a new company for that side of things. He handles sales and payments, pushing everything through the smaller company he made so he can more easily get away with charging agency prices rather than freelancer rates. In reality, it's him and his secretary/project manager plus me and my outsourced help.

He takes around 20-40% of most projects (depending on size, margins, and price sensitivity of the client) and handles sales, collections, and payment processing. It worked really well for about 5 years until he had some weird issues with a bad employee at his main company, but that's totally unrelated to the validity of the arrangement. Now I'm on the fence about it.

The only big issue I've had to deal with is that it's really hard to teach someone what they need to say or not say to close a deal. He has occasionally given clients the wrong idea about things, over/undersold potential results, or misread the scope and needs of certain clients, and that can make things harder on me. Overall, though, it's been a nice way to get more business than I would have otherwise gotten and I don't have to rely on some low-level salesperson who reads from a script. I used to do all my own sales, but I don't particularly enjoy it and this lets me devote a lot more time to side projects while still getting lots of household name clients. I like just giving him a quote and then hearing back in a week or two, "Ok, we closed ---, go for it." Occasionally I'll join in on a call or meeting if the client needs more persuading, and I like that our arrangement has that flexibility.

I will say that I don't think this setup is terribly common, though. A lot of people get regular work from agencies, but it's usually a different kind of thing where they work for a small hourly rate (rather than a partnership with the owner where you take the lion's share of the fees charged to the client and they sell what you tell them you can offer). I think you'd have to either train your own salesperson as an employee/contractor, or find someone who's connected and has a steady base of clients but who doesn't yet do what you're offering.
 
AngryFiver said:
I haven't been doing this myself as I can't currently afford to hire someone, but I'm curious as to if there's a way to outsource this shit so I don't have to do sales myself...which I don't like doing.

- What would you pay someone for this task?
- Are you responsible for getting the leads to call or is this their responsibility?
- Where do you get the leads?
- Is the sales person responsible for writing the script?
- What kind of a return would you expect on his part?

Interested in hearing from those with experience.
Click to expand...

I do this for a ton of people. I don't use a script. People can tell when you are using a script. The leads come from everywhere. Online, referrals networking etc.
 
This is a tough tough decision to make. I struggle with it a lot. I feel like, who knows it better than me? If a potential customer is trying to weed out the time wasters, they need to be talking to someone who knows their shit, or else...

I don't see myself giving up the sales reigns anytime soon. No way to grow a business, but I suppose I just need to spend some time putting together some training materials, and find that "good match."

Good luck!
 
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