Should You Outsource Your Sales?

Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of Coffee is Foreclosures. Me and James today and what we're going to be talking about is how, slash, why you should or you would outsource your sales.

Welcome to the show, guys.

Yeah, welcome to the show. So if you're, if you're a sales guy and you're running in an internal team or an external team like a sales agency, we'll sort of talk to you about the differences and the pros and cons. If you're a business owner and you're looking to potentially outsource your sales, or you're not happy with your inside sales team, or you're not happy with your external sales team, then we'll talk about some of the pros and cons and how and why you would potentially make a change. It's a good fit for some, not a good fit for everybody. So, yeah, make sure you, like, subscribe. Hit the notification bell. Do whatever it is you need to get the word out there for whatever it is you're watching this on. And cue the intro.

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Put that coffee down. Those of you don't know, me and James run an outsourced sales agency. We also run a sales training company called Seventh Level and then some consultancy stuff and sales team sales coaching. Do a lot of team sales coaching these days rather than just. Just individual stuff. Yeah.

If people already have that external team, they just want someone to come in and manage that set. KPIs built the systems around that and I guess coach how to get the most out of that sales team. We. We do that also.

Exactly. So what we'll do today is we'll go over kind of, I guess, why somebody would consider outsourcing the sales team. We'll start off with that. So why would you consider outsourcing your sales team?

Jimothy1 Is you probably in a good position where you have a product that's selling decent enough. You just don't have the tools to grow that team and you need someone else to come in and do that. Or you want no part of managing the day to day operations of sales so you can focus on content creation, growing the business. There's probably another couple of Decent reasons that that have not come into my head right now that you might want to touch on. Did I miss anything?

Yeah, I think like, I think those are sort of the key ones is one like a lot of people want to grow their business but they don't really have a passion for enjoy or understand sales. And so if you don't understand sales like you got a couple options. You could hire someone who has an in depth knowledge of sales and then come in and take over the entire department with that. There's some pros to it. One, they're in house. The real con to it is that like you're going to end up incurring a significant infrastructural expense and there's an administrative burden there in order to then get the team on. Or you start with like a team, like a one off closer and then you try and hopefully they grow into a role. But it's sort of a difficult thing to get right. And especially if you don't have an understanding of what's good, what's bad or how to develop that person, chances are you're going to have to spend a lot of money then on someone to come in and coach them anyway, which can defeat a lot of the purpose of, of having an internal team. And you're no guarantee that you're going to keep that person. So you could spend $50,000 over two years developing them into a sales card and they just leave.

They get good, they get a better offer because they are good.

Exactly. But like if you have a pretty significant internal structure already, it might not benefit you to go the agency route. It might benefit you just to hire full time people in your business because you can handle the burden and like the drop in net profit long enough for it to make sense in revenue.

Yeah.

And same for that. On the other side of that coin, being a sales guy, right. Like what would be the really determining factors as to whether or not you were selling directly with a relationship one on one for a company or whether you were going through something like us, which is a sales agency which has many accounts and the people in our agency work for us, but they sell many different products and services.

The security of always having leads there, always having accounts, being able to move up in a hierarchy, whether that be into managerial or just moving up in the sales space. You know, better accounts, higher paying accounts, more long term and professional sales cycles to develop a whole nother skill set.

And the downside being in some cases but not all, you'll probably get paid less for Sale.

Yeah. There's also a cut that needs to happen.

Yeah. So if you think of like just to explain kind of what a sales agency is. A sales agency is essentially a real estate brokerage. So we are the owners of the real estate brokerage. So we're Sirhant or Ray White or Keller Williams, wherever you are. Right. And then from there we would. We hire agents because of our reputation, our the amount of money that we spend on branding and content and all that kind of stuff. We then get a lot of business inquiries. Okay. Then from there we take those on. So we essentially get buildings, let's say developments and then we have our agents sell the building under our branding. That's essentially the business model.

So now good buddy Ryan Sohan.

Right, exactly. My close personal friend Ryan. So like if you are the agent that gets that by yourself, you then don't have to split that with the brokerage firm. However you then, you know you're up for a lot of other expenses and both time and resources also like you just don't. That's why people work under a brand.

Still so hard to land that big development deal. As a solos.

Yeah. Like one of our clients we within two weeks of working we had like 22 reps on their account. Like so if you just go in there to work as a rep, like you would have just gone in and one dude and then probably not going to hire 22 guys. Right. So yeah. So there's, you know, there's pros and cons and I think it's important that people understand both side of it. I think our business is relatively unique in how we actively do try to move people up through the ranks. I like, I like promoting from within.

