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(Accelerate Business) How it works: Sales development, inside sales + prospecting

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Inside sales and sales prospecting are essential parts of any business. These departments can be the key to your success if you know how to hire them from the right sources.

This article is specifically about what sales development, inside sales, and prospecting are. We’ve also included a few pointers on where these roles overlap with each other and some of the success stories of people who have excelled at them.

Sales Development
Inside Sales
Prospecting
How to grow your sales team
Virtual assistants for sales development

Sales development

Definition

The role of sales development is to find companies who may be interested in our product or service. This can be done by cold calling, emailing, sending a postcard, and even attending trade shows, conferences and meetings.

One might think that sales development is a simple job. But in reality, it’s not. Selling your product over the phone can sometimes be extremely difficult as most people don’t hold their calls very well on the phone, which makes this job tense and nerve-wracking; especially if the business you are calling is huge or something big that may affect your project in one way or another.

But what if the business you are calling is actually interested in your product? Well, then you would need to build a relationship with them. You would need to tell them more about your product and services, the value it offers, and what it can do for their company.

Once they are interested in your product, you would have to introduce them to someone who can actually close the deal on your end, such as a salesperson or a business development manager.

Famous sales development professionals:

Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
Louis Grenier, Everyone Hates Marketers
Daniel Ramsey, MyOutDesk

[Considering a Virtual Assistant?]

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Inside Sales

Definition

The role of the inside sales is to book appointments with leads over the phone. This requires you to have a very friendly and optimistic voice that can directly influence the potential customer in a positive way. Inside sales usually require a lot of communication with various departments inside their companies.

The inside sales usually work from a customer relationship management platform or CRM. However, you can also find them in various different departments inside of their companies such as the technical support or even a marketing department.

Opportunities: Inside sales often talk and communicate with other departments inside of their companies which makes it easy for them to introduce customers to other departments inside of their company. They may also possess certain skills that would allow them to influence certain departments to make more sales for the company, such as finance and development.

Because they have access to more information than other people who work outside of their company, they can easily pitch products or services that are related to the department they are talking about over the phone.

Famous inside sales professionals:

Dave Ramsey, Ramsey Solutions
Dave Elkington, InsideSales.com

Prospecting

Definition

The role of a prospect is to find customers that may be interested in buying our product or service. This can be done by cold calling, emailing, sending a postcard, and even attending trade shows, conferences and meetings.

We’ve been taught from an early age that it’s best to stay away from strangers and to only talk to people you know rather than strangers. In a perfect world, this would be true. But in real life, we make mistakes and it’s important that business owners learn from our mistakes rather than learn from the mistakes of others.

This is why developing relationships with people before you approach them is of utmost importance for any type of sales job. People you go to school with can introduce new clients to you which may soon lead to new opportunities for your business not only through that relationship but also through that person’s friends and family members as well.

Communicating in writing is effective because you can show people how enthusiastic you are about your product or service while also setting expectations regarding what your product or service was made for and what their needs are.

Every sales job has a different degree of prospecting that needs to take place. Some jobs might require a lot of prospective calls or emails while others might require the customer to do it. Prospecting is an art all in itself and takes years to perfect.

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How to develop your sales team

#1: Set a process and stick to it.

Prospecting is a continuous process and the more you can stick to your plan, the better your results will be in the long run. As I mentioned above, an email is the most effective way to communicate for a sales job.

You just have to make sure that your prospecting process is set up properly and that you don’t get sucked into the trap of spending too much time on one person.

If you’re sending out hundreds of emails and only getting one response, then you must think about how you can improve your process so that more people respond.

#2: Have a clear target market for new prospects.

Think about who your ideal customer is and write it down on paper. Are you looking for older women, young girls, middle-aged professionals? Write down as much as you can about your target demographic. If you need some help with this check out this article here.

#3: Tie your dream into some larger ambition.

A lot of people who are starting a business have dreams of quitting their day job and using their business to retire early or travel more. When I started my first business I was single and living with my parents, but I knew that having an online business would allow me to build some financial independence for the future.

