by Karen Van Ert
A little background on me….
I’ve spent the majority of my career managing large internal marketing, UX/UI and content teams, and the companies I’ve worked for fully supported me building internal teams over outsourcing – in fact they pushed for it. At my last gig, I started with six very bright, but very young employees. Six years later, the team was 32 deep and I’d managed to keep three of the original crew, mentoring them into lead positions. In my opinion, it was an ideal situation, but it was one that grew organically with the organization and it worked for us at the time.
Towards the tail end of that role, I hired some agencies to augment my team when we couldn’t find the right talent to hire outright or to cover in cases of attrition and I’d be lying if I said it was an easy decision because it wasn’t. It was a difficult decision first to outsource, and second, who to select because for some reason, there’s a bigger element of trust at play.
Now, ironically, I’m working for an agency and I find myself having this exact conversation with prospects who are leery of working with an agency. I love having this conversation, because that’s what it is. There’s no black and white here and I understand the angst involved.
So what can I impart? Being perfectly frank, if you have the money, know what you need from an employee resource perspective, and can attract and hire the right talent, you should, but there are two big “ifs” here. Talented ecommerce experts, (think merchandising, search marketing, retention marketing, data analytics, developers) are hard to find, and they cost a pretty penny. Plus, they’re hard to keep – so even in the best of cultures, you’re going to need back up in case you lose a key player.
If you’re starting out in ecommerce and you don’t have the money to hire a full team of skilled employees, you’re much better off hiring a young, inexpensive, eager go-getter internally along with an agency that has experts in all the necessary channels and who’s willing to scale with you as your business grows. I like to suggest that clients work with us on a focused a initiative, and when we prove positive ROI (return on investment) and get them a little more money to work with, move on to a second initiative, and so on. It’s also important to work with agencies willing to train your internal staff so you’re not handcuffed to a 3rd party for life.
The most important place to start is with internal expectations. What are your goals and how much can you pay to achieve them? Are you starting from scratch, or do you have a few key players already on board? Do you have a solid org chart and do you know what your headcount can be to remain profitable from an overhead perspective? Do you know how much it’s going to take to hire the right people?
At the end of the day, having a mix of internal and external talent is a great solution and makes fiscal sense. So how do you hire the right agency? Here are 5 pointers to selecting the right agency:
1. Make sure you use the same due diligence interviewing prospective agencies that you would internal hires, that you set expectations and have an out clause you can live with.
2. Verify that any agency you plan to work with believes in measurable KPIs (key performance indicators), understands your ROI goals, and has examples of reporting that’s focused on success outcomes.
3. Ask for references that have engaged with them on work similar in nature to what you’ll be engaging the agency to do, and call them. Have questions ready in advance and make sure you ask some tough ones.
4. Take time getting to know the team members who’ll be working directly with you and make sure you gel personally. Check them out on linked in and make sure you’re comfortable with their experience.
5. And, last but not least, make sure any agency you work with uses a team based approach meaning you won’t be starting over with a fresh team member that has to relearn your business if they have turnover.
Good luck! And if you want to debate or discuss the topic, I’m open to comments, questions or calls.