Yeah, absolutely. So.

So yeah. But I mean I can't speak for any other sales agency or anyone else. I can only really speak for us in terms of what we're doing. I don't really know there are any agencies. I know like of one or two other rooms but I don't actually know anyone who runs them. So I can't really talk as to what the structure is like.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So some of the other like reasons like the wouldn't be able to get to position to grow your sales team is if you as the business owner just sucks at sales yourself.

You know, it's pretty common skill set. Yeah.

You just don't have the skill set to train someone to a level that can scale your business.

I think like people who work best with us like allow us to control a large portion of the process. I think if you're someone who's not cool with that, it would definitely not be a good relationship and it would definitely not be any fun to work with. If you really wanted to have a deep level of control over everything that was said and done throughout the process. Like, it's probably not going to work and you should probably have an internal team that you can really control. But if you're someone who really doesn't want or like sales or you realize that it's a massive, like, I guess, shortfall in your own skill set. Like if I sold a business coaching program for marketing agencies, right. I don't know how to run a marketing agency. So like I really give you input and how you should coach them on how to be better at their job. Like, I wouldn't do that. Same as if I. We sell business coaching for roofers. I don't know how to run a roofing business. So I'm not going to give you input on how to teach people how to run a roofing business.

Know how to sell it though.

Yeah. So I'll stay in my lane and just kind of take that, you know what I mean? And try and make it as good as possible. But the more that we do this, the more that we learn that the businesses that are more willing to give us a good amount of control and fluidity in how we do the process, the better it is and the ones that allow us to put in the infrastructure required to have a really good quality coaching business. I'll be very specific. Coaching business.

Just justified infrastructure.

Yeah. Like for example, some of our accounts are willing to pay for setters, some aren't. The accounts that are willing to pay for setters make three to four times the ones that are on every occasion. Because like setters, they are a great way to generate leads. If we have organic, if we have a Facebook group, if we have this, if we have this, whatever. We have even like lists of phone numbers. Like, I'm not going to have people do that for free, you know what I mean? Or do it for comms only because it's too much infrastructure. I have to pay those people basis. Right. And so it's like I'm just not going to put them in now. I'll forego revenue, right. In order to do that. But if I have to put five setters in your business, like that's going to cost me at least 5, $10,000 a month. Like it makes no sense for me to put them in. Unless you're going to pay for Them. And it's really funny, like the businesses that are like that are against that kind of stuff, they just cap out at like 300,000amonth.

Yeah. Which seems like big numbers for, you know, coaching business. But reality comparison could be it's, it's not that easy.

Get to 500. If they pay $10,000 a month in setter fees, that'd be at 500 within four in six weeks.

Absolutely.

Like.

Yes. Well, assuming that the rest of the strategy would be done along with that, I. E. The content, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, but that's, it's pretty easy to be honest. So.

Yeah, like if, if you've been told that you're, you know, if you've had people leave your organization because they felt you micromanaged them, you were just handing them all the time, probably an outsourced team isn't the best option for you.

Yeah, for sure. Or it is.

You're never gonna, like, you're gonna get.

Out of the way, but you have to. That's a whole nother session. I have to have some soul searching on that one. Yeah. Like, people who, like. I'll tell you, one of the worst things a business owner can do, and I think I might have said this the other day, was like, you should never go to your closer and be like, I listened to your call. Like, I would have closed them.

Yeah, yeah, we had this conversation.

Yeah. But I think business. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, probably a few times. But yeah, like, there are benefits to outsourcing your sales team. One is that like, so the cons would be for a business owner, you'll pay more commission. Yeah, right. Because like, again, everything's got to flow through. Like there's a flow through there, there's a management structure. So you're paying for infrastructure that isn't yours, but it's to your benefit. Right. So you usually pay slightly more, but in exchange for that, you usually get infrastructure and consultation from the people who are running it, like me and you and Marco and Will Hinks and all these kind of guys that we have that have been, you know, head of sales of larger coaching organizations or companies, and they can provide you with insight that you might not have access to. And it's essentially like for free, right?

Yeah. Well, the cost of that high commission is the consulting and the largest scale scaling that you do get. It's just a cost of business and.

It'S the ability to stack more. Like, you don't have to go through a recruitment process. It costs about 15 to $25,000 to recruit a sales guy, Right? And I can put five in business tomorrow.

Sometimes it costs three, but, you know, we won't speak about that anyway, so. Yeah, like, I mean, yeah, of course you. You pay a lot more there, but the amount that you're saving and the speed of which things can be delivered and implemented is far outweighs the cost, in my opinion, which may or may not be worth anything.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. Like, the speed and all that kind of stuff. Now, in terms of, like, a sales guy, right, Because I think it goes back to the sales guy, I guess. What do you. What do we provide our sales guys that make them want to stick around?

