The Evolution and Strategy of Outsource Sales from Amanda Puppo

In a fascinating episode of the Transform Sales Podcast, hosted by Amir Reiter, guest Amanda Puppo, a seasoned expert in the outsource sales industry, shares her journey and insights. Puppo’s story begins with a candid admission of being fired from her first job due to a lack of closing skills, despite being adept at cold calling. This moment of adversity propelled her towards entrepreneurship, eventually leading to the founding of her company, MarketReach, over two decades ago.

The Core of Sales: Building a Strong Pipeline

Amanda underscores the importance of having a robust sales pipeline. Without it, businesses risk stagnation. Her initial years were marked by organic growth, long hours, and gradual expansion, highlighting the hard work and resilience necessary in the sales industry.

The Hard Truth of Sales and SDRs

Emphasizing the toughness of the sales process, Puppo points out that securing an appointment is often the most challenging part of sales. This process, often termed as ‘the grind’, requires either mastering it yourself or hiring competent individuals to handle it effectively.

The Digital Age and Its Impact on B2B Lead Generation

Puppo notes the increasing dominance of large corporations in digital advertising, leaving smaller players to navigate the more traditional spaces of phone calls and emails. She advocates for a direct and honest communication style, particularly effective in the Northeastern U.S., for successful B2B lead generation.

Common Mistakes in Choosing an Outsource Sales Agency

One major mistake buyers make when choosing an agency is treating lead generation and appointment setting services as commodities, focusing primarily on the lowest price. Puppo stresses the importance of recognizing the human engagement aspect of these services, and the need for an adequate budget and realistic expectations.

The Long Game in Sales

Puppo advises treating outbound prospecting as a long-term strategy rather than expecting immediate results. Understanding the sales cycle length and aligning expectations accordingly is crucial for successful collaboration with an outsource sales agency.

The Evolution of the Sales Industry

Over the last two decades, Puppo has observed significant changes in the industry. The rise of AI in developing prospect lists and the shift towards more accurate and targeted data have been game-changers. She emphasizes the importance of having a qualified prospect list and engaging in multi-channel marketing approaches.

Client Engagement and Staff Excellence at MarketReach

To ensure client engagement, MarketReach focuses on regular communication and follows up on leads with clients. They employ recorded calls for quality assurance, ensuring high-quality lead generation. Staffing changes due to the pandemic have allowed MarketReach to hire top talent from across the country, maintaining high standards in their services.

Contacting Amanda Puppo for Expertise and Collaboration

For those interested in tapping into Amanda Puppo’s wealth of experience in outsource sales and lead generation, she is accessible via LinkedIn and her website, MarketReachResults.com. She remains open to discussions on effective appointment setting campaigns and strategies for better client engagement.

Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Amanda Puppo: Welcome to the Transform Sales Podcast, where forward thinking business leaders come to share their experiences and ideas, learn from each other, and amplify their results together. 

[00:00:09] Amir Reiter: Hey guys, Amir Reiter here with another episode of the Transform Sales Podcast. I got my guest today, Amanda Puppo. We’re both in the same area, Northeast, straight to the point. Amanda, thank you for joining us today. How are you? 

[00:00:21] Amanda Puppo: Great. Good to be here. Blue skies, first day of spring. Let’s do it!

[00:00:25] Amir Reiter: Well, man, I, yes, I didn’t realize it was spring yet. For anybody chiming in typically, we have people who are either sales agencies themselves are getting, you know, to know other agencies in the industry and hear tips and tricks or first time buyers of outsourced sales agencies. Sometimes people who’ve tried outsourcing before and claim that it didn’t work, right?

Our idea is just by really talking more about the mistakes that may buyers make with the hope that buyers will avoid those mistakes and get the pipeline that they want, which is usually why they hire agencies before you enter that.

Maybe you can tell people a quick fact about you and how you got into this lovely outsource sales industry to begin with in general?

[00:01:28] Amanda Puppo: Pipeline. I love that word. That is the name of the game and sales and owning a business. If you don’t have a pipeline, what do you, what have you got? Right. So how we got started – so I got fired, right? This is what happened. I got fired from my first job at a college.

[00:01:47] Turns out I actually wasn’t very good at sales. I wasn’t good at closing the deal. And they probably should have let me go sooner, but I was really good at cold calling. And so they kept me for about a year and then it was time to go. And so I said, well, what am I going to do now? I had an English degree because I was originally on my way to law school, decided I was going to defer that for a while. And, but I was good at one thing and that was cold calling. And so I said, well, what if I give this a shot and try to start a business? That was two decades ago. So that was that was done in my early twenties and I had little to lose anyway.