[Up to 70% off: Virtual Assistants]

How virtual assistants can help in sales development

Virtual assistants can manage day-to-day tasks that don’t require specialized knowledge or experience. This allows the sales team more time for their primary responsibilities. They can fill in the gaps of the team and help to make sure that all the details are covered.
MyOutDesk offers relentless talent matching for career-oriented virtual assistants — with proven track records & digital expertise — at up to 70% less than the cost of a traditional employee. Add a new hire to your team — without the headaches of payroll, taxes, insurance, retirement, office & equipment costs.

Calls:

Virtual assistants can conduct research for calls or appointments, making it easier to answer specific questions that prospects may have. They should have experience with customer service call Scripts and be able to create presentations for each call. Virtual assistants can schedule calls using online scheduling tools, such as Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar. They should be able to handle appointments with prospects via email or phone. This includes reminding them of upcoming meetings, sending directions and parking information, and organizing files that need to be reviewed ahead of time. Virtual assistants can also help in organizing and managing documents that need to be reviewed or sent to prospects during the sales development process.

Presentations:

Virtual assistants can help with the organization of presentations. This includes scheduling, sending reminders, and helping with collecting information from the prospect via phone calls or e-mails. Virtual assistants can also maintain the database, or CRM, that will be used for reference during calls.

Other factors:

Companies that want to outsource their sales development team can save time and money by hiring a virtual assistant. Sales development professionals can focus on creating sales for the business while outsourcing the other details to this team member. Virtual assistants can create calls or appointments automatically, saving valuable time. They also have experience with researching useful information online. They would be able to provide research that would be relevant to the conversation during a call or appointment.

Persuasive
Persistent
Excellent communicator and listener
Good at reading/understanding people
Prospects on a regular basis

A virtual assistant working with SDRs will make calls and send emails to prospects. This can include sending emails to companies directly and making calls to decision-makers when necessary. This person should also be able to confirm appointments via phone or email and manage appointment schedules for follow-up purposes. It is also important for this person to be able to track contacts through a CRM system like Salesforce. So, they can provide updates on the current status of sales leads when needed.

So, you should be asking yourself if virtual assistants can help you grow your business & team.

[Considering a Virtual Assistant?]

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“Outsourcing makes the hustle better — because you’re not burdened with many/growing expenses that you’ll need to figure out how to cover and hit profit”

Focus on your growth & scale your operations

Envisioning of a New Reality for Your Marketing Business

Simply put, MyOutDesk equips entrepreneurs & marketing agencies owners with tools, strategies, and virtual employees – and when combined, businesses have a competitive edge and find growth while efficient systems and processes are put in place.

MyOutDesk proudly provides additional free business growth guides, books, and strategy calls.

See what we are about, and schedule a free consultation with us. We’ll take the time to learn more about your business and offer solutions to foster top talent and lower operational costs for your company.

Experience The Difference
MyOutDesk can save you up to 70% on the employment cost
Claim a free business strategy consultation & ‘Grow Virtual’ Guide

Did You Know? MyOutDesk’s origin story is set during the last global financial crisis of 2008. Yes, that’s right — our business started by scaling businesses with virtual assistants during a recession! Our first client in 2008 went from five to seventeen VAs with a completely revamped organizational model in short order, and he told MyOutDesk, “Our virtual professionals have shaved $250,000 off our monthly overhead.”

June 17, 2021/by Jeremy

man with a graph showing a graph of business development to success and growing growth concept

The Sales Guide: A deep look into Sales Development operating models

Inside Sales, MOD Virtual Assistants

Sales development is a broad term that covers many different tasks. The success of each initiative depends on the unique needs and goals of every company, so a good sales development representative must be able to adapt to the specific needs of his or her team.

The contents of this guide cover:

Sales Development Models & Goals
The Sales Development Cycle
Recommendations for Improving Sales Development Effectiveness
Examples of SDR (Sales Development Representative) Calls
Recruiting the right SDR to my team
Converting leads using the right angle (Motivations, Fit, Timeframe)

Sales Development Operating Models & Goals

There are several key operating models that sales teams use to reach their goals. The ultimate goal of sales development is to increase revenue. Of course, it’s not a simple task to achieve this goal even for seasoned salespeople–it takes a strong team.

