Kathryn Neal-Odell Interview – Sales-Onsite CEO

Posted by Tom Blue on February 23, 2010 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

We, Lead411, have worked with Kathryn Neal-Odell in the past and because she is in such a similar space we decided to have an eInterview with her about her company, Sales-Onsite.  Please see below.

1. What do you do?

Sales-Onsite LLC delivers an onsite business development solution for SMB’s for marketing/advertising agencies and for technology firms.

These companies typically don’t have a full-time salesperson. Their execs are supposed to do the front-end business development but end up being pulled away to keep current clients happy.

We provide a part-time, onsite, on-demand salesperson to do the time consuming front end work in sales: identifying the right decision-makers, connecting with them, starting a dialogue and keeping in touch (lead nurturing) until there is an opportunity. Then we carefully transition this opportunity back to our client to follow through with the rest of the sales process.

It’s a flexible, affordable, effective way to solve the revenue problems these small firms face. Our person becomes a valuable part of their team and their business development process.

2. Who are your competitors?

Our competitors tend to be call centers.

3. What are your or your ceo’s biggest challenges?

We’re very choosy when we select clients and when we select our onsite salespeople. We look for clients who are intelligent, love what they do and who welcome developing a partner vs. vendor relationship with us. Our onsite salespeople need to be hunters, problem solvers and have outstanding interpersonal skills. It takes longer to find clients and employees like that.

4. Which marketing tactic/strategy has produced the most leads/revenue for your company?

We do the same thing to produce leads for our company that we do for our clients:  Offer value and stay in touch. You can’t call a prospect once or twice or offer them something that doesn’t make sense for their business and expect them to give you money. We see pipeline opportunities that take almost a year to turn into a sale. If you don’t stay in touch, you lose this sale to a competitor.

We profile our ideal prospects and build a list based on that profile. Our focus is on a small group of ideal prospects instead of a large number of so-so prospects. This increases our response rate.

We do multi-channel (phone, voicemail, email, direct mail) outreach and stay in touch (lead nurture) with case studies, articles and links to our blog posts to develop our credibility. We keep track of all of it through a CRM (Salesforce) to measure results and monitor our pipeline.

5. How long have you been in business? 5 years.

6. How many employees do you have? 6

7. What is your current revenue growth?

Our sales revenue has grown an average of 25% year to year.

8. What is your bio/work history?

I spent several years in management in the temporary staffing agency field. It was an excellent entrepreneurial training ground because you had to manage a P & L and run operations, sales and recruitment.

All of the sales and sales management positions I have held were “in the trenches” types of roles. This enables us to give great support to our salespeople who work with our clients because we know what they go through every day and what kind of tools they need to be successful.