[00:02:24] So I was in New Jersey, central Jersey, about 10 minutes from Princeton. And I worked out of my house for the first couple of years, did all the cold calling myself. And then we grew rather slowly. And in the beginning there, it was just a, you know, it was very organic and it was me, you know, working 16 hour days and, and joining the different membership organizations, doing my own outbound calling to get sales.

[00:02:50] Then we started doing well and hired some people and, we’re still here in central Jersey, although we have changed the course of of how we hire and how we go about sourcing our people, but otherwise things have, have gone well. We seek to do appointment setting and lead generation in a better way B2B.

[00:03:13] Amir Reiter: I would like to say that that one thing you’re good at is the hard thing. So I would rather be good at the hard thing than a good at the easy thing. I kind of think that these days. AEs are more customer support answer questions. And I think that the real sales happens from the the SDR side. So I would not undersell that you got, you were good at the hard thing and you turned a business out of the hard thing you were good at.

[00:03:35] Amanda Puppo: I like that. I like that, that attitude about it. And and I would agree. And of course I got better at sales over the years, but I, I was just, I was good at rapport building. I was good at getting the prospect to say, all right, I’ll give you 20 minutes. And that, that is the hardest part of sales.

That’s the grind, right? That’s the grind, but we got to get good at the grind or we got to hire people that are good at the grind. Either way, it’s got to get done. 

[00:03:59] Amir Reiter: I like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter ads are always grinding every day. They’re just. But they’re grinding, right? The flip side is the digital space is owned by the big billion dollar companies. And then a lot of humans are fighting over the manual phone call, email spaces, but it’s all B2B lead gen. Right. And also I would imagine that I think you’re probably really good at it. Cause you’re super clear, direct and to the point you are a Northeaster. And I love people from the Northeast because I could be direct and honest with them and it makes sense. There’s probably no. Hey, how are you? I hate that call. I like that. That hurts me. So you’ve been doing this for two decades was awesome, right? Lots has changed then, but what you’ve probably seen over the last 20 years are a pattern, right? And, and a pattern of buying behaviors right now. I don’t want to get into the behaviors now that you’re higher. That’s going to be the second question.

[00:04:46] But what is the biggest mistake that you’ve seen buyers make when searching for an agency when hiring and obviously the mistakes that I’m referring to are not mistakes of like, I couldn’t close them, but mistakes that really hurt the buyer from finding the right agency.

[00:05:03] Making the right deal with the right agency. And really they think they’re winning, but they’re kind of not, right?

[00:05:26] Amanda Puppo: I think that one of the greatest mistakes is that you’re hiring in your head, if you are a buyer and you hire like a commodity, meaning you, you treat appointment setting and lead generation, like you’re buying a widget. Right? And you look for the lowest price, for example, the lowest price doesn’t always win, right? So you can have a low price and maybe you’ll have okay quality, or maybe you’ll have great quality. But maybe it’s not the lowest price. You usually can’t get it all at once. And so for buyers that always want to shop lowest price, this is human engagement we’re talking about here, right?

[00:05:48] And it’s, and it’s, you have to, you’re essentially you have to determine what you’re after. So you have to figure out your goals. You have to determine what length of time and your budget and how much you’re really willing to put in. And if it’s not enough. Don’t bother. So what I say to people is, if I’m taking your last 2, 000, spend it somewhere else, right?

[00:06:12] If I’m taking your last 2, 000 where you say, I have to make four sales in the next 30 days, otherwise I’m not going to continue it. Then it’s not a win. It’s not a, it’s not the mindset that’s needed to be successful with any kind of marketing. But especially appointment setting and lead generation, because it takes time to develop that opportunity and develop those products. That makes sense. 

[00:06:36] Amir Reiter: I’d ask you this, right? Like I’ve seen that too, right? Buying as it’s commodity, looking for the low price. It’s, it’s interesting, right? Cause I think if you ever asked those buyers about, Hey, if you’re, if you’re Get a rocket ship and spaceship to go to Mars. Are you going to, are you going to try to get a deal on it? Like you probably blow up. Right? And I’m like, it’s really what’s happening in sales, right? Because they’re looking for the low price thinking they’re winning. But if you don’t hit your pipeline, Hey, you can miss your forecast. Lots of consequences for publicly traded for probably trade companies that miss forecast consequences for funding companies that hit their forecast.

[00:07:14] So it’s like. You know, it’s one of those things where you think about it from a rational standpoint. I would go out on a limb saying that it’s probably something where you’d want to be like, I want to pay more for this. Or you know, something that we advise new time buyers on cloud task is to work with multiple agencies.

