Questions

My creative agency does about 1mm in sales (of a 15k product) through Inbound marketing. My inside sales guy closes all of it and has time for more, but haven’t had much luck increasing # of leads through mktg over past 9 months. I don’t have a ton of cash and need to bump up to 1.5mm total. Considering trying to find the unicorn that works on no/low base, high commission. Or should I put more money into something like Growbots.com - outbound efforts to bring in more for my inside sales guy?

Essentially what I see you asking here is: should I increase the lead generation to my inside salesperson, or should I hire an outsider to get those new leads and convert them?

As a business owner, can you see the problem with the second option? You are completely putting lead generation and a lot of your conversion into the hands of an unproven outsider. I wouldn't do that.

My advice is you talk to a competent Traffic person (not me--I'm a Conversion guy) and learn more about lead generation so you can keep that knowledge In House.

Then, if your current inside salesperson gets overloaded, you can hire another inside salesperson.

You HAVE to keep watch over these people. You cannot "leave it to the wizard" where things happen behind a curtain and you hope they're getting taken care of. If they don't, you are behind months and many dollars in return for nothing.

By learning more and keeping the institutional knowledge within your organization, at least you learn something in return for your money.

I AM one of those BDM types...and I say it's a huge mistake for you to entertain the idea of hiring one right now. Let's say, best case scenario, they generate their own leads and close a lot of them.

Good, right?

Wrong.

What happens when they get frustrated with you? Start thinking they're doing a lot of work for not enough money? And leave?

What then?

You've learned nothing, and you're back to square one.

Nope. I wouldn't do that nor would I advise anyone to go down that road. Keep it in-house. Keep it under your control.


Answered 8 years ago

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