What if you could crush every single one of your sales targets? One of the easiest ways to boost your sales numbers is to hire external workers who have experience employing modern sales methods. Hiring freelancers is a great way to tap the talent pool and round out your weaknesses without funneling your profits into annual salaries and employee benefits.
In this guide from Techie Talks, we’ll explore seven effective steps to help you hire the best freelance sales professionals and finally reach those sales goals!
Consider the Advantages
Business owners often hold a number of misconceptions about freelancers. Many think that freelancers lack the skills, experience, or professionalism of employees. But nothing could be further from the truth. Freelancers are incredibly innovative, creative, and familiar with the ever-changing dynamics of the economy.
While working with freelancers means relinquishing some control over the sales and marketing process, this can actually be a good thing for your business. Hiring talented individuals to handle your marketing projects will boost efficiency and reduce the number of decisions you need to make every day.
The Alternative Board lists some other great reasons to consider hiring freelancers:
- They don’t require training and start working almost immediately.
- You only pay for the work you need done.
- You avoid the risks and responsibilities of an employer.
- There is an infinite talent pool of worldwide
Determine Your Hiring Needs
Before you start hiring sales professionals, determine exactly what type of sales and marketing help you need. This is a good time to reevaluate your sales goals. You should be thinking smaller than a quarterly quota. HubSpot recommends setting short-term goals and activity goals that will get you closer to your target.
After setting new activity goals, it will be more obvious where you need to make improvements to your sales process. Let’s say you want to close three deals per month. If your lead conversion rate is 2%, you’ll need about 150 new leads to reach your target. Falling short of your lead goals? Bring in a lead generation specialist!
Look for High-Quality Candidates
There are many talented freelancers, but you need to find someone who is the right fit for your business. Start by articulating exactly what it is you want done, then plan your screening process. Then, treat hiring a great freelancer like onboarding a business partner.
A few things to look for when evaluating freelance candidates include:
- Top-notch communication skills from the first interaction.
- A robust portfolio that demonstrates experience working on projects similar to yours.
- Possession of the necessary tools they need to complete projects independently.
- They use the latest marketing software and sales methods.
- Feedback from other clients confirms their work ethic, reliability, and experience.
Develop an Effective Hiring Process
Once you find a few sales or marketing professionals who seem like a good fit for your business, it’s time to start the hiring process. Interviewing your candidates is essential! Make sure you ask the right questions to learn more about the contractors you’re considering onboarding. How will they help your business grow? Make sure your candidate understands your mission and has marketing campaign ideas that they are confident will produce measurable results.
Equip Your Workers with the Right Tools
You may want to provide a few helpful tools to ensure all of your sales professionals are on the same page. Some key sales tools to consider include:
- Communication and collaboration tools like Slack and Salesforce Chatter.
- Email insight tools like Bitly and Rapportive.
- Social media management apps like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social.
- Invoicing software to manage accounting data and track performance.
- Cloud-based file storage tools like Google Drive.
Learn How to Manage Freelancers
Freelancers often need less direction and supervision compared with full-time employees. They chose to be freelancers so they could have a high degree of flexibility regarding how and when they work, and you need to honor this. But do ensure that you have clearly communicated your needs and expectations to avoid time-consuming misunderstandings.
After setting expectations and defining your project details, give your freelance sales team the freedom to make decisions and complete their work how they see fit. Trust that the work will get done on time and to the best of their ability. The main difference between employees and freelancers is that employees work for you while freelancers work with you.
Measure Your Results
Before onboarding your freelance marketing team, establish a few performance metrics and take note of your current baseline. You can track any number of key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress towards your sales goals:
- Total monthly, quarterly, or annual revenue.
- Average revenue brought in by a single product.
- The lifetime value of an average customer.
- How your customer acquisition cost compares to your revenue.
- How likely your customers are to recommend your business to others.
- Percentage of deals closed compared to leads.
- Percentage of revenue from new versus existing customers.
After hiring new sales and marketing professionals, you should see improvements in many of these metrics. If your sales are not improving as you had hoped, your detailed KPIs will help you pinpoint the problem so you can make impactful changes to your sales strategy.
Start Your Freelance Process
If you want to modernize your sales and marketing process, hiring experienced freelancers is a great step in the right direction. Get your freelancers tools that align with your employees’ practices, and use free collaborative tools when possible. From understanding your unique hiring needs to establishing key performance metrics, every step will play an important role in your overall success.