[00:07:29] We often say, Hey, do two at the same time. And it’s not to make a bigger sale. It’s because we don’t know what’s going to happen this way. You’re not going to say, Oh, I tried it in work, lose six months of pipeline. And you can, you can bet on the winning horse, right. Or three. So it’s, it’s good hearing that over 20 years, guys, if you’re listening, Amanda’s probably seen it all.

[00:07:47] And. I’ve even wrote an article about that, so I’m going to attach it to the podcast. But yeah, if you buy based on price, you’re probably means that you don’t really know the math of your funnel, right? And you might need some more education time. Talk to me a little bit about now, about what happens when buyers don’t buy on price, they come in, they know the process.

[00:08:06] They, they, they, they, they, they look like a great partner on, on paper. Talk to me now about mistakes that buyers make when working with you, right? Cause they’re almost. You almost, it’s like whack-a-mole. You don’t know what’s gonna happen, right? They, they can change. Right now your champion is gone and now it’s a different team.

[00:08:21] What, what have you seen over and over again? A, a pattern, something that can be fixed by the buyer that would improve their, their outcome and their money. 

[00:08:30] Amanda Puppo: A few things come to mind. Number one is it’s my job to be transparent about what we expect the outcome to be. So that’s the first step for me as the seller, right?

[00:08:40] If I’m the salesperson selling my services, I want to ask the right questions, find out what the true objectives are, find out You know, why somebody would want to buy from them, understand what prospect pain points we might hear about, and then turn that into a solid script with a good prospect list that then generates them the quantity of leads that we expect that I would present to them.

[00:09:08] Before we even pick up the phone. So it’s first off to be on the same page. That’s number one. The second step I think is to realize that it is a long ball game, right? This is what’s that phrase where it’s, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. That’s the phrase. Yeah. It’s, it’s not going to happen tomorrow.

[00:09:26] And I think that if buyers realize and treat marketing and outbound prospecting, like a 12 month effort, that doesn’t mean you buy 12 months, right? You buy a pilot program to test it. But once that test shows quantity and quality, now you want to say in your mind, all right, I’ve got a 30 or 40 or 50, 000 budget for outbound, which is still half the cost of a good salesman.

[00:09:52] Right? So you, you put your, your money in that longterm plan so that you can find the whales, right? That’s really what’s going to make a difference here. If you go, okay, I got to make a bunch of sales in the next couple months, it might lead to an expectation that can’t be met. Now, do we want you to make sales immediately?

[00:10:12] Yeah. Is that likely? Maybe not. And do are you likely to make a whale of a sale? Probably not. 

[00:10:20] Amir Reiter: So I’m almost hearing 2 things. There’s 2 things I heard, right? And I want to, I want to slow it down and unpack it a little bit. The 1st thing that I heard and correct me if I’m wrong was that the mistake that buyers make while working with you is that they, they, the buyers.

[00:10:34] Focus on an outcome versus the actual value of a campaign where it’s almost like the survey, like, Hey, the real gold here is in the nose. It’s in the rejections it’s, and they’re so focused on, did you get 10 meetings that they kind of overlook what they can extract, which is like the market validation, right?

[00:10:58] Yeah. And then if I heard you correctly. The second mistake they always make on top of that is they don’t know their math or their funnel. They have a nine month sales cycle. They want an ROI in six months. They went out to go to raise a series a and told investors we’ll pay you back in 10 years. They want you to pay them back two months.

[00:11:15] So it’s like a dual side of thing, right? Where there’s a mismatch on the math of the funnel. And also on the, the, the real ingredients, right? Like it’s like working out in the gym, like those first couple of days where you’re really sore, right? Like that’s the goal, you know what I mean? And they’re focused not on the, the pain, but they’re focused on the gains basically.

[00:11:32] Amanda Puppo: Yeah. And I love the words you just used. I think that you’re dead on accurate, right? Which is sales cycle. If your sales cycle is nine months, why are you expecting to make a sale in three weeks? Yeah. I think you hit, hit upon that really. That’s an important point. Yeah. My speculation 

[00:11:46] Amir Reiter: Is just a lack of understanding and fear? And that’s also not protecting themselves, right? Like not protecting their downside. As I mentioned, like, Hey, don’t don’t work with three agencies, right? Work with three SDRs. Don’t focus on the how, but the outcome, right? Like, like almost like. “We gotta get this football over the, the end zone,” like get that football over the end zone, like, versus like, “Let’s use as minimum touches as possible.” Because it’s never like that. And, and I’m glad that you’re saying these things. Cause I think that these are the biggest things that buyers can make in it. And, and if anybody’s listening to this as a buyer, I’m like the same principle works with an SDR direct hire. It works with the sales agents.

