So I have a large list of prospects and want to hire one or more salespeople to cold-call and sell SEO services (in the US).

Does anyone have any good suggestions on where to look, to hire commissioned salespeople for this? I need people who understand what they would be selling, so I can't really see going to CL or somewhere like that, there would be a long training period needed. I'm looking more for someone who already understands SEO so that there's a lot smaller learning curve.

Any one had any luck with this, or have ideas?

That's tough. A salesperson to come in who doesn't need much training, is very very hard to find - those guys & gals are likely to be repping another agency already.

You may want to consider doing a referral fee strategy like Taktikal wrote about - get your friends and your friends friends, and your family and their associates, talking about money you can pay them for setting you up with a meeting and you closing the deal.

Otherwise, you might want to rethink your strategy of not offering much training. Look at it this way, if they understand SEO - why not sell it for themselves and outsource it?

I think you can find many of SEO experts willing to do cold calling for you through freelance marketplace sites on hourly or monthly basis.

Here is the link to that conversation....good luck

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...ee-months.html

Thanks - I'm already familiar with Taktical's post and it was a great one, but this is a different situation; I've been given the list of thousands of prospects already, I just have to find a "smart" way to convert/monetize them.

Appreciate the feedback, hoping for more.

I have a sales team of 7 right now that handle cold calling for all of my services. I found 4 of them through craigslist and they then had friends of theirs come aboard with us. I have been through about 20 to find the 7 that I currently have. I pay them generously off of commission and residual income( the nice residual checks keep them from going somewhere else to work or doing it themselves.) I started them out by selling other services that were easy to pitch and sell while slowly teaching them about SEO and the other services we have to offer. I wouldn't worry too much about teaching them every single detail of how SEO works, just the basics so that they will be able to explain SEO to potential clients on the same level ( this might help sales too because I know us SEO guys tend to get a little too technical when explaining to customers how we make the magic happen). If one of my sales guys get a prospect on the phone that wants to talk nuts and bolts then he just lets them know that he is going to transfer them to our SEO Specialist that will be able to better answer the questions that they are asking. OP you are definitely thinking in the right direction. I have only had my business for 5 months now and have been getting so much business because of my team.(3k the first month by myself, 5k the second with one other person working, and about 10-12k every month since, with Jan. 1st rolling around my goal is 25k for the month of January.) And now my referrals have just started coming in this month. You do not even need to mention that there is a referral program and clients will still send people your way. If you do good work and rank your clients for keywords that are going to provide them with good ROI then they will tell all of their friends how great you are and how much you are of value to them. I actually just read this thread after getting off of the phone with one of my clients who had posted my contact info on the wall of a facebook group yesterday which got me 5 call and three emails. I am working out the deals and am confident I will close 100% of them. OP feel free to PM me if you have any questions I will be more than happy to help out a fellow BHW member.

Thanks for the great info and the offer - I may PM you after I get a little further into this. Much appreciated - this is the spirit of why BHW is such a great place

Blackhatworld > Warriorforum. this site is amazing

I know someone who tried to expand rapidly and nearly bankrupt their company by hiring a big team of sales people and not teaching them enough....

That being said, you only want to invest time to teach them enough to sell your SEO service, else as has been said above they might go off and try and do it themselves!

As far as finding sales people - there a loads of young unemployed out there, some of which are on these forums learning a little bit about SEO and desperate to try and make some cash, you could try here at BHW ;-)

You can try hire some students with little technical background and teach them few processes about your company.

engage executive search/recruiter/headhunter...plenty of these people will do Excellent work on contingency....meaning u only pay if satisfied with the hire...typically can get great terms....i.e. reduced fees and guarantees

AWESOME POST! This is exactly the type of content / example that I love to see here on BHW. This is a real world example of how we can all make this business into anything that we want.

Thanks,
Red

Originally Posted by WebOracle

I have a sales team of 7 right now that handle cold calling for all of my services. I found 4 of them through craigslist and they then had friends of theirs come aboard with us. I have been through about 20 to find the 7 that I currently have. I pay them generously off of commission and residual income( the nice residual checks keep them from going somewhere else to work or doing it themselves.) I started them out by selling other services that were easy to pitch and sell while slowly teaching them about SEO and the other services we have to offer. I wouldn't worry too much about teaching them every single detail of how SEO works, just the basics so that they will be able to explain SEO to potential clients on the same level ( this might help sales too because I know us SEO guys tend to get a little too technical when explaining to customers how we make the magic happen). If one of my sales guys get a prospect on the phone that wants to talk nuts and bolts then he just lets them know that he is going to transfer them to our SEO Specialist that will be able to better answer the questions that they are asking. OP you are definitely thinking in the right direction. I have only had my business for 5 months now and have been getting so much business because of my team.(3k the first month by myself, 5k the second with one other person working, and about 10-12k every month since, with Jan. 1st rolling around my goal is 25k for the month of January.) And now my referrals have just started coming in this month. You do not even need to mention that there is a referral program and clients will still send people your way. If you do good work and rank your clients for keywords that are going to provide them with good ROI then they will tell all of their friends how great you are and how much you are of value to them. I actually just read this thread after getting off of the phone with one of my clients who had posted my contact info on the wall of a facebook group yesterday which got me 5 call and three emails. I am working out the deals and am confident I will close 100% of them. OP feel free to PM me if you have any questions I will be more than happy to help out a fellow BHW member.

Speaking from personal experience, I have tried using Contract Work Marketplace such as Elance or Odesk to find Telemarketers. The good part is that the telemarketers that you will get on such sites would be very polished in terms of their Telephonic or sales skills.

And although they might not be aware about SEO, they will still manage pretty well since learning about various business processes is part of their job. However, what kept me from hiring them was the fact that all of them were insistent on working on an hourly basis. They will not accept a commission based contract.

So, there is a bit of investment but with the right script, backend support and of-course the quality of your database for calling should yield a favorable ROI, at least in the long run. We might just hire someone in the near future, although as of now the preferred choice is to find callers willing to work on commission basis.