

Ask HN: Outsourcing sales to virtual freelancers? - gingerlime

Hey HN, We&#x27;re a bunch of geeks building a new platform for learning anatomy[0].<p>We know that we&#x27;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&#x27;t work for us. It really (really!) doesn&#x27;t.<p>Recruiting or finding another more sales-savvy co-founder would be great. But we haven&#x27;t met anyone (yet). We&#x27;re bootstrapped, so can&#x27;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.<p>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 &#x2F; elance or similar?<p>If we can&#x27;t do sales ourselves, does it necessarily mean we will also fail finding the right people to help do some cold calls &#x2F; help promoting us??<p>Any other tips??<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kenhub.com
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JSeymourATL
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](https://www.dropbox.com/help/200/en)
It's an easy model to replicate.

~~~
gingerlime
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.

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collin128
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/](http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-complexity/)

Edit: Moving link to bottom.

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gingerlime
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.

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silver1
you should try affiliate marketing ... offer generous commission as you dont
have to pay basic salary.

~~~
gingerlime
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.