[00:12:26] These principles are pretty much the same, whether you’re outsourcing the SDR work or anything else. Right. It’s like know your business. And I think that we’re finally getting to the point where companies are ready for this after COVID. Right. I think they, it was very much, Hey, the person’s in my office.

[00:12:40] I trust them. Right. And I’m going to use this emotionally. Now everyone’s remote with each other. Now we have, we have a clearer vision of what’s happening. How have you seen in general, the industry just, just change over 20 years?

[00:12:49] Amanda Puppo: Yeah, well, there’s certainly a lot of noise out there, right? And there has been noise. The internet has been around since what, 95 or so you know, between all of the marketing techniques that occur, which I’m a fan of them all, by the way, I believe in the multi channel approach and I think that they’re all important, not just outbound prospecting in its own wheelhouse. I think it all works together.

[00:13:11] But I think that there’s a couple things that have changed in particular over the past couple of years, which I’m interested to see how it goes, and that is the the A. I. Related to prospect lists. So what I mean by that is that back in the day you had done a Bradstreet, you had info USA and you had third.

[00:13:30] I can’t remember what you what you did. No, that was that’s a little newer. And they they’ve used some crowd sourcing and some some A. I. They were actually one of the first to really kind of blow up into this much higher price, um, solution that scrubs the web and produces data that is typically better than you can get from InfoUSA or anything like that.

[00:13:52] You’re going to pay the price for that, which is fine because finding direct aisle names for the VP of Nike, nearly impossible if you try it on your own. So I think there’s a few competitors now to zoom info as well. That has made it so that finding better prospect lists really helps out a sales effort.

[00:14:15] You gotta be willing to put some money on it, of course, but. Having a qualified list is such a big part of the success for any outbound program. Yeah. I say to all my clients, I’m like, look, if you don’t have a list, which a large percentage of them don’t, Hey guys, if you don’t have a prospect list, start now, you got to start developing that, that prospect list and whether it’s from inbound or whether it’s a trade show or whether it’s just.

[00:14:43] Doing some research with your admin, whatever that might look like, having a qualified prospect list that has some marketing behind it, like an email newsletter, for example, is a really solid way to make your outbound prospecting far more successful. So wherever you can really break into some better prospect lists.

[00:15:03] And I think that’s probably what’s changed the most over the past 20 years. Yeah. So everybody listening, 

[00:15:08] Amir Reiter: That makes a lot of sense, right? It’s no longer. Do you have data, right? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the same thing as seeds, right? If you’re buying seeds of trees that are never going to grow back to 20 feet trees and you’re waiting 20 years and they were never, they were, were, were Dorf trees, they go with, you’re not going to get it right.

[00:15:24] And people overlook that. And we live in a world like Amanda said, where you can really focus in on your target list. You can even verify it. You can get it validated first. You can do a lot of things to the data before ever giving it to an SDR or an agency and the outcomes of your campaigns are going to really differ.

[00:15:40] Less on, you know, the motion, but more on the quality of the inputs. And this actually relates to a question that Tangier has, who says question to Amanda, what specific strategies is market reach utilized to promote responsive clients, engagement and excellence in staffing and how have the strategies contributed to access to the business they serve?

[00:15:57] And interestingly enough, I think this question rolls into your last question, right? Because you went over the data. So I’d love to hear. 

[00:16:04] Amanda Puppo: Well, there’s two questions here, right? Which is how do we how do we get clients to engage? I think is the one question. And then how do we ensure excellent staffing results on our side?

[00:16:15] So the client engagement is really just making sure that they’re highly connected to the outcome by setting up meetings relatively often with them. One of the things that’s important to us is following up on a client’s meetings after they occur. So we will often have these strategy meetings with the client to say, That lead.

[00:16:34] How was it? Was the prospect there? Was it with the decision maker? And we do something a little different at Market Reach. We actually use a recorded call for many of our leads that then get written by management so that it’s like a court reporter, right? Nothing gets missed. And so that’s how we type up a lead sheet to be able to really present the situation of the prospect.

[00:16:57] And it’s literally… An exact reporting of what occurred on the call. So there’s never bad quality at MarketReach because it’s always good quality leads based on the interaction with the, with the prospect. So I think good communication with the client is just paramount, but from a staffing perspective, that’s, has been an interesting change for MarketReach.

