Loading...
Answers
MenuWe have leads for our solution. However, we don't have the sales people to follow-up and close opportunities. How can we solve this problem?
The typical size of the deal is 20K.
Answers
Here is the deal: as an entrepreneur, you must be the best sales person at your company. There aren't any excuses that can combat that. Then, once the business has a revenue stream, you may hire a small sales team to continue new business into the sales funnel.
In order to become successful, you (and your co-founders) must make an effort to pursue those leads on your own.
If you need help on developing a system or a sales process, do not hesitate to message me. I would love to help. I have done sales strategy consulting and coaching many times and have trained many entrepreneurs to become successful in sales.
If you schedule a call with me and do not think it was worth your time and money, I will refund your money no questions asked.
However, you should shoot me a message and explain to me a little bit better what your situation is exactly so I can figure out how I can best help. I always give free email support until your goals are achieved.
Hope to see a message from you soon.
- Colin
Is that $20.00 per unit? Or, is there a zero missing?
Tough to say without knowing what your product or service is, but if it's something they can purchase online, you can hook up a payment system to your site and use data segmentation and email nurturing campaigns to drive them to purchase.
Happy to discuss how to approach this with you in greater detail if you'd like to schedule a call.
If you have the leads and a good product hire sales people. Either commission only, minimum base salary if they opt for that prior to starting the week's sales period... If they feel they're on a learning curve you motivate them with tools and tips but make them feel safe and calm with a secure base pay while they get things working for them.
Hire straight salary.
That is actually a fantastic problem to have.
We went through a similar situation during the early days of my startup.
You really have two options: either recruit sales people or automate the process by improving your conversion funnel.
If your deal size is as large as you've mentioned, ($20K), it might be in your best interest to hire a real person/team to do the closing.
Recruiting, vetting, and working with a killer sales team, is completely different discussion.
Hope that helps! Happy to answer any other questions you may have :)
You have some great advice here. Of course the devil is in the details. We don't know what you are selling. I assume you are working as hard as possible. How do you make your company look and operate larger than it actually is? LEVERAGE. Can you hire sales agents to sell your product? Can you find resellers? Is your product part of a broader solution? If so, can you recruit integrators. Also, are there master reseller opportunities. These are just a few questions I would have. Also, are we talking about qualified leads are inquiries?
Best of luck.
Denny
Establish a sales funnel.... Use cheaper / less experienced people to qualify and make appointments whether personal or virtual. Use more experienced people to have a conversation and/or the final close. Most sales are a three step process, especially in a higher value item. Don't rush the close, establish the value. Apart from this basic idea, everything has to be custom tailored to your particular needs. Let me know if you need further help developing this.
I am a startup mentor and business consultant for early stage startups.
There are different approaches which might work here. For $20/deal it's not very much you can do to close deals and it is questionable if you should get sales reps with such a deal size.
So, if you can't get reps....what can you do?
There are two questions here which you should answer before hand to get a better understanding of your sales:
1) How do you determine whether your leads have real potential and are ready to close the deal?
This questions is quite important, because you don't have the time and recourses to follow up on leads which don't have any potential or are not fitting your own profile. You should definitely take a look into lead nurturing/scoring and make sure that you pre-filter your leads and break them down into the leads which have a high chance to buy your product.
2) How do leads reach you?
There are various sales workflow products which will help you send out some automatic emails.
I hope that this will offer you some more insights. Feel free to reach out to me, so I can answers your questions more specific.
As a small business owner, you are the salesperson. No one understands and owns your product more than you do. Is there a reason you are not closing those $20k deals? Do you not have the time? The skills? The processes?
Without knowing the details of your operation, I can only make assumptions. A friend said to me that he is not a sales person. I beg to differ. If you are passionate about something, you will be able to persuade someone to take action on it.
That said, if you are simple unable to close the sales, which is a different issue to address, then hire a sales person. You will need a talented person with great people skills who will learn your product intimately, build rapport and relationships with your leads/prospects and move them through a sales cycle to close the sale.
Hope that helps. Let's get on the phone if you need more assistance. I can definitely help! Best of wishes!
Hire a VA to do it.
If you have leads for your solution but lack the resources to follow up and close opportunities, there are several options to be consider:
1)Consider establishing partnerships with resellers or distributors who can sell your solution on your behalf.
2)Implementing sales automation software and tools can streamline your sales process and make it more efficient.
3) Invest in training and developing your existing team to enhance their sales skills.