In terms of operating models, some companies focus on growing their top line by acquiring new customers and keeping existing ones happy with good service. Other businesses concentrate on increasing customer lifetime value (CLV). Although there are countless ways for businesses to generate more leads, they all fall into one or more categories:

Introducing new products or services;
Cross-selling or existing clients;
Turning prospects into paying customers.

The job of a sales development team job is to do whatever it takes to achieve these objectives & goals. For example, they may need to conduct market research and analyze the results.

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The Sales Development Cycle

In some cases, a company might require its sales development reps to carry out lead generation campaigns. This relationship-building process is called the lead generation cycle and it consists of four steps:

Prospect Identification – This step involves finding potential clients or customers that are interested in a product or service from the company. The goal here is to build relationships with these organizations by contacting them directly through emails, phone calls, and even face-to-face meetings.

Lead Nurturing – In this step, sales executives try to get potential clients or customers engaged in a conversation about their product or service. The goal is to build enough trust and credibility so that they will open up about why they need the company’s services or products.

Lead Qualification – The sales executives use this step to qualify the potential clients or customers based on their need and desire for a product or service. They want to ensure that they will get a positive response if they offer them an opportunity.

Lead Closing – In this step, the sales executives try to convert potential clients or customers into actual buyers by providing them an opportunity for a product or service that they want.

After that, the sales development representative (SDR) works with members of their team to follow up on leads to allow sales reps to close actual buyers. The sales development cycle is a continuous ongoing process.

[Considering an SDR Virtual Assistant?]

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Recommendations for Improving Sales Development Effectiveness

Business models must change and adapt gradually overtime to stay afloat. Your business, as it exists now, will look different 10 years from now. Therefore, your current activities must be oriented toward what the future holds for your present company and others like it.

1. The first thing we recommend you do when considering sales development effectiveness is to define your goals.

You’ll need to focus on measurable and trackable outcomes. Business models must change and adapt gradually overtime to stay afloat. Your business, as it exists now, will look different 10 years from now. Therefore, your current activities must be oriented toward what the future holds for your present company and others like it.

2. The second step to ensure continual improvement to your operation is to hire the right people for your sales team. You should aim to recruit people for their talent, over their skills. Find those who are trustworthy, hard-working, and have a strong sense of responsibility.

For long-term success, the purpose of sales development personnel must be considered.

If employees are frantically running around trying to get as many leads as possible so that they can close as many deals as possible, there is no time for quality. The problem, of course, is that this approach is counterproductive. The harder you push to close deals and get leads the more resistance you encounter from potential customers. This in turn reduces your conversion rate, which means that salespeople are getting fewer leads per hour than they were before.

In order to increase your sales, you should not be trying to force leads and close deals. Your company needs to develop a new business model based on value creation for the customer rather than profit generation for yourself.

Virtual Assistants for Sales Development

Consider virtual assistants (up to 70% less than the cost of a traditional employee) as your Sales Development Representatives. You can save time and focus on closing deals, while the assistants help handle prospecting, nurturing, and service.

Sales Development Reps – The True Catalysts in Business

See also:
How to determine & hire talent – Link
Who do I hire? – Link

3. The last step is to prepare several call scripts angles to best serve leads and land the sale.

You can do this best by referring to our Lead Motivation, Fit, and Timeframe Framework, below.

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Understanding Your Leads’ Motivations, Fit, and Timeframe

We’ve garnered a lot of experience about how best to prepare virtual professionals for sales development roles—and we have created a concrete system to ensure that you have success with yours too.

When leading prospective buyers through your nurturing processes, consider the lead’s motivations, fit, and timeframe.

Motivations:

Ask: What’s the reason for your call?
Locate the urgency of what they need in the tone of their voice
Figure out whether they are ‘in pain’ or ‘in opportunity’ while considering your product and service as a remedy to the issue.
Usual ‘pain’ responses:
- “I’m not reaching my goals”
- “I’m dropping the ball in some way. I’m overwhelmed.”
- “I’m losing a lot of opportunities, Can’t keep up with our leads or paperwork.”
Usual ‘opportunity’ responses:
- “My business has grown. I’ve had this opportunity”
- “We’re super busy. No time”
- “Have looked into this before and now I and ready”
- “I would like to learn more about how you can help me”
Quantify the pain or sense of opportunity. Is it motivated by time? money? growth?

