Recommend a partner to sell annual memberships a B2B Online Information .

BenEadir

I'm looking for suggestions for outsourced solutions for selling a B2B online information portal service which gives companies access to specialist information. The portal is live and has some paid members but sales isn't the strong point of the company who built and run it so they're looking to outsource member acquisition. I know the owner of the business so I'm just looking for suggestions as to who he might approach for such a service and how the cost of something like that might work?

I won't disclose the identity of the business but the portal is similar to having access to a comprehensive suite of up to date information and tools which certain types of professionals would otherwise have to access manually. It's an annual membership model of (for example) €300 per individual account with discounts for companies who purchase 5 licences, 10 licences and so on.

Can anyone suggest either a business or an individual contractor based in Ireland (if a call centre the staff must be physically based in Ireland) who specialises in dialling for dollars to sell B2B software/services on a success basis i.e. they are primarily paid €x for each membership sold?

Feel free to PM me if you want.

Thanks.

BenEadir

^^^ 42 views and no posts. Am I in the wrong forum or am I asking for something that doesn't exist?

thecommander

There is no detail in your post. I have a thing, that some people might want and I'll pay X for it to be sold to Y. Even if you said it was for travel agents, or medical companies or whatever you might get an answer.

jimmii

Its a very specific thing which unless someone has that exact experience of using all anyone is going to know is what you can get from a google search. Best thing to do is find some Irish call centres and get it touch with them.

BenEadir

thecommander wrote: »

There is no detail in your post. I have a thing, that some people might want and I'll pay X for it to be sold to Y. Even if you said it was for travel agents, or medical companies or whatever you might get an answer.

Apologies, let me clarify. The service is aimed at accountants and is therefore relevant to any company which has one or more accountants e.g. in a finance/accounts department. It is also relevant to accounting practices but no more so than it is relevant to accountants in industry. Consequently the target market are all commercial entities regardless of size or industry.

The challenge/opportunity is to cold call companies to speak with the accountant/FC/FD, succinctly explain the service, possibly offer a time limited free trial and if the user converts to a paid account (or buys several paid accounts) the outsourced sales service gets a fee, or something along those lines.

It's very much a professional B2B sale so the provider needs to be Irish based and specialise in/have a track record of selling services/SaaS type products.

I hope that helps.

BenEadir

jimmii wrote: »

Its a very specific thing which unless someone has that exact experience of using all anyone is going to know is what you can get from a google search. Best thing to do is find some Irish call centres and get it touch with them.

Thanks Jimmii, I was hoping to get a warm referral here for some organisations/individuals who would specialise in outsourced B2B sales but if that doesn't materialise contacting call centers or hiring/contracting an individual to perform the role will be the next step.

BenEadir

^^^^ So there are no recommendations then? I thought there'd be lots of options known by posters in this section of Boards but I guess not.

Thanks for having a look.

JD Dublin

BenEadir wrote: »

I'm looking for suggestions for outsourced solutions for selling a B2B online information portal service which gives companies access to specialist information. The portal is live and has some paid members but sales isn't the strong point of the company who built and run it so they're looking to outsource member acquisition. I know the owner of the business so I'm just looking for suggestions as to who he might approach for such a service and how the cost of something like that might work?

I won't disclose the identity of the business but the portal is similar to having access to a comprehensive suite of up to date information and tools which certain types of professionals would otherwise have to access manually. It's an annual membership model of (for example) €300 per individual account with discounts for companies who purchase 5 licences, 10 licences and so on.

Can anyone suggest either a business or an individual contractor based in Ireland (if a call centre the staff must be physically based in Ireland) who specialises in dialling for dollars to sell B2B software/services on a success basis i.e. they are primarily paid €x for each membership sold?

Feel free to PM me if you want.

Thanks.

Would they not think of setting up an office here to do that sort of work? Anyone I know that does ''dial for dollars'' has someone in-house to do the work for them. It does involve boots on the ground for the person selling the service, but they get a dedicated worker ( s) to do their bidding. They get good call reports and can track what is going on and what the employee is doing for their wages.

What you are asking for is not logical, as if the service / product does not sell then the call centre does not get paid, yet they are paying out wages. Who'd take that on? You are trying to transfer the commercial risk from the seller ( you or your customer ) to the services provider.

pedroeibar1

I have considerable experience in selling and managing the sale of B2B services to a similar market (C-suite, but CFO predominant) both here and overseas. You have to do it yourself with a dedicated salesforce. It does not have to be employees, you can select a salesforce that can carry your product as an add-on to their product but you MUST have close control of them. Outsourcing the job to a call centre is a total waste of time. It was tried by one of my competitors who used it to pre-qualify sales leads and the results were abysmal – it created a negative image of the product and vendor; a very large proportion of the leads generated were spurious because the calls/appointments arranged were done just to get the call centre off the phone and resulted in no-shows when the sales agent arrived.
I suggest you examine how companies such as business information providers like Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, etc., tackle their target markets.

BenEadir

Hi JD,

Thanks for the feedback.