4)Another option is to outsource your sales function to a third-party sales agency or freelancers.
Remember to assess the costs and benefits of each option.
I've been in similar situation recently. You need to hire "CLOSERS". Closers are the people where you sent your warm leads to, and they will close the deal for you. Closers work on commission based only, therefore the deal size matters. $20K is ideal. Two of the best place that I know to source Closers are : Dan Lok and Grant Cardone. Dan Lok and Grant Cardone have the institutions where they train and provide the best closers in the world.
Related Questions
-
What's a reasonable profit margin on merchandise?
Are you the manufacturer or reseller? If you are the reseller, typically about 40-50% above cost. Use the MSRP as an indicator.ZR
-
What do (bootstrapped) startups offer to new sales hires? Commission only? What are some good examples to keep people motivated and still survive?
Generally bootstrapped startups should avoid salespeople, for a few reasons: a. they typically can't afford the base and overall comp required to attract sales people who can actually sell / or afford to support them with marketing, management, etc b. it will be very difficult to find the rare person with the right mix of sales and startup DNA along with the critical domain knowledge, consequently the startup is likely to settle c. the founders need to be very involved in the selling and customers will demand it That said, if the plan is still to hire a salesperson, find someone who has demonstrated sales success in startups and is excited by the early stage in company building. Create a comp plan heavily leveraged on sales results (unless you are in an industry where 100% commission is a common practice, would recommend against $0 base as this creates the false impression that your hire isn't passing time with one company while looking for another job with a richer comp plan - you want your rep focussed). Sell the vision and opportunity to be part of a growth story. I have written a several blog posts on hiring sales people into start-ups. You might find these useful: http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/ceo-question-should-i-learn-to-sell-or-hire-a-sales-person/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/start-up-sales-and-hiring-advice-dont-stop-selling-once-you-hire-your-first-sales-rep/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/hiring-start-up-sales-reps/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/startups-and-salespeople/ Good luck!EB
-
What should my consulting rates be as a freelance developer who can also do SEO, social media optimization and other marketing services?
Pricing for different tasks that require the same amount of time from you tells the Customer (and your subconscious) that you're working at a 5 on task x, but working at a 9 on task y simply because it costs/earns more. That seems to be a disconnect. Your time is your most precious asset, and I would charge for it whatever you're doing. If you build a site, and they are happy with your dev fee, but feel like you should charge less for SEO, simply let them find another SEO guy. That's their choice, but YOU are worth $xx.xx, no matter what you're doing. Also, in general, take whatever you're charging and add 10% to it. If you're still busy, add another 10%. Let the demand level determine how much work you do, and at what cost.SL
-
Best sales funnel to scale $47 fitness infoproduct?
Scaling with paid/cold traffic is a very different kind of beast. Depending on your paid traffic source their motivations and behavior is different than that of a house list or affiliate / JV traffic. Usually paid (cold) traffic is more difficult to convert with a $47 initial offer. I've had success warming up this type of traffic, with clients of mine, before asking for that level of sale. There are some exceptions to the rule depending on how rabid your market is to buy, but the fitness niche is usually more skeptical. You can warm them up by starting with an email opt in to a lead magnet then present them with your $47 sales offer, theres a side benefit to this as well. The other way to warm them up is to start with a survey leading them into a customized VSL to your $47 product. There's also some major benefits here if you segment your traffic right. As far as after the initial sale in regards to the backend funnel itself my typical flow looks like this: Sales page > Up Sell #1 > Down Sell #1 > Up Sell #2 > Thank you page. However some of my clients have much more than 2 up sells in place in some funnels. The trick is that your up sells should flow logically to each other. Meaning make your first up sell a product that gets your target market to their desired solution faster and easier with the up sell. For your down sell, you can keep the same product / offer but lower the price or offer a payment plan. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.BH
-
What would be a good answer for describing the size of your company to a potential prospect who might consider you too small to service their account?
What an awesome question! Businesses are running into this issue more frequently that ever, good news is, it can be done. Having worked on projects with oDesk, Fox Television and Wikipedia and having a very very small staff, it's certainly possible. Here's how I say it in our pitches to larger organizations: "Tractive West provides tailored video production services to organizations of all sizes. We have developed a distributed workflow using the latest digital tools. We leverage our small creative and management team with a world wide network of creative professionals, that means we can rapidly scale to meet the demands of any project while keeping our infrastructure and overhead lightweight and sustainable." Cheers and best of luck.SM
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.