Questions to ask:

What exactly is being missed/dropped and what is that costing you?
How much business are you losing, are you able to put a dollar amount around it?
How many hours are you spending on non-productive activities?
What are you leaving on the table, and how are missing those opportunities costing you?
If you could fix this problem today, what would that be worth to you?

The Fit:

Consider their responses and identify how your product and service and best serve (or best ‘fit’ into) your lead’s background & experiences.

This is the right time to deliver more value to the lead. If you have a free giveaway or resource, now is the time to offer it: “I have a free resource, can I send it to you?”

Timeframe:

Look into seeing their timeframe to buy. When the lead expresses interest, this is the time to figure out if they are considering other competitors and the urgency of responding to them.

Typical motivated responses:

“I’m talking to other companies right now, but I like you.”
“How soon can we buy?”
“I don’t need more calls. I just want to sign up”
“I already know how this works, I just want to sign up”

Typical not motivated responses:

“Not ready”
“Not sure”
“Exploring options”
“I want to see what you guys do”
“I don’t know how you can help me”
“Send me an email of what you guys do, pricing, list of your services”
“Doing research for future reference”
“Who else do you work with? Specifically around [area]”

If you’re far into the call and still unsure about the lead’s motivations, ask this question:

“On a scale of 1-10 on [the value you provide, i.e. buying a home], how much do you move quickly on this?”

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The last important key factor to good sales development is: You know what the best sales development is? The one which has the best product.

You want to generate leads? Then you must have a great, well-tested product for your target market. If you have a great product, and if you can explain it brilliantly, then people will want it. When you make it really easy for people to find your product, and then lead traffic will come to you. [Considering a Marketing Specialist Virtual Assistant?]

Example SDR Calls, Scripts & Recruitment Tips

We’ve compiled all the tips and strategies you need to easily recruit & implement the perfect Sales Development Representative. Focus on talent acquisition, time savings, and lowering overhead.

View and download our SDR resources guides, here.

ENVISIONING OF A NEW REALITY FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Simply put, MyOutDesk equips entrepreneurs & business owners with tools, strategies, and virtual employees – and when combined, businesses have a competitive edge and find growth while efficient systems and processes are put in place.

MyOutDesk proudly provides additional free business growth guides, books, and strategy calls.

Experience The Difference
MyOutDesk can save you up to 70% on employment costs
Claim a free business strategy consultation & ‘Grow Virtual’ Guide

Did You Know? MyOutDesk’s origin story is set during the last global financial crisis of 2008. Yes, that’s right — our business started by scaling businesses with virtual assistants during a recession! Pioneers of virtual assistant services, our first client in 2008 went from five to seventeen VAs with a completely revamped organizational model in short order, and he told MyOutDesk, “Our virtual professionals have shaved $250,000 off our monthly overhead.”

See Also:

Marketing Virtual Assistants for Your SEO: Link

Explained: What is a virtual assistant? Link

November 4, 2020/by Jeremy

myoutdesk sales development virtual assistant

Sales Development Reps – The True Catalysts in Business

Accelerator, VP-Book

About 50 percent of the virtual professionals we place with clients are fulfilling clients’ sales development outcomes (that’s over 5,000 virtual professionals we’re talking about). So over the years, we have garnered real evidence about how virtual assistants as Sales Development Representatives are real catalysts in business.

We share this concrete system to show how any business who integrates virtual assistants in their business can also scale operational capacity while also lowering overhead costs.

Bulletproof Scripts
Clear Elevator Pitch
Value Proposition
Process for Handling Objections
Positioning Document
System for Measuring Results
Avoiding Common Mistakes
Sales Development Rep Example Calls

A virtual assistant can help you and your business enormously when it comes to generating and converting leads — that is, taking a potential customer who may have an interest in your business, or even may never have heard of your business, and turning that lead into a warm opportunity.

That warm opportunity would include a sales meeting, and if all goes well a sales quote. Preparing virtual professionals to succeed with this outcome is one of my favorite things to do because the path to having your investment in sales development reps (SDR) pay off in terms of revenue is clear-cut and highly measurable from an outcome basis.

