Hello, my name is Nicola Hill
I'm the Sales and Marketing Director for Gem Vending Ltd.
We had an internal telesales ourselves and the girl was very successful.
It took us a long time to find her
but she proved herself to be very successful.
And we had a period when we were short on sales
so we put her out in the field
and she became equally successful out in the field doing field sales
and it left us a gap.
For me, recruitment in that area
has been very difficult in the past
so we looked at outsourcing at that point.
I've been with the company for 21 years
and during that time
we've used two or three different agencies
and what we've found with them is
that they've never really understood what we are as a company.
The [Straightahead] team didn’t just go out there for appointments.
It wasn't a numbers game
of getting as many appointments as possible
because appointments that aren't
qualified appointments aren't valuable
or are just a waste of my salespeople's time.
So it was very much a relationship sale
If it's appropriate now we'll have an appointment
but if it's not appropriate now, when is it appropriate?
I really like that
because it saves me time as well as money.
The consultative approach,
and not the hard sell approach, I like that
that's how we sell as a company.
So it matched what we're about
As the relationship continued,
it felt like they were part of our team selling our products.
The delivery has been great. It's been exactly as was promised.
The feedback's been good. It has been a partnership.
There have been times when we've given feedback.
but it's always been taken on board
and the next round has been better every time.
So, it's very much been a partnership and listening to each other's needs.
The most important part was to manage our integrity.
We didn't make promises that we couldn't keep
for the sake of getting appointments.
We definitely got some quality business coming through because of that.
And what we've also got is relationships to take forwards.
Straightahead's reporting is very good.
We always got the reports on the day that we were promised the reports.
and they were always accurate and distributed exactly as we were promised.