Our two person company is struggling to grow our sales force and have been considering outsourcing a sales team to help free up time and have budgeted $5000/mo towards starting this project. We have heard horror stories about call centers and aren’t sure where to look for a smarter solution. Thanks!
Ask HN: Sales Team Growth
1–4 of 4 posts
Re: Ask HN: Sales Team Growth
#2More details would be helpful here. Are you B2B? B2C? What are your fulfillment constraints? How big are your deals? How long is your sales cycle?
Knowing only what you've shared, I'd want to know if you considered A) Hiring your 1st salesperson or B) Making your first marketing/growth hire
Re: Ask HN: Sales Team Growth
#3More details would be helpful here. Are you B2B? B2C? What are your fulfillment constraints? How big are your deals? How long is your sales cycle? Knowing only what you've shared, I'd want to know if you considered A) Hiring your 1st salesperson or B) Making your first marketing/growth hire
Thank you for your reply. I truly appreciate the questions. We sell physical goods to both retail consumers and wholesale brick and mortar accounts for resale. Physical goods are sold by the individual unit or in bulk to wholesalers based in the United States. Some of our products are more regionally limited, with laws allowing sales in specific states only. We fulfill and ship most products the next day, with bulk orders being manufactured on demand and taking up to 6 weeks. Smaller wholesale accounts order a few thousand dollars of product a month, with larger accounts for us averaging 10k+/mo. The sales cycle has relied on incoming e-commerce leads and is usually very quick (day or two) account setup, verification, and a phone call to ensure the right product fit.
We have absolutely considered both of those hiring options. We are trying to identify and fill our weakest points first. We’re trying to avoid putting too many eggs in one basket by investing in a single point, making it difficult to decide who to hire first or how to spread out the investment wisely. Thanks again!
Re: Ask HN: Sales Team Growth
#4More details would be helpful here. Are you B2B? B2C? What are your fulfillment constraints? How big are your deals? How long is your sales cycle? Knowing only what you've shared, I'd want to know if you considered A) Hiring your 1st salesperson or B) Making your first marketing/growth hire
Thank you for your reply. I truly appreciate the questions. We sell physical goods to both retail consumers and wholesale brick and mortar accounts for resale. Physical goods are sold by the individual unit or in bulk to wholesalers based in the United States. Some of our products are more regionally limited, with laws allowing sales in specific states only. We fulfill and ship most products the next day, with bulk o…
That sounds like a really fun project. I worked at a similar company previously. It was tough, inside sales is a difficult thing to hire/train for. My advice is to consider two hires -- a growth person to own eCommerce leads and a sales person to close those. Once you have a good handle for the funnel, you should be well positioned to figure out what quotas should look like and how to scale the sales org. You don't need the more complicated sales roles right now (sales ops, sales managers, etc), you need a funnel that you can measure and plan against.