Let me respond to your points in the order you raised them

JD Dublin wrote: »

Would they not think of setting up an office here to do that sort of work? Anyone I know that does ''dial for dollars'' has someone in-house to do the work for them. It does involve boots on the ground for the person selling the service, but they get a dedicated worker ( s) to do their bidding. They get good call reports and can track what is going on and what the employee is doing for their wages.

They tried that twice by hiring two different people who on paper had the skills and experience and both times it was an expensive failure. There are numerous causes but one of them is that this membership service is a by product of the main consulting the company does. It is a totally different sale to the main business so a) it doesn't get the attention it needs and b) the management team have no experience of selling this type of service.

JD Dublin wrote: »

What you are asking for is not logical, as if the service / product does not sell then the call centre does not get paid, yet they are paying out wages. Who'd take that on? You are trying to transfer the commercial risk from the seller ( you or your customer ) to the services provider.

I have to disagree with you there JD. All resellers/distributors take on commercial risk when agreeing to sell a product. If they buy stock and sell none of it they lose. If they buy stock and sell it all at a high margin they win. It's business. Service like http://callpageboy.ie/outbound-call-centre-services/sales-switching-campaigns are experienced enough to do their homework on the product and propose pricing which reflects the risk they are taking on e.g. they can trial different approaches/call scripts with 100 sample calls of each, see what works best, see what hit rates they achieve and base their pricing on that data plus their own experience. Your argument is valid if the fee payable per membership signed up was €10 or something silly like that but if the company are prepared to offer (for example) a fee of €100 per membership signed up and a call centre operator can (based on initial sample data) expect to close 8 memberships a day I'd say the risk being transferred is more than compensated by the reward to the call centre.

BenEadir

Hi Pedro,

Thanks for your insightful response. Much appreciated.

As I mentioned in the post above the company have twice tried to hire a sales person and it failed, primarily I believe due to the fact that this service isn't the "main" focus of the business and the management don't have any experience in selling a service like this so even if there is a dedicated sales person they aren't being managed properly.

Let me respond to your other points:

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I have considerable experience in selling and managing the sale of B2B services to a similar market (C-suite, but CFO predominant) both here and overseas. You have to do it yourself with a dedicated salesforce. It does not have to be employees, you can select a salesforce that can carry your product as an add-on to their product but you MUST have close control of them.

I do believe this is the preferable solution but the company management have no experience of selling a service like this so I'm afraid managing an outsourced salesforce would be even less effective than trying to manage an internal employee!!

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Outsourcing the job to a call centre is a total waste of time. It was tried by one of my competitors who used it to pre-qualify sales leads and the results were abysmal – it created a negative image of the product and vendor; a very large proportion of the leads generated were spurious because the calls/appointments arranged were done just to get the call centre off the phone and resulted in no-shows when the sales agent arrived.

This service sells itself once the target professionals try it, there won't be any appointment setting for face to face sales meetings. The call centre would be tasked with getting through to the target professional, briefly explaining the service and offering a free 7 day trial to the potential customer. At the end of the 7 days a second call would be made to enquire if the trialist would like to purchase an annual licence. If they do the sale is either made by Credit Card over the phone or an invoice is issued to the company to pay by EFT/Cheque. Once payment is received the account goes live and the sales agent gets paid.

I'm sure there are better ways to sell the service and they may evolve over time but right no no sales are being made so the company have to do try something different otherwise the service will die and there won't be a service to sell better in the future.

JD Dublin

BenEadir wrote: »

Hi JD,

Thanks for the feedback.

Let me respond to your points in the order you raised them

They tried that twice by hiring two different people who on paper had the skills and experience and both times it was an expensive failure. There are numerous causes but one of them is that this membership service is a by product of the main consulting the company does. It is a totally different sale to the main business so a) it doesn't get the attention it needs and b) the management team have no experience of selling this type of service.

I have to disagree with you there JD. All resellers/distributors take on commercial risk when agreeing to sell a product. If they buy stock and sell none of it they lose. If they buy stock and sell it all at a high margin they win. It's business. Service like http://callpageboy.ie/outbound-call-centre-services/sales-switching-campaigns are experienced enough to do their homework on the product and propose pricing which reflects the risk they are taking on e.g. they can trial different approaches/call scripts with 100 sample calls of each, see what works best, see what hit rates they achieve and base their pricing on that data plus their own experience. Your argument is valid if the fee payable per membership signed up was €10 or something silly like that but if the company are prepared to offer (for example) a fee of €100 per membership signed up and a call centre operator can (based on initial sample data) expect to close 8 memberships a day I'd say the risk being transferred is more than compensated by the reward to the call centre.

Fair points, but selling a service is not like selling tangible products. The seller should "get" what the service. I suppose a smart alec reply to your would be to say "well why dont you use callpageboy.ie"". So why dont you or your customer do that?

I think you are probably right about the rate of commission needed to incentivise the seller. In my experience the service providers dont like handing over that much of their income. But maybe I lead a sheltered life.

BenEadir

JD Dublin wrote: »

Fair points, but selling a service is not like selling tangible products. The seller should "get" what the service. I suppose a smart alec reply to your would be to say "well why dont you use callpageboy.ie"". So why dont you or your customer do that?