[00:17:17] So we were in person for the first 19 years, and then the pandemic occurred through the world in a tailspin. And we said, you know, we can manage this program virtually. With our staff. So we’ve got people that live 15 minutes here from the office that I haven’t seen in two years. And the reason for that is because we decided to go remote.

[00:17:37] And so because of that, I’ve actually been able to hire people that are all over the country that are really solid, a players, as I call it that know how to be consultative. And that’s one of the things that sets market reach apart from the competition is that we are purely B2B. We are consultative. We ask questions, we find pain points and needs and and properly present value proposition. And that all culminates into a quality lead that the client will hopefully make some hay of over, over time. 

[00:18:08] Amir Reiter: And your use of sales technology and recordings and constantly touching in with both the client and even the prospects is what, what allows you to kind of fine tune that messaging between the, your staff member that you hired and the end prospect.

[00:18:21] QA. QA makes it. And that’s it. It works. I’m like, I, I like it. I think, I think the, I think a lot of times you’d be sticking to the discipline of, of actually, you know, asking the tough questions, even what went wrong with the call, right? You could find out like, you know, that feedback, right?

[00:18:39] And that’s that feedback loop that, that I think separates you guys from what I hear. Talk to me a little bit now about like your best clients. And I’m going to try to like, I’m going to try to make you pick one knowing that you do probably handle everybody. Yeah. Imagine that you had only one choice, software or service, which would you pick and why?

[00:18:59] Amanda Puppo: Okay. Yeah, I would probably pick service, although we have plenty of software and technology clients. We’ve done it all. I mean, we’ve got, we have a client that’s a business broker where we call business owners who may be in a position to sell. And, and we’re looking for, on behalf of the buyer we have clients that do janitorial services, right?

[00:19:19] We have clients that are generally service based. So very few of them make widgets that we then sell. We really do appointment setting on service based intangibles. And the best client for us is a client that is B2B that wants some kind of outbound call made. Ideally one that has a prospect list in mind. For example, we have an insurance client who’s about to come on board, who is the restaurant association. Main guy, right? He pays for that. He pays to be the the, the guy that is promoted in the restaurant association, but he’s got great brand awareness, he’s got authority, he’s got credibility. And even if not every prospect knows him, our introduction is warm, which takes down the guard and the defense of the receptionist. Boom. Step one, take the guard down of the receptionist, right? To, to get through. Because that’s the biggest challenge of cold calling is getting through to the decision maker.

[00:20:20] So when you’re armed with a client that’s got brand awareness or credibility or a reliable prospect list, that’s step one. It doesn’t matter the industry, but to answer your question, if I were to say some industry, so we’ve got success in insurance, we’ve got success with again, business brokers, janitorial.

[00:20:39] Vending, vending operators is a big one for us. But we’ve got, you name it and we’ve done it cause we’ve been around for over two decades. So any client that’s B2B that’s looking to get more at bats with their client, we’re, we’re your people. 

[00:20:54] Amir Reiter: Talk to me about market. You got to pick one, America, Europe?

[00:20:59] Amanda Puppo: Yeah. So we are, we are English speaking folk here. We are all within the country. And so we, we actually call mostly America and a little bit of Canada right now, I’d be open to some Europe. But, but it does have to be English speaking. 

[00:21:15] Amir Reiter: Yeah, most of it is. This has been awesome. Talk to me about where people can reach you.

[00:21:18] If somebody wants to connect with you, wants to tap into the 20 years of experience and expertise you has, how does the question about whether or not they, that you guys are the right fit or just something. Industry agnostic wants to ask a question. Where do they find you? Is it LinkedIn, Facebook? Where are, what’s the best way to reach out?

[00:21:34] Amanda Puppo: You can certainly find me on LinkedIn. But you can also go to my website, which is market reach results. com market, reach results. com. You can give me a call. I’m available 609 448 6364. So there’s lots of ways to reach me, but I’m happy to talk to anybody that. Wants to chat or wants to understand how to put together an effective appointment setting campaign, or wants simply more at bats with their prospects.

[00:22:02] Amir Reiter: Yeah, that makes sense. I appreciate you being on the show. I hope you come back for some more episodes and we have to see you in Columbia. So thank you for tuning in and everybody who’s been listening to the transform sales podcast with, with me and Amanda, I appreciate you guys tuning in and any requests or questions you might have.

[00:22:17] Feel free to send them to me anywhere, any channel I’m your writer. You can find me easily, Amanda. I will let you get, let you get back to your day. And it was amazing having you here. Thank you again.[00:22:27] Amanda Puppo: Thanks so much, Amir. And thank you guests for listening as well.