Enterprise Nation

We’ve been asked a few times recently as to whether we can recommend a company that offers sales professionals who will work on a project basis. We did a little research and approached a company that seemed to fit the bill.

Responding to the call of a Tweet

The power of Twitter. We tweeted about there being a gap in the market when it comes to a company offering an A team sales force on a project by project hire basis.

Sarah Bradley of Help Ahoy tweeted back to recommend there was such a company – in the form of Physis Consulting. We approached founder and MD, Liz Sparkes, and discovered that her company provides freelance sales professionals to businesses and at any one time has a database of over 250 sales consultants actively looking for opportunities.

We asked Liz a few questions on how it works …

How do you find the sales professionals?

Our contacts database has been built up over a number of years and comprises of consultants who are known to us, either having worked with us in the past, or having worked with someone who has, so it's like a sales professionals network. We send out a news bulletin to our database informing them of new opportunities as they come in. If that doesn't fill the vacancy, we will also use standard internet job advertising to find the right person.

Do you find out the client’s needs and then match to a professional?

We take time to get to know our clients, their personalities and their products or services. We act like match makers, because we know it's not just about skills, it's about a good fit, especially in micro or SME'S. As we work with a wide range of channels we have the diversity within our consultant base to find a good match, be that in type of sales, or product knowledge. (ie traditional "door knocking" or direct sales, right through to professional sales of for example HR legal services or IT)

What kind of sales activities can your freelancers take on? Is it making calls or are they also prepared to attend meetings and man stands etc?

We specialise in field sales professionals. Our freelancers prefer to sell face to face rather than over the phone. Because of the breadth of experience of our freelancers, we can find someone for any sort of business, B2B or B2C.

How do you charge?

Firstly and most importantly our consultants are remunerated on a commission only basis, so a business pays on results not promises.

We have 2 services. The referral service (recruitment if you like) costs just £900 per placement, payable in 3 equal instalments. Payment 2 and 3 are payable only if the freelancer is still working with the client, and if they leave for any reason (outside the clients control) we will find a replacement within the same fee structure. So our fees are per PLACEMENT rather than per person.

Our second service is a Managed Project, where we undertake to manage the whole sales campaign, starting with the sales and marketing plan, through recruitment, initial training and ongoing sales management processes, including CRM provision. Fees for this service vary dependant on the type of project and product/service to be sold, but typically costs would be around £1,000 for the Sales and Marketing Plan, £900 per placement, 4% commission on all  sales arising for the management of the team, and an initial training fee of around £500 a day + expenses. As the majority of the costs are based on a percentage of sales arising, this service enables micro and SME's to access a professional sales service as it effectively moves a significant proportion of the costs of sales from an overhead to a direct cost.

Who does your own selling?

I do! With 25 years experience in sales, I should know how to do it by now! However we find our services are so very attractive and a real "no brainer" I think anyone could sell them! :) Nowadays I feel more like an order taker than a sales person but then that's the best sort of selling, isn't it? When you have a great service, it's an easy sell.

• Liz Sparkes, Physis Consulting