When I say pay off, I’m not speaking merely of an increase in sales. In business, I like a three-to-one return. If I’m spending $5,000 to put someone in place, I want to see a $15,000 return. Your top concern about onboarding a virtual sales team will probably be “How do I do this?” Well, you could just put someone in a seat and say, “OK, now go sell for me,” and ask that individual to be accountable for some metrics you have made up in your head. In fact, as an entrepreneur, your go-to mode is probably that you jump right in first and worry about the how later. That is classic entrepreneur behavior, and in general, it’s a great attribute. In this instance, however, I’d like you to resist that and reframe your thinking.

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This is a situation in which having a concrete plan will pay off in real dollars. Think about onboarding an SDR as if you are running a relay race and you have a baton in your hand. You’re fully committed, and you’re killing it at Usain Bolt speed. As you approach runner number two, she holds out her hand expectantly to receive the baton. But instead of passing it to her, you throw it to her. It misses its mark, striking her in the head, and she stumbles. Not smart, right? You have just set up your talented teammate to fail. And that is the biggest mistake that people make when they hire VPs: They chuck the baton rather than smoothly hand it off. So, all you need is a recipe for a smooth handoff.

Experience The Difference
MyOutDesk can save you up to 70% on employment costs
Claim a free business strategy consultation & ‘Grow Virtual’ Guide

Have Bulletproof Scripts

Scripts are in the virtual professional’s arsenal. Here are the elements you should painstakingly document in written form for your new sales team members. Of course, the content will vary depending on the type of business you are in, but for the moment, I will give you examples based on what we use at MyOutDesk.

A Clear Elevator Pitch

Know your elevator pitch. The base formula for a good elevator pitch is “I serve [who] to do [what], so they [get this result].” Ours is: “We instantly scale growing companies with virtual professionals.” That is what we do at MyOutDesk, in a nutshell. The elevator pitch is such an important piece for you to craft and for your VPs to absorb. You all need to be on the same page as you communicate your company’s value, and once you have articulated this clearly and documented it transparently, your VPs will be able to advance that message. They will communicate it in exactly the way you would.

Know Your Value Proposition

This might seem a bit obvious, but many business owners think their value proposition is just that—obvious—and they fail to document it concretely for their virtual sales reps. Give them the information they need to be clear in their conversations about why your clients choose you. What is the benefit they see? We hear time and time again from our clients that they are overwhelmed, and alleviating that overwhelm is where we add massive value. They are so busy, and we are the “easy button” for finding talent to help them. There is no way they could find five people to interview in forty-eight hours…but we can. We have already vetted them. The MyOutDesk value proposition: “We provide indispensable VPs to growing businesses.” If you can articulate your value proposition clearly to your virtual professionals and have that in written form somewhere they can refer to, you are hitting one out of the park from the outset.

[Considering a Virtual Assistant?]

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Have a Process for Handling Objections

When you give your virtual professionals your value proposition, you are giving them the ideal outcome. But you also have to prepare them for the challenges they’ll encounter. Document all the objections that a potential customer might have for your product or service, and your virtual professionals will wear it like armor in their conversations with leads. They will be ready to answer potential customers’ objections in a friendly way. Why might a customer say no? What answer could your virtual professionals give that might turn that into a yes? Help them to anticipate these issues.

Have a Positioning Document

A positioning document expresses how your product or service fills a need that competitors don’t, so this is a critical piece for a sales development rep to know. At MyOutDesk, our positioning document has expressions along these lines:

We have helped over 7500 clients grow their businesses.
We make sure that every virtual professional you interview is exceptional and MOD-certified because of our thorough vetting process.
We have been in this business for 15 years and built an industry around serving medium and small businesses.
We provide Market Force™ personality profiles to accurately match talent.
We provide medical benefits, microloans, vacations, and conferences for our virtual professionals.
MyTimeIn is our proprietary software that helps track outcomes and provides daily task oversight.
We have a Chief People Office in the United States that personally vets our virtual professionals.
Your partnership with us benefits our Charity Impact Movement (503c). We give away thousands of dollars every year to impoverished communities.