Development, culture, training, an environment that pushes them to be better? All the things that. All the things highly ambitious people want and need for them to be successful. Really?

Yeah, I think, like, I think for us, like, the. I think the thing that. Structure. Yeah, let's structure in, like, a home so the guys feel like they're part of something. I think one thing's a time when guys are working for accounts is like, there's a massive churn in accounts. Accounts have massive churn of salespeople, and sales people have massive churn of accounts because, like, if you're selling for one person, which I never recommend, I always recommend having two accounts because you want redundancy in your income. And, like, if you're selling for one guy and he shits the bed and becomes like a political martyr on Facebook, and all of a sudden his YouTube gets throttled, his Facebook gets throttled, his Instagram gets throttled, like, everything. How long can you weather that storm? And are they willing to pay you a base while they get everything? While they fix the ship? Right. And the answer is probably not. And so it's like, there's a time frame in which you can work with them. So that's why I recommend having two accounts. But a lot of people, like, they struggle to get accounts. To be perfectly honest, it's kind of like, it's a very common question I can ask, how do I get my first sales figure? And I'm like, well, I don't know, man. Like. Like, I. Like, I've never had a problem getting one. Like, I guess what we sort of provide is we provide access to multiple accounts. If one account goes down, we can shift into another one, you know, and so it kind of gives. Yeah, it's security and redundancy, and then, like, usually because you're on two accounts, you're quite busy, so that should help you Develop faster, you know. And then because we provide development, I do a big training every two weeks. Marco does a lot of training with everybody just instituting some slow, like some smaller, more defined two and three on one sessions with me. And then we do role plays. And then we have our staff portal, which is pretty much excellent. Yeah. That people have access to. And you know, they have a. We have a culture of development which I think people just want to get better and better. And I think one of the reasons is because we do have guys that are making significant incomes. We do have guys that are at 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a month in commissions.

Where did a guy do a $220,000 piff the other day off the back of four weeks earlier? $175,000.

Yeah. So there are pretty. People are making a lot of sales. And because all of our sales are public, like you could technically like just go through slack and figure out how much money someone's making. But the top guys are making 40 plus because they see that that's possible. That means that the younger guys know that that's their future if they just keep doing the right things, you know. Yeah.

As well as they've seen many people in that position develop to that level and go through that process and steps. But you mentioned a second ago, like there's a lot of churn rate in terms of accounts and salespeople on those accounts for the business owner. And I find a lot of that reason is, is because as a loan sales guy, you're finding these accounts yourself. And maybe you don't have a team that can evaluate whether they're good. Check in on the numbers, make sure it all seems legit, make sure their delivery is good, make sure there's a very well negotiated compensation plan. And a lot of people jump onto accounts and delivery sucks. They hate working with the guy. They don't have the numbers that they promised in terms of show up. They lied about lead quality and stuff. And then you get on the account you spend.

Remember that account that we were on when the guy told us that his biggest problem is he had too many good leads? Oh, yeah.

And that's why we couldn't make sales. Cause they're just too good.

Oh yeah. We were making. The thing is, we were making a lot of sales, but he was frustrated because more people weren't getting from being set all the way through to a sales call because the lead quality was horrendous. And they told us the biggest problem is they have too many good leads. And then and then the data should. Otherwise.

That was a fun conversation.

Just tell me your biggest problem is you have too many good leads. Is that what you just told me? Anyway, just for context, basically, we'd scraped the bottom of the barrel, and we were like. We'd farmed a Facebook group so much and so aggressively because they asked us to. There was just nothing left, and it was just like, they couldn't get people in it. Everything was falling apart, and we were just like, guys. Like, we've just gone too hard. We told you this would happen. We sold everybody and it would. The only people left were, like, strippers and drug dealers.

Yeah. And the issue was they weren't bringing any more people into that.

Yeah, there's no more people getting into the group.

So, you know, there was no refilling of the cup. But, yeah, like, people, you know, they leave those accounts because they've spent three months and it wasn't what was promised. So you've committed a significant portion of your time and lost potential income in the form of commission because there was no one doing the due diligence on that company. And. And vice versa. The business owner hires someone or, you know, even pays for recruitment, and the sales guy's just not that good, and they keep giving them a chance.

