One of the methods I see getting talked about fairly often on webmaster and web business forums is outsourcing. Usually the discussion revolves around hiring freelancers–often from India or the Philippines because they typically work for lower rates than U.S. freelancers will–to do programming or writing work.
In fact, there are even a few “products” being promoted out there which encourage you to use freelance workers as “cheap labor” for coding work and article writing, link building, ghost blogging and etc.
Personally I’ve never been a fan of that approach. I’m not in this for fast money, I’ve spent years building an actual business for myself, so I never want the word “cheap” associated with my business in any way.
However, I am a fan of outsourcing for different reasons, and I think this is one of the ways in which the Internet has really opened doors for entrepreneurs, making it possible to find quality help on a contract basis to accomplish anything that you yourself can’t do, or don’t enjoy doing to the point that you can hurt your business by forcing yourself to do it.
For example, I have always despised contact selling. Nothing makes me fret and yawn more than knowing that I’ve got a sales meeting on my schedule. This isn’t something I deal with at this point anymore, but a decade ago when I launched my business and our primary function was selling web services to local small businesses, that was a real problem for me. I had qualified people for the tech work, but I didn’t have anyone helping me with sales in those early days, and it was a serious obstacle that actually slowed our growth early on.
Eventually we reached a point where I could bring in some sales help, and the difference that they made for me was astronomical. I realized almost immediately that I had wasted a lot of time standing in my own way of success by trying to do it myself up until that point.
If I were starting out today with my same distaste for selling, I wouldn’t even think about trying to do it myself. I’d contract with a company like Cydcor and get professional sales help out there turning my leads into revenue.
I wouldn’t even look at freelance boards or sites for sales help. Think about this, in marketing we spend a lot of resources on lead generation. Nearly all of our online marketing efforts are (or should be) aimed at building leads, and the reason is because all revenue comes from those leads. In other words, since revenue is dependent on converting those leads we work so hard to get into sales, this isn’t where I’d fool around or ‘test’ the capabilities of a freelancer. I’d go straight to a company like Cydcor and outsource with professional sales people to handle my face to face and other contact selling, especially for B2B offerings.
There are others out there too, I only mention Cydcor here because they’re the company that I know by reputation and their size in North America with hundreds of offices and thousands of sales professionals across the U.S. and Canada, that’s the kind of coverage I’d want.
Think of the advantage that gives you just starting out, even if you’re good at selling your own business service or products, can you get that kind of instant reach with face to face contact on your own?
It’s easy to overlook the value of the people who do the selling. That’s not just the sales associates, but also the communications people (writers) who create, shape and broadcast your message. I did it myself in those early days, and I talk to others all the time, people from large corporations to garage start ups, who think their greatest assets are their R&D, or production, or who believe that by just having a great product or service they’ll be successful.
It just isn’t so. I don’t care how good your research and development is, or how good your product/service might be, if nobody is buying it you’re still in the red.
At the end of the day, no matter what you do or offer, your business success is going to be measured by a financial barometer. That means you’ve got to generate leads, and then you’ve got to convert those leads into sales.
I think we’ve all heard the 80/20 rule before. When I started out I followed it, but I got it backwards. I put 80% into the service and 20% into selling it, because I didn’t enjoy sales and there wasn’t the easy access to outsourcing back then that there is today. 5 years into it I realized that I was 5 years behind where I could have been as a result.
I’m not advocating skimping on your product or service, but rather seeing the big picture. That by applying the 80/20 rule in the opposite direction I could have grown my business much faster, which would have made more resources available for developing and improving our products and services, which would have made converting even more leads into sales a lot easier.
The bottom line is outsourcing is a great tool that’s widely accessible for any size business today. Not because it’s a path to “cheap” labor, that’s a crazy way to build the foundation of your business; but because almost no business–small or large–has all of the skills or resources necessary in-house to do everything they’re going to need to in order to succeed. By contracting with professionals though, you can overcome any shortfall and give your business the opportunity to reach it’s fullest potential a lot quicker and easier.
