The business is 10 years old and going from strength to strength, what’s the secret?
There’s no secret, other than we always do the very best for our clients and are always working hard to improve what we do. Our ethos of continual improvement is the DNA of Virtual Sales Team (VST). Whether it’s how we recruit and look after our employees or work with clients and report to them – we’re always refining and making changes to deliver the best possible campaign.
Sixty percent of our new business comes from referrals, that speaks for itself. Our clients recommend us because they’re happy with the service we provide. They know they’re valued and that we deliver results.
Most businesses rely on leads and new business, why do you think they should consider outsourcing these services?
All businesses need new opportunities, whether that’s from existing customers or new prospects. The biggest challenge is that most companies find it difficult to increase their sales and marketing activity quickly or conversely, decrease it should they need time to deliver the current order book. That’s where we can help. For example, by setting new business sales appointments for our client’s senior salespeople, we’re providing a truly scalable solution. This keeps their best face-to-face salespeople in front of clients and prospects, and also gives them the opportunity to reduce activity should they need to.
Managing fluctuations in activity is a human resources headache, outsourcing takes this pain away completely. Also, asking your sales reps to do a set number of cold calls per week is challenging, and I can guarantee that ninety percent of those tasked won’t succeed. In my experience, they’ll become distracted by any other job. When you outsource your activity, you’re guaranteed this difficult but vital activity will be completed every week.
Outsourcing is also less expensive when you factor in the cost of potentially hiring the wrong salesperson. It can cost four or five times that of the actual salary for hiring incorrectly when you take into account the full implications. These can range from the recruitment fees, training/management time or if things go very badly, managing customer complaints and lost business. When you outsource, all you pay for is a setup fee and fully inclusive day rate. All you need to worry about is servicing the opportunities we generate for you.
What’s in store for VST in the future?
We believe we’re innovators in our industry, so you can expect plenty of new products and services to push us forward through improvement in measurement, process, and efficiency. We also want to be closing more sales for clients as well as generating the meetings, or as we like to call it – ‘closing the loop’. We are also launching our own telemarketing training courses and telephone account management service, so watch this space.
What’s the key to a successful partnership with VST?
To get the most out of a partnership with us (and the best ROI) we ask clients to treat us like an extension of their sales and marketing team, not a supplier. We strive to become a true partner to our clients, which means celebrating our successes as well as working together on areas that might need improvement. We thrive on feedback, warts and all – it’s the only way to improve and refine.
To give an example, we’ve just launched a feedback app for the salespeople who attend the appointments that we’ve set for them. The app allows them to rate the quality of the appointment before they leave the prospects car park. The feedback is fresh and there’s no paperwork to complete, but more importantly – we all receive the feedback instantly. We are the first in our industry to do this.
Another important factor for success in working with us is to ensure the campaign is set up correctly and then being a little patient as the pipeline develops. What we do doesn’t happen overnight – it happens over time. Our most successful clients are the ones that have worked with us the longest, allowing us to fully manage the pipeline and give it a chance to flourish.
