Q&A MEMBERS CALL: Should I Outsource my Inside Sales?

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Transcript: 

Andrew asked the question – he is definitely new to the group, because this is one of the things I am passionate about. “Have you had good experience with VA ISAs? If so what VA locator service would you recommend?”

So here’s the thing with just inside sales in general.

It really does come down to structure. So I’m going to repeat the question again. This is a good one, worth repeating on even our weekly newsletter. So Mark, you can pay attention to this one.

“Have you had good experience with VA ISAs? If so what VA locator service would you recommend?” Fundamentally, the first contact you ever have with a client, on a scale of 1-10, how important do you think that is?

Not asking you how much of a grind internet buyer leads are, or just the importance of the first impression that a potential client of your team or your company has of you, how important do you think that is?

It’s like an 11 or 12 out of 10, in my opinion.

Outsourcing Effectively

So that being said, do you think you can hire out either domestically or off-shore effectively?
The answer is yes, maybe. I know 1 or 2 out of 10 that are off-shoring inside sales. They’re going to the Philippines mostly. MyOutDesk has a huge push for this. Commissions, Inc. started Appointments, Inc. as a separate company that's getting a lot of people doing it.

I don’t believe if you really sat down with those people, Jason Secor knows someone. And I won’t mention her name. But I’ve heard him say, and we’ve since talked about, and he says, yeah, I guess she isn’t crushing it.

But he says, yeah, she’s crushing it with off-shore inside sales. The challenge is, she was selling about 100-110 homes a year. She’s fully in production. So she’s doing about 50-60 deals. She’s got 3-4 agents. She had 3-4 ISA to sell whatever. Even if it was all 100 homes, it wasn’t, because some business came to her and mostly listing side stuff was coming to her in referrals. So maybe it was 60-80 sides, that 4-5 ISA and 3-4 buyer agents.

Building Your Team

It’s such a diluted effort. The way that I built the team, and the way that I recommend most of you build your team is that you get really busy first yourself. Hire an admin. Then you’re building your buyer agent team. And then you’re getting out of the buy side.

And your buyer agents are their own ISA to start. Yes, it requires you being in their stuff and leading them and holding them accountable. But your ability to develop yourself, there’s less risk in that than you off-shoring inside sales.

So I know you didn’t ask this question thinking I was going to unleash this type of answer on you. But unless you’re at the point, I believe, where you have 3-4 productive buyer agents, a kick-ass admin, and you’re doing 30-40 deals minimum yourself, that ISA really belongs in your business.
 
It is an essential part of your business. So I don’t want you to think that it’s not. These are the three models that I work against. And I even more so stand behind these now.

I think if you skip to having ISAs and not doing listings yourself, and going showing agents, you’re going to take on too much overhead. The score card is cash in the bank. Your ability to do that is way less risky to do it this way than to do it any other way.

I’m very opinionated about it. And  I just don’t believe it’s the best experience for clients. Having someone on the phone that is just looking to shuffle through leads, yeah, I don’t see it.