They may well. It's one of the options I found when researching this. I found a couple of others who I think would have a better cultural fit, they are small and hungry and an opportunity like this would be a good filler for them during times when their ultilisation is low to even out their work loads.

JD Dublin wrote: »

I think you are probably right about the rate of commission needed to incentivise the seller. In my experience the service providers dont like handing over that much of their income. But maybe I lead a sheltered life.

My argument to the company is that hiring the last two guys incurred relatively large fixed costs, a bed in period while the guy got to grips with the service/target market etc and then more cost when it didn't work out plus the opportunity cost of lost profit from lost sales. As this is an already built service the marginal cost of adding a user is minimal so it is possible to offer an attractive revenue share in year one as you are only incurring costs when sales are actually made and you capture full revenue in years 2,3,4 and so on assuming the churn rate is modest.

That's the plan anyway!!

BTW, I don't work for the Company or consult to it. I just happen to know the owner and how frustrated he is having made a big (for the size of company) investment in the service which appears to be well received by users but isn't being sold very well. I'm just trying to help him find a solution for now which a) is economically viable and b) will get some critical mass of users on the service without disrupting his focus from the core business.

I might get a nice bottle of wine if I point him in the right direction!!!

pedronomix

This thread has been rattling about in my brain, something fundamental is wrong but it would not reveal itself. And then bingo, let me put this forward:
business idea/concept/product grew inside a larger organisation whose main activity is quite different to this operation. The owners are clueless as to how to market/sell it... as they don't have any experience is this field, should not be unexpected. It does not matter a whit how good it is unless they have the plan and skill sets on how to market/sell it to the targets, every sector/segment has its own nuances as to what succeeds.

As part of a larger organisation, it probably has no internal "business leader/driver/champion" the brains made the product, let the plebs sell it kinda thing!

Solution: Spin it off to a proper entrepreneurial sales go-getter who will immerse himself in the business of doing business. The detail of a deal itself is just that, the key is to liberate it to allow it to flourish in the hands of some suitably talented dynamo! Might even fancy a cut at it myself!!

BenEadir

pedronomix wrote: »

This thread has been rattling about in my brain, something fundamental is wrong but it would not reveal itself. And then bingo, let me put this forward:
business idea/concept/product grew inside a larger organisation whose main activity is quite different to this operation. The owners are clueless as to how to market/sell it... as they don't have any experience is this field, should not be unexpected. It does not matter a whit how good it is unless they have the plan and skill sets on how to market/sell it to the targets, every sector/segment has its own nuances as to what succeeds.

As part of a larger organisation, it probably has no internal "business leader/driver/champion" the brains made the product, let the plebs sell it kinda thing!

Solution: Spin it off to a proper entrepreneurial sales go-getter who will immerse himself in the business of doing business. The detail of a deal itself is just that, the key is to liberate it to allow it to flourish in the hands of some suitably talented dynamo! Might even fancy a cut at it myself!!

Nothing wrong with your logic there. If outsourced sales is tried and fails then i do think the business would consider selling this fledgling business (which is separately branded etc) to a third party who can fully exploit it.

If that decision is made I'll revert to you!

pedroeibar1

I’d share Pedronomix’s thinking on this, he’s on the money.

What you have us a classic case of selling a low-cost product that requires high-level skills and input. The target market is sophisticated, (uneconomic to reach by physical visit) and difficult to reach by phone, which is why I said outsourcing to a telesales team cannot work. You need accurately targeted niche marketing, combining telephone sales linked with email and a good CRM system. (Question – does target have to be CFO level, could it be someone more junior/hands-on down the line? A drawback is that a more junior contact might not have use of the company credit card for eventual purchase/payment.) The issue is compounded by the reluctance of product owners to take ownership of this product – I infer they are outside their comfort zones and possibly developers/tech guys rather than sales. (Nothing sells itself BTW!). If they do not want to sell, it can only have a chance of success if one person is given responsibility to oversee the development.

Use sales agents rather than employees. Start with one, give the agent a sole territory (say Dublin South/postcodes/whatever, but define it) and a desk and a phone. Pay a high rate of commission on completion of the sale and pay a sliding scale of commission on signed contracts over a four year period e.g. 80 – 50 – 30 – 10%.* It pays to follow up and have an interest in the customer for at least a year to ensure renewal. Be prepared to invest on a percentage basis at appropriate trade shows/professional events.

To get the right salesperson you might have to front-end it for a period, offer a weekly up-front payment certainly not more than the minimum wage, so the person can live until they get off the ground. It is not a salary, call it something else. Using the CRM system monitor the number of calls made, contact success rates, conversion rates, etc. You then have a model to work from, expand to other geographic areas with new agents. It will be clear if the agent has the drive/ability to succeed and underperformers can be told that unless the success rate improves their up-front payment will be gone. That usually sorts it out and they leave.

*You need to examine the commission structure to ensure that the reward ratio is fair to all parties. If the product is excellent a good salesperson should have a 25% success rate on calls and a take-up rate of about 5% i.e. five out of every 100 calls.