Get offshore Leverage

Everything that you think is normal with employment is not

I met a fractional sales agency that is recruiting live Account Executives (AE’s) right now at famous SaaS software companies to moonlight for 1-2 hours a day for other customers.

I meet offshore talent every day that is serving 3 customers at the same time.

Traditional employment is a legacy model.

Here is what we’ll cover this week:

1. Just embrace “double dipping” & “moonlighting”.
2. How to teach your outsourced talent autonomous decision-making.
3. Skills that offshore talent should level up.
4. Marketing agencies are rushing to outsource to save on the Cost of Delivery – Gross Margins.
   

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Just embrace “double dipping” & “moonlighting”

Sure – you can turn up your nose to this idea.  I know double-dipping and moonlighting rubs some people the wrong way.  Trust me, you’re going to need to embrace a new reality to employment, not just for offshore talent.

What is double-dipping:

• Contractors that leverage their same role/responsibilities at multiple companies and are able to transfer workloads/assets with asymmetric gains.  In essence, 1 employer build “the stuff” and employer 2, 3, and 4 are reselling the same work but 2, 3, and 4x their salaries.  This is leverage.

What is moonlighting:

• Employees that work for 1 employer, but find time to carve out for a 2nd employer.  Easier when employer 1 has a results/performance model (just get tasks done), or more “grey area” if the employer pays by the hour.  Then the employee is optimizing their time.

Whatever the model, just embrace it.  Fighting this ever-emerging trend is like fighting to keep your employees off social media in the early 2010s.  The world is just going to move on without you.

In fact, this trend plays to your advantage.  Most opportunities to kickstart offshoring in your business start with fractional work.  You don’t actually need someone to execute the role/responsibilities in 8-hour days.  You probably only need 2-3 hours to complete the tasks.  Now your talent pool expands exponentially for those that want to take on more work.  Especially those that have the perfect core competency for your tasks, and can execute them with ease in a short period of time.

Think of the story of the plumber.  They fix your broken toilet in 3 minutes and you question why you paid them $200 for the visit.  The plumber states “You paid $0.05 for the broken washer, and $199.95 for the 10 years it took me to become an expert plumber”.

How to teach your outsourced talent autonomous decision-making

One of the largest complaints that our customers have with outsourced talent is either:

1.  Puppy Dog.  Give me a task, do the task, and come back waiting for the task.  The onshore managers eventually get frustrated that they become a bottleneck to constantly needing to think up more projects.

2. “I’ll ask my manager”.  Any decision that isn’t clearly outlined in a document like a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is automatically paused and waiting for instructions from management.  This becomes extra frustrating in CX roles, where a queue of support questions piles up.

There is an entire process we teach called ‘Coaching Moments’, but here are 3 details that will dramatically improve decision-making:

1. What & How based questions to open their mind to learning – when teaching talent about decision making, you first have to unlock how they make decisions.  Asking What & How based questions about a process/task will help them see how rigid/singular they might think through a scenario vs. where the questions may lead to the optionality of decisions.  You are opening the talent up to think differently.

2. Gestalt storytelling – people don’t remember facts as well as stories.  Teach your team by telling stories with a moral.  Stories that showcase what happened to you or other teammates that made the same decision, and the cause/effect.

3. Teach-back Method to retain scenario-based decisions – skill retention comes from being able to teach someone else that skill.  Want to teach a child a sport, you first have to be able to play that sport.  Have your offshore talent teach YOU how to execute a task, and how you would make decisions in various situations.
   

Skills that offshore talent should level up

We see a disconnect in the outsourcing world, and that’s a lack of enablement given to outsourced talent.  I don’t mean onboarding your product, or culture, or showcasing how their role will work.  That’s obviously going to happen.  

I’m talking about the skills that will help offshore talent become more effective working with North American customers:

1. How to show up and conduct yourself in virtual meetings

2. How to communicate via email, chat, text

3. How critical taking ESL classes will profoundly impact your future salary

4. Never show up to a meeting with suggested options and a recommendation

5. Decision-making and strategic thinking best practices

6. How to look for projects, not wait for projects to come to you

There is so much to teach your talent to become even more effective teammates.  Stay tuned, as we’re investing in this courseware to give FREE to your talent.

Marketing agencies are rushing to outsource to save Cost of Delivery – Gross Margins

I was on a call with a customer that has a $50,000 video editor, a $50,000 social media manager, and a $80,000 QA content writer on staff.  That $180,000 at 25% EBITA profit margins requires $720,000 in sales just to cover these 3 employees.  The agency is feeling the pricing squeeze from customers, but also growing rapidly.  “I can’t keep up with this cash flow cycle.  Outplaying $10,000’s of $10,000’s in salaries each month, and collecting payments from customers +90 days into the future”.

Our customer had originally called us to talk about offshore Demand Generation talent but realized that how they were supporting customers was not optimal.  Yes, there are strategic teammates that are customer-facing that need to be onshore, but what about the support staff?  The social media manager who posts content on behalf of the customer… what’s the difference in posting pre-developed content from Denver vs. Dhaka?  The skills are exactly the same, the costs are 1/10th.

This is happening to SMB marketing agencies all around North America.  Any role/responsibility that’s NOT in strategy sessions with your customers, question the following:

1. Do they really need to come into the office every day?
2. Can they work virtually from home?
3. Can “home” be jumping on Zoom / MSFT Teams from anywhere in my country?
4. What about anywhere in the world at the scheduled time for the call?

You’ll realize that a huge portion of your delivery work can be farmed out to hyper-accelerate your Gross Margins… ultimately helping you become more profitable.

Create objective clarity in every role BEFORE you onboard talent – for example, Standard Operating Procedures

Access it here

How have you prepared your Executive Assistant for success?

Here is an example of my Standard Operating Procedures document for my Executive Assistant (specific to Email and Calendar Processing).