In order to face the competition, it is important for companies to focus on their core business. To do so, companies have every interest in entrusting certain duties to free themselves the time necessary for their main activity.
Outsourcing its sales functions can be the solution.
Find out what the key steps to successful sales outsourcing are in an interview with Jean-Charles Spanelis, CEO and founder of Finelis.
Hello Jean-Charles,
Could you tell us a bit more about the process of sales outsourcing at Finelis?
The Sales Outsourcing process at Finelis is quite simple: we help customers to sell better, directly with our team.
This means that we use their company’s e-mails, and we do the day-to-day prospecting for them.
It can be very easy or very complicated since we have clients who sometimes don’t know about sales outsourcing. So, we have to explain to them how it works. It’s no more complicated than having salespeople into your company.
And for those who are already familiar with sales outsourcing, it’s a little simpler because they already have experience. So, we’re really going to work with them and propose hybrid solutions between outsourcing and insourcing.
So what do you see as the main steps for a successful launch of sales outsourcing?
That’s a very good question! There is no miracle. We’re in the business of sales and sales strategy. We have an On-Demand service that we provide immediately to the client. This means that when we sign the contract, on the first day, we can already deliver directly. That’s the promise. The reality is that in order to succeed, we offer a very classic 3-month trial period.
- In general, when it goes very well, it’s the first month: mutual understanding, training. We start prospecting with the client. We really work hand in hand.
- The second stage (2nd / 3rd month): we will start to have operational results. It’s really the follow-up of the indicators that is important for the client. We will translate the operational reality of the client. It’s not just reading the contract.
- The third step is of course the continuation of the contract and the framing of the future collaboration. We discuss what the client wants in terms of monthly recurring revenue. What is his customer acquisition cost? Because he also has a different view at this point based on his experience. He has more perspectives that seem interesting.
So, these are the 3 steps of a successful sales outsourcing for a duration of about 3 months.
What differentiates Finelis from its competitors and why choose you to outsource its business activities?
Today, the company is 12 years old (happy birthday) and I’ve been saying the same thing for 12 years but in different ways. The Covid-19 is not good news for anyone. Sometimes I find it a bit sad that it is the Covid-19 that makes a lot more people listen to me when I have been saying the same thing for 12 years. We are currently listened to a lot because everyone needs outsourcing, but the business strategy is not going to change.
Our differentiator over the last 12 years is that we are very innovative. We are very far from the main competitors who started much later. Many competitors started a year ago with Covid.
We have always had at heart to have an “On-Demand” offer available and to make the sales strategy coupled with the operational part. It is therefore a huge challenge that our competitors do not meet. Our competitors, in general, do either the consulting, training, sales strategy, or the very operational part, lead generation but without the sales follow-up. There are also a lot of companies that make the tools, the follow-up of the tools, but it’s only digital in fact.
We use digital tools to serve this commercial strategy, which must also be operational. At the present time, I don’t know of any competitors who do that. That doesn’t mean that we are more successful than others. It’s still complicated, but it does mean that we are the only ones who really do a strategic and operational part. We are really the ear of the manager.
What advice would you give to SMBs who would like to try your sales outsourcing services?
Today, they are very lucky because in 12 years we have constantly innovated on the offers, new offers to be always more flexible, easier in fact for new customers.
From March 1, 2021, we have an offer that will allow companies, any SME, to test the service without even having to commit to a fixed price.
In the past, you had a fixed-price commitment that was already extremely competitive with rates that were already, I think, quite impressive compared to internal resource costs.
And today we’re taking it a step further: we’re going to be able to start at triple-digit rates and offer a trial by number of accounts, really at the unit level. We’re really following the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, as far as I’m concerned, Sales as a Service, since they’re the same letters.
This means that a company can say “I’m French, I’m Spanish, I’m English. I’d like to try out about twenty companies that are my prospects”. It will have the ability to have prospects in France, Singapore… She will be able to mix languages and we will be able to work on these 20 companies. She will just pay a unit cost per company (which will be less than 3 figures per company anyway).
During this trial offer, the company will not only benefit from our most senior sales strategists, and I’m one of them, but it will also be able to test the service as a whole.
The trend in the market today is to try smaller volumes to really test the whole service.
So a SME will have access to very attractive prices for a test with a sales team made up of CRM and marketing experts. In addition, it will be able to test the CRM aspects if it does not know, for really extremely interesting prices.
Thank you, Jean-Charles, for all these details. See you soon for the next Finelis news!