These are points on which none of our competitors can compare. Anyone who tries to stack up against that will have a huge challenge, and the only way they can win is through offering a lower price and lower quality. MyOutDesk is the price leader and has the highest quality available, so this is exactly where I want our competitors to be (a lower-priced alternative). If they offer lower prices, we can say, “Look at all the value we have to help your business scale. If you are looking for the cheapest, that’s not us. If you are looking to scale effectively, while ensuring a great end product that gives value to your customers, we know how to do that.”

[Considering a Virtual Assistant?]

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Have a System for Measuring Results

You and your sales virtual professionals will know you are scaling the business when you have clearly defined processes for measuring the following:

Leads received: This is the number one thing you must track. How many leads are coming into your business every single day, week, and month?
A number of calls: How many calls did your virtual professionals make to those leads?
Leads converted: How many of those calls went from being just a lead to an actual opportunity to sell?
Speed to lead: This is a metric that really matters. How much time elapses between when the lead comes into when the call goes out and does it convert successfully? For example, a lead might come in at 1:00, and they get a call five minutes later.
New clients/sales: How many new clients resulted from this process? This is the bottom line. Have a system in place that tracks all these things in a way that is easy for everyone to understand.

Avoid These Failure Points

What I have described so far are the things you need to do to be successful in scaling with your virtual SDRs. Based on my vast experience, I’d also like to give you some common pitfalls to avoid.

You don’t have enough leads: I like to have five hundred new leads a month, but your number will depend on what industry you are in and what your sales cycle looks like. I always like to have three to five salespeople behind our virtual SDRs. An SDR’s job is to convert a lead into an opportunity, right? And the salesperson’s job is to turn that opportunity into a client. It is important for the SDR to feel like he or she is on the same team as the salesperson and vice versa. Having enough leads and enough salespeople allows you to test who is closing and who is not. We once had a client come to us because he was upset his team wasn’t converting enough leads. It turned out that the salesperson wasn’t immediately calling the leads once they got converted into an opportunity, instead of letting them go for two or three days before calling. It’s very important that you have enough people and measurement for speed to lead for both the VP and the salesperson here in the United States.
You aren’t doing daily and weekly meetings: I like a daily morning meeting with a little music and a little coffee, so everyone can talk about the wins. Everyone is talking about where their energy is and how they are feeling, and we are putting positivity out early in the morning so that feeling can be conveyed through the phones. Weekly meetings are for making commitments to sales and conversion goals.
You aren’t tracking conversations: Someone who is having forty or fifty conversations per day is going to have a different result than someone who is having ten. You want to set concrete goals for the number of conversations and share those in your daily and weekly meetings.
You don’t have activity-level measurements: Your system for measuring results should include everyone on your team. How many calls did each person make? How many times did each person try? How fast did each person handle the opportunities in front of him or her, and how often convert? These are important metrics to have for each individual.
You aren’t going after the 3Rs: As I mentioned in chapter 11, referrals, recommendations, and reviews are critical to your business. It is astounding how many businesses fail to harness the power of these three things. We chase them ruthlessly at MyOutDesk. In fact, we get referrals all the time from people who have never even done business with us. There is a woman in Texas who has sent us three or four clients. I had only one conversation with her, five years ago, and she hasn’t bought from us, but she keeps sending us people because I had a great conversation with her. If you aren’t pursuing the 3Rs with your team, you are missing out. As you can see, my prevailing message about how to set up your virtual SDRs for success is to communicate, communicate, communicate. Assume nothing, and document everything.

SDR Example Calls

Here are a few snippets from a call being made to a seller lead:

Here are a few snippets from a call being made by one of our Real Estate ISA VAs to a Buyer Lead:

Here are a few snippets of a call being made to an Expired Listing Lead:

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Did You Know? MyOutDesk’s origin story is set during the last global financial crisis of 2008. Yes, that’s right — our business started by scaling businesses with virtual assistants during a recession! Our first client in 2008 went from five to seventeen VPs with a completely revamped organizational model in short order, and he told MyOutDesk, “Our virtual professionals have shaved $250,000 off our monthly overhead.”

August 20, 2020/by Jeremy