Really difficult. It's really difficult, unless you really understand sales, to evaluate a salesperson. And then it's very difficult for a salesperson because they don't generally know a lot about business to evaluate a business. So because we have. I understand sales. So we have a high caliber of salesperson. So we have an internal sales coach who just makes them do role plays and sends us call recordings, and then we evaluate them on their actual sales ability, and we can see potential as well. So it's like, oh, they have a bad structure, but we can see that they could be good because they have a good natural this, this, and this. But with a better structure, they'd be really good. Right. So we do that, and then we get sent accounts because we probably get, I would say, conservatively, five to six inquiries a week for people who want to do. Done for you stuff for us. And some of them are really good. They're just not a good fit. And anyway, yeah, like. And so now we've become quite good.

At, like, number of reasons we Sifting.

Sifting through the bull. Well, we can only take on one or two a month, tops. So many, you know, like. And now we're at the point where we're just replacing. So we're just taking accounts that are not producing consistently. And we're moving those onto like a more of a placement model and then from then bringing in those better ones for us. Right. So. But yeah, like that, that's a, that's a skill set that we've acquired over the last year or two because like in the beginning we got told. And if you're a sales guy, oh man, we have 400 leads a month and they're amazing. And we're closing at 70% and oh man, then you get in, there's like one call a week and you're like, what happened? Like, so business owners just inherently marketing went down.

Yeah.

A lot of business owners think they have really good lead. Like, they just think that because they think that their doesn't stink and their marketing is amazing. And most of the time, like, they're just not that good. Right. But it doesn't mean that they don't have potential. In the same way that a sales guy can come in, you can kind of look at it and go, all right, with some tweaks in the process, we can probably make this work. But most, most sales guys are going to overestimate their abilities. Most accounts are going to overestimate their opportunity. You know, so it's very rare that I've had someone. It's never happened where I've had a business owner come and say, yeah, you know, the leaves are pretty rough, but we have a half decent volume. And then you get in there and it's a playground. It's all rainbows and unicorns. It's most likely the opposite. But it's interesting.

You get the same with the sales guys. Like, they come in, they think they're better, closer than what they are. They think their structure is better. They think they can handle objections, but they don't recognize the objections. I think they got better numbers, they think they earn a lot more money, but it's just not the case. Well, don't get me wrong, there's something.

You'Ve got to get really good, like breaking down numbers. So like when I, when a sales guy comes to me, like, I'm very clear on like what numbers I want to see. And then I'll be very clear. Like, is that offers made or is that people who've turned up to the sales call? Because that could totally change the metric. But then I'll also go, how are your leads generated? And then I can there, like, if the leads are triaged, make a decision, and they're only closing at like 30% of triage leads, that's really bad. But if they're closing 30% of on a, on a one call, close, they're not being triaged. I'd be like, oh, that's pretty good. Depending, you know what I mean?

So, yeah. Or they just put on the triage and put everyone through.

If it was offers made versus not. I just, you know, I mean, it's a totally bull unreadable metric. And then as well, when I have an account owner come to me, like, I'll ask them their numbers in a totally disjointed manner. Because if you ask them like in a logical manner, like how many people opt in, how many do you get on the phone, how many do a triage, how many do a sales call, how many buy, they can just essentially make those numbers up into what they think they are. We had a guy who hired us for consulting, told us they closed at 90%. He was dead set. That was the number. And I made him confirm it like three times. Then we got in. They literally don't track that metric. Yeah, it's like, and it was probably around 20, like, because we had to look at the numbers going back and it was nowhere near. It was absolute ridiculousness. Like there was on no, on no level of reality was that number even close to being achieved. And so it's like it was a guess. But he believed it. That was his. We closed at 90%. He said, we have a 90% show up rate to triage. We have a 90% pass through rate, a 90% show up rate to sales call, and a 90% close rate. I was like, me, that is incredible. And I asked him like a bunch of times. Yeah.

My next question would be, how much is the product? Yeah. $10,000.

And how much money?

Okay. And how much did you grow last month? We stayed about the same. Okay, so you lose not like 90% of your people on a monthly basis. No, no. Retention is amazing. It's like 7%. Then why didn't you grow?

Yeah, how is this possible? So how did you physically, like, yeah, it's happened.

You're breaking the law. Physics.

Hang on a second, buddy. This doesn't make any sense. So the way that I'll ask it is like I'll ask the revenue and then I'll ask like the show up rate for here and then I'll ask like the close rate and then I'll ask like the show up rate to sales call and then I'll ask for like the retention rate and then you ask for how much the product is and then you Ask for how many sales they made last month. How many leads did you generate last month? Like, hang on a second. None of this adds up at all. And because they can't keep track of it. And if they're making it up, they'll just make up numbers and none of it'll make any sense. But if you ask it in a random order and every number makes sense, then, you know, they're probably telling somewhere near the truth.

