How to take a small company to the next level
March 2008
Many small companies start off their life with a pool of regular customers who recommend and refer them onto others. This is a very good way of growing a business organically and often leads to a sound base of quality clients. The problem with this method of growing a business though is that you have no control over the speed of the growth and sometimes you need extra help to take you to a higher level of activity.
Of course, employing sales people is a risky business for a small operation. First of all you have to find the right sales person, which can incur hefty advertising or recruitment fees, and the chances are, that the really good sales people will be attracted to the bright lights of the large companies. And of course, you always run the risk that a sales person you employ will not actually sell anything! Assuming you do find somebody you’re happy with, you still have to provide an office for them to work in, and IT equipment to work with and have to generally administer and manage their role.
Using an outsourced sales company is a good alternative solution. It represents a very low risk and can start offering tangible results very quickly. It is also totally flexible, and can be scaled up and down very quickly, thereby matching sales activity to in-house capacity to carry out the new business.
Computer and telephony solutions company, GK Communications, are a good example of a successful small company that wanted to expand. Having built a sound business through word-of-mouth, they felt that they were ready to become a larger operation. However, they lacked the skills in-house to make a serious push on a sales and marketing campaign, and were reluctant to plough large amounts of funding by employing full-time staff. Instead, they decided to call in Virtual Sales Limited (VSL) to do their outbound sales calls and make appointments. John Bailey of GK said,
“We felt it better to outsource as we are too close to the company, and calling 100 people a day and being told you are not wanted can be very demoralising! With VSL we only hear the positives of appointments and connections. Andy Dickens, the MD of VSL is very passionate about his company, and we felt he had the drive to move our business onto another level. And indeed, we have seen great results – we get appointments, email contacts and our company is exposed to a target audience. In one month alone we got seven great appointments and more than 30 email contacts. Outsourcing certainly works for us.”
Author: Andy Dickens
Company: Virtual Sales Limited
www.virtual-sales.com
