Ask HN: Outsourcing sales to virtual freelancers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7971308

by gingerlime • 12 years ago

8 6 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hey HN, We're a bunch of geeks building a new platform for learning anatomy[0].

We know that we're supposed to be doing sales ourselves. Get away from the keyboard and hit the phones, blogs and emails. We tried it. It just doesn't work for us. It really (really!) doesn't.

Recruiting or finding another more sales-savvy co-founder would be great. But we haven't met anyone (yet). We're bootstrapped, so can't pay a real salary either at this stage. But we do have some budget. And we do realize that sales are super-important for a startup.

Now to the question: Is there a good (or at least not a total disaster) strategy to using freelancers or virtual sales staff on odesk / elance or similar?

If we can't do sales ourselves, does it necessarily mean we will also fail finding the right people to help do some cold calls / help promoting us??

Any other tips??

[0] https://www.kenhub.com

silver1• 12 years ago

you should try affiliate marketing ... offer generous commission as you dont have to pay basic salary.

gingerlime3• 12 years ago

Thanks, we tried a bit of that, but not entirely sure how to scale this and heared some horror stories about fraud, spam and some ugly practices... Happy to pay a nice commission for real genuine sales, but not sure where to start and how to structure it...

EDIT: I should mention that we're a very niche product with rather specific target audience. So general affiliate networks might not be ideal. Or maybe I'm wrong, but don't know where to look.

JSeymourATL• 12 years ago

The Sales, Lead Generation, & Appointment Setters you'll find on Elance vary greatly in terms of expertise and abilities. Generally speaking, the good ones will command higher fees. Difficult to prove strong ROI on a bootstrappers budget.

Recruiting a sales-savvy co-founder is a smart play, and well worth the extra time and effort required. Build this vital project into your calender. Think when the Beatles went looking a for Ringo.

One last tip-- Dropbox enjoyed success scaling up with their referral program> https://www.dropbox.com/help/200/en It's an easy model to replicate.

gingerlime3• 12 years ago

We do have a referral program that actually pays money back (sadly, we can't add Gbs to the quota like dropbox). It's doing ok, but far from a viral storm.

We do recognize that reaching out to students / student associations is probably the best route, but for that we need some kind of sales abilities, which we lack. Hence the "Ask HN" post.

collin128• 12 years ago

Sales-savvy-co-founder of a bootstrapped company here. Stop. You don't need a sales person, you shouldn't be cold calling, or even selling over the phone.

Why?

It won't be profitable at your current pricing model ($132/year) unless you are pursuing large universities or university buying groups that can purchase 75+ licenses per year (~$10k ACV).

If your ACV for each sale is over $10k (even $5k but that's getting down there) then it makes sense to have a direct sales team.

If your ACV is under $10k, then you'll need to find more capital efficient ways of reaching customers. Not my area of expertise, David Skok has a great post about sales complexity that'll do a much better job than I can [0].

If you're ACV is above $10k I'd be happy to offer some tips on building a sales team behind that (I don't charge for consulting). We have a product that you're a little too early for but may be able to help when you're further down the road.

My details are in my profile, feel free to reach out if you'd like some advice.

[0] http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-complexity/

Edit: Moving link to bottom.

gingerlime3• 12 years ago

Thanks for the info. We're not thinking about direct sales to end-users, but also not to universities (who typically don't really care how easy or hard it is for their students to pass the exam, even though there are some image-licensing opportunities with universities... but that's not the main focus).

We are hoping to reach medical student associations and offer some opportunity for affiliate programs. We've had some success with those, even though in all cases so far we were the ones contacted by those associations. We think those have the best reach to students in our niche market. A good sales person could find their way to reach those targets. Or that's the hope anyway.

In any case, thanks again for the advice, and we'll look up the info and might take you on your offer.

Ask HN: Outsourcing sales to virtual freelancers?

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