Call center sales outsourcing.
Companies around the world widely practice leasing premises and equipment – this is considered natural and profitable, while leasing employees is less common. Most managers prefer to entrust the hiring of specialists to their HR department, and if something goes wrong, and the staff turns out to be insufficiently qualified or not suitable for other reasons, the search is repeated again and again, trying to fill the vacancy. But there is a simple way not only to solve this problem with brilliant results, but also to significantly reduce costs with the help of call center sales outsourcing.
What does a businessman usually do when the company lacks managers?
Situation
Business is developing, traffic is growing along with the load while staff cannot cope with the new volume of tasks.
Questions to ask yourself:
- How quickly can the company train the required number of managers?
- How does this fit the staff hiring restrictions?
- Are there employees on the team who are experienced and multi-tasking enough to undertake the responsibility of training newcomers and at the same time begin to expand the sales department?
Solutions you could consider:
- Recruit and train future specialists of a sales call center or, for example, a support call center, independently;
- Seek help from a recruiting agency;
- Resort to out-staffing.
All three options have their advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons, as well as the pitfalls that you may have to be ready to face.
As you can see, there are plenty of disadvantages and problems along any of the three paths. But there is a fourth option, which allows, if not to avoid problems and risks, then at least to minimize them. It looks like this: completely stop participating in the search for employees, and delegate the process with all risks, expenses and difficulties to professionals by transferring to full call center outsourcing.
Typically, this option is used by those who:
- Engaged enough in hiring and training staff to no longer want to deal with this labor-intensive process;
- He is good at math and knows how much it will cost his company to expand its own staff;
- Cannot spend countless hours interviewing and screening candidates and wants to fill vacancies as quickly as possible;
- Understands that he does not have extensive knowledge in this matter and looks for someone who has experience in outsourced marketing and sales to save resources and reduce search time;
- Tries different strategies to find the most profitable one.
I came to the conclusion long ago that it is the fourth way that allows you to solve problems as quickly as possible without spending extra financial and time resources.
Setting a goal
If you put a direct question to the owner of a company, what is more important to him – an increase in traffic processing capacity or profit, everyone will give a completely predictable answer. First of all, what is important for business is the economic benefits of hiring certain employees and the results of their activities, and not the process itself, although the second naturally follows from the first.
Why is outsourced recruitment with us cost-effective?
By signing a contract with our company, a businessman pays not for the time of operators at inflated rates, as is often the case when turning to outsourcing or out-staffing, but for the experience and productive actions of KPI managers. At the same time, our partners are not concerned with issues of employee insurance, their vacations, sick leave, etc.
Why can we ensure that our partner meets KPI?
We offer our partners a non-scattered group of beginners who still don’t really know, or know how to do anything. Our client has at his disposal a ready-made, well-coordinated outsourced sales team capable of:
- Be goal-oriented and rely on the same KPIs that serve as a beacon for full-time employees of the company;
- Be in constant contact with the client and adjust your activities in accordance with the circumstances;
- Take part in A/B tests, share experience and best practices to achieve effective results.
Who is responsible for hiring and training new staff?
With the exception of rare cases that are agreed upon in advance, we take care of everything: interviewing candidates, selecting the best, conducting training and exams, adapting newcomers to the team, scaling or completely replacing staff.
Since we provide full call center outsourcing, are engaged in hiring, onboarding, and administration, we bear all the costs associated with these processes. The client receives a finished result with a qualified team of specialists and a project manager to communicate with it.
How does this differ from standard outstaffing?
Our clients are relieved of the need to deal with each new employee individually. With the management team at their disposal, they can:
- Monitor the quality of its work through the project manager;
- Immediately introduce any necessary innovations;
- Receive feedback and analytical indicators on the work of the team providing call center support services for its discipline, conversion, etc.;
- Without engaging in training and professional development of the staff, be confident in the professionalism of the team and its ability to achieve the best results;
- Rely on the active position of the staff, taking the initiative; focus on results using all the best practices of previously gained experience.
As a rule, we launch a pilot period, after which we sum up its results together with the client and implement a win-win strategy, in which the amount of payment for team members’ hours varies depending on the achievement of target KPIs agreed upon with the customer. Thus, everyone wins: the client, the team, and we.
What to do if the KPIs of outsourcing sales managers have not reached the expected level?
Outstaffing in its classical form often encounters a situation where actual KPIs fall far behind the indicators that the client expected. They try not to talk about this problem, but this does not negate its existence. We are going a different way. After the pilot period has passed, the customer and I establish a scale of the relationship between target and actual indicators and observe.
If the manager does not demonstrate positive dynamics, we stimulate his development as a professional. Is the situation still unchanged? We are changing him. As a result, the indicators begin to grow.
One of our cases: accounting of client databases for audience engagement in sales
Task: request from a potential client for an account
The company was developing successfully, managers were managing high-value clients with a conversion rate of 90%, but the growing volumes forced their own internal staff to literally be torn to pieces, unable to cope with the workload. As a result, customers with medium and low checks went to competitors.
Problem statement: creating the team of external managers to cover clients that internal ones cannot handle.
Step by step solution:
- Analysis of the situation;
- Creating profiles of operators and hiring a salesperson manager suitable for them;
- Training of newcomers – in this case, the first in-depth training was undertaken by the owner of the company, after which we polished the new employees;
- Establishing the work of the new team with the client’s full-time operators in a single, seamless rhythm;
- Adjustment of goals and KPIs, taking into account the relationship between the amounts that the client paid to us as a contact center and the income that our managers brought to his company.
At the same time, there was continuous training of the skills of operators, who were supervised by managers free from other projects, and an individual approach was actively used: each individual account was analyzed in detail for lack of sales, after which it was decided how to get clients.
Conversion showed excellent growth: revenue increased 4 times!
Here's what it looked like in numbers:
- Generalized conversion rate for the year – 32%;
- Conversion into sales – 40%;
- Staff of external managers – 16 people, including 3 assistants;
- Sales profit growth by 1.5 times;
- Profit growth due to an increase in the average check by 4 times.
When we first started working with this client, we received 25% of the profit for our services. A year later, this figure dropped to 15%, allowing him to return large sums from each investment. The client was completely satisfied and decided to add financial rewards for outsource managers as an additional motivation in order to raise quality assurance and customer service even higher. This led to a 4.5-fold increase in revenue.
Later I will share other cases on creating and expanding an accounting or outsourcing sales department and improving the skills of its employees, and I will also tell you more about win-win offers for effective partnerships.