Project reference · Digital marketing
A remote sales and marketing team for a US agency.
A US digital-marketing agency wanted English-speaking people in Ukraine who would work from home on American office hours. First it needed appointment setters to cold-call US businesses, then social-media, SEO and pay-per-click specialists. The agency interviewed and employed them itself. We found them, screened them, ran the interview schedule seven time zones apart and got twelve employment contracts signed in six months.
54 candidates presented
Shortlists
12 employment contracts signed
Hires
Up to 3 client interview rounds
Process
7 hours of time difference
Time zones
The working day
Eight hours on American time
The appointment setters worked the US business day from home: training in the morning, two rounds of calls split by US time zone, and a debrief after each round.
The brief
What the client actually needed
The agency sells search, social-media and website marketing to small and mid-sized US businesses and needed more people to find leads for its sales closers. Its board had one condition: it would not pay a large fee up front for someone who might leave after three weeks.
So we priced the search to match. Instead of a one-off placement fee we charged a small monthly fee for each appointment setter for as long as he or she stayed, and a share of salary for specialist roles, spread over the months worked. The agency trained, managed and paid its people. We found them and kept the pipeline full.
The hard parts
Where it gets difficult
Cold calls to America, from Ukraine
Good English is not the same as sounding local. US business owners hang up fast, and the first hires told us that accent and pace, not grammar, were the real barrier. That changed who we looked for.
250 calls a day
The target was 250 dials and six hours of talk time a day, on a PC wired to the router and never on Wi-Fi. Candidates needed to know that before they applied, so we asked the client for its KPIs and put them into every first call.
An evening shift at home
American office hours run from mid-afternoon to near midnight in Kyiv. People with day jobs or studies dropped out. The ones who stayed were those who wanted exactly that evening shift.
An employer they never meet
Contract, non-disclosure agreement, training and pay all came from a company on another continent. We walked each candidate through the contract, collected their questions, got the client’s answers and returned the signed copies.
The first three weeks
Probation meant three weeks of daily training. Several appointment setters left in the first month or never started. Our fee ran only while people stayed, so retention was our problem as much as the client’s.
Specialists on an entry-level budget
Social-media, SEO and pay-per-click people with fluent English earn more than a call-centre wage. We matched the client’s budget with people good enough to earn a raise quickly, and both of the first two did.
What we did
Price, search, schedule, adjust
- May 2015 · Terms. A quotation, then a service agreement the client’s board could accept: fees tied to how long each hire stayed, and a free replacement in the first three months.
- Jun–Sep 2015 · Appointment setters. Job ads, CV screening, phone and Skype interviews in English, then up to three client interview rounds booked on US time. Nine contracts signed in July and August.
- Jul–Nov 2015 · Specialists. Social-media, SEO and pay-per-click roles, with the client’s own test tasks and screening questions. Three specialist contracts signed.
- Sep–Oct 2015 · A better model. After the first wave we proposed a lead centre instead of a call centre: a native-speaking supervisor who can listen in live, call software linked to a CRM, five minutes of research before each call to make it a warm one, and a lower base salary with a bonus for language progress.
The client kept asking for more: further social-media and SEO people, pay-per-click managers and developers, and in 2016 a senior pay-per-click specialist.
In the client’s words
“We are very happy with both of them. They have already been given raises.”
The agency, about its first two specialist hires, October 2015.
How we work
We do not show you another company’s name
The client, its owners and its people are not named here, and they will not be named in a meeting either. We are glad to talk this project through in detail. What we will not do is discuss the last client that way with you, or you with the next one.
Next step
Hiring in Ukraine for a team abroad?
Whether you employ people yourself or want us to employ them for you, thirty minutes is usually enough to tell you what set-up and what salary will work.
