More »

More »

RSS

Outsourcing sales

May 21 2007

To gain new business, research and consider the use of Sales Agents. These are self-employed sales people operating in particular markets in particular areas.  If you put in a search engine “sales agents” you will get a list of organisations that act as agencies putting companies such as yourselves and the sales agents in touch, and ensuring the correct mutually advantageous agreement is in place. Two such agencies, amongst others, are British Agents Register, www.agentsregister.com, and Agent Base, www.agentbase.co.uk

However, you also need to look after and develop business from current customers; it is at least six times easier to gain new business from current customers than new customers, so you need to consider a plan and approach to do this, perhaps with yourself liaising with your customers to ensure they are happy with your product / service, and developing new business opportunities with them.

 
Comments [2]
Comment by Samantha Osborough
Wednesday 29th August 2007

This advice is ideal for our business too. What is the average commission rate we should expect to pay? Are there any areas we should be aware of - this is a new area for us and I'd like to have a bit of info behind us before we start posting ads etc for agents. Thanks.


Report this comment
Comment by Polly Anderson
Wednesday 31st October 2007

Consider very carefully the idea of abdicating responsibility for your business to an outside agency. The path is fraught with danger, most of which isn't noticed until it's too late. Any third party resource must be managed tightly and targetted accordingly. Regardless of their levels of capability, no one will sell your business as passionately or enthusiastically as you.


Report this comment

Prize Draw

 

Enter our prize draw!!

You've probably noticed smallbusiness.co.uk has a brand new look. You can personalise the homepage to suit your needs and there's lots of new content including video, blogs and the small business resource centre. 

We're interested to know what you think about the new small business site, so we'd like you to take this opportunity to have your say. All entrants will be entered into our free prize draw to win a bottle of champagne provided by our partners at Laithwaites! Enter here

Green business – what's the point?







Site map

« Expand to view