I always ask revenue lost. Because the next thing I said to that is, you know, let's say the program's 2,000amonth, right? And they say, oh, yeah, yeah, revenues are 80,000. Like, oh, cool. So you got 40 clients then, right? Now, like, oh, no, no, we got like 12. Like, well, how does that work out? Is that your revenue?

Like, yeah, that's a big one too. Because some motherfuckers will count revenue as, like, contract value, right? So, like, which is not your revenue.

No, it is not.

That's accrued revenue. That's not your revenue. And so we've nearly been fooled by that as well. If you're talking. If you're talking to a marketing company, right? Some of them will charge the ad spend to their client, right? And they will include the ad spend in the revenue. Remember we were doing a thing with that guy?

Yeah.

And he was like, how much money do you make? We did exactly that. And then we were like, hang on a second. That makes no sense, dude. And he was like, he had his 2 comma Club Award room in the back, and none of it made any sense. And we were like, what is happening here? And we smashed him around a fair bit. And we're like, hang on a second. What? And he was like, oh, yeah? Well, I charge about 50 to 60 thousand dollars. I think it was 60 thousand dollars a month on ad spend. I charge that to my clients. I go, so you're making 30 grand a month? He said he was making a hundred, right? And he's like, so you're actually making 30? He was like, yeah. And I was like, so why the didn't you just say you're making 30 grand a month, bro? I was like, I don't include expenses in my. In my revenue. Like, what is like. And that's how he got the 2 comma club.

And he was so proud of that. He got the two common club award after having seven clients paying two grand.

The stupid thing is he's using stripe, which takes 3%, which means he's losing 3% of that money and paying it back to Facebook on credit card.

So like forex rates, stripe fee, credit card fee, then the return fee to the client. I was like, man, just to inflated number.

Like he's using Amex. So like Facebook charges you a fee to pay on Amex. So he didn't realize, but he was probably losing. I don't know. I would say conservatively three to $4,000 a month in bullshit fees that he's paying because he wanted to have the ego metric of being able to sage 100 grand a month when it's not real because it's being given direct to Facebook.

At least he got.

So he didn't realize, but he was probably losing. I don't know. I would say conservatively, three to four thousand dollars a month in bullshit fees that he's paying because he wanted to have the ego metric of being able to sage 100gr when it's not real because it's being put given direct to Facebook.

At least he got a nice replica ripoff of a platinum cd. Yeah, but anyway, so if that kind of sounds like what you're doing, you probably need a done for your service.

No.

We'Ll go to someone else. You know, anyway, that was.

I was idiot.

Yeah, I had that come. I've had that conversation so many times. And what are you doing? It's so easy just to be like, come on, really?

But yeah, anyway, that's things to look out for if you're a sales guy looking at a business because like you can get bamboozled by that pretty easily all of a sudden. It's just true.

We should put together a not an sop, but a free downloader on what to look for a spot about account.

Yeah, we can maybe comment. Summer comment. I don't know. Sop. If you want us to do that. If you're still. If you're still watching, we'll play it to you. That's what we're sort of. I don't think we have to go through much more today, but. Oh well. How can an accountant spot a salesperson?

Don't listen to that call and take them for their word that they close out. But like, you need to have experience or at least ideally in that industry, you do a role play. You listen to a call, you ask them to pitch you. Like, if you're just a sole business owner getting yourselves right, give them the material, let them study it. Don't hire them, let them pitch you. Get them to sell you your product after listening to one of your calls. And if they can do it with them, like even a minuscule amount of resemblance that sounds good and looks good and they have a clear understanding of the information presented and they're good culturally going to be okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Good cultural fit. You should be fine.

Also, if you're good at sales yourself, then hire on the culture with someone that does have good potential and mold them the way that they need to be molded to sell your offer. Excellent.

And don't try and get someone to sell the exact same way you do because it's never going to work. It's stupid. I've talked about it a hundred times. Anyway, I think that's all we need to go through for today. So I appreciate you all. Make sure you like subscribe hit notification bell whatever it is you listen to this on. If you are listening to this on your phone, it's a podcast. Make sure you subscribe, share this with a friend. Do something to get the word out and we appreciate all of you have.

A fantastic good news is we've just okayed 10 more done few clients over the next five months. So if you feel like you're one.

Of those, even better news I'm about to buy a new camera.

Also DM Matt directly information about that.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Because you'll for sure get a reply. Yeah.

And we promise it won't be a.

4 the 4000 other DMS that I get today. All right guys, have a good day. Bye. Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only.