Bearworks + Influx: How to Onboard a Sales Partner Successfully

Here’s the scenario: You already have 1-4 sales reps. You’re meeting pipeline targets, but individual performance is varied, and the management cost of hiring, onboarding, training and developing sales staff is proving significant and pushing out other initiatives. 

How do you continue to grow your pipeline, while keeping your customer acquisition cost manageable?

Enter the sales partner - a repeatable and scalable outsourced sales engine that operates as an extension to your existing team, while collectively working within the Bearworks salesfloor and dialer.

Onboarding a sales partner is tricky though. Many companies treat onboarding a partner the same way as onboarding a SDR, which is usually incorrect. A sales partner is a managed sales engine, so onboarding them is like onboarding an entirely new org unit, even if you’re starting with just 1-2 sales reps.

How do you do it? It boils down to four things: Scope, success, reporting and rhythms.

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1. Define the Scope — Build the Sales Machine Before You Hit “Start”

Sales isn’t one job. It’s typically four jobs working towards the same goals:

• Lead gen/research: Find real humans, at real companies, with real needs. Filter out noise. Feed the pipeline. Review. Improve the process. Repeat.
• Inbound sales: Grab every inbound call, chat or email, ideally 24/7.
• Outbound sales: These are your callers. They relish the excitement of getting through. Ideally they have a ‘semi-warm’ list of leads, either existing customers or a warm list from an event.
• Closers: The revenue generators, usually specialized on revenue generation.

If you can’t articulate which parts of this engine your sales partner is taking on, don’t hire them yet. A good partner needs to know if they’re here to find the leads, warm the leads, or close the leads - different roles, different people, different playbooks.

And most importantly: you’re not buying a service; you’re extending a system. You need a partner who can integrate into your model—not build their own in parallel.

2. Define Success — Inputs. Outputs. Real Numbers.

We’re not in theory land here. We’re building a revenue engine. So what does a great month look like for the new sales team?

Success in the First Month:

• Inputs: Calls made. Emails sent. Sequences followed. CRM hygiene. These are the controllables. Track them.
  
  
• Outputs: Leads generated. Appointments booked. Revenue started. This is the business case for putting the time in. You should see some early signs of success in the first month, but not a full-blown, high-efficiency engine yet.
  
  

Don’t expect miracles in the first 30 days—but do expect consistency and improvement. If your sales partner can’t show traction on inputs within 2 weeks, they’re not ramping—they’re stalling.

Define which of these metrics matter. Which metrics will you be looking at first thing on Monday? If the answer is ‘none of the above’, then you’re not ready to hire a partner yet.

Three Months In:

This is when outputs should start to compound. You’re not just tracking calls anymore—you’re tracking revenue and efficiency. You should know:

• How many calls turn into meetings.
• How many meetings convert into pipeline.
• What that pipeline is worth.
  
  

3. Set up Your Reporting — If It’s Not in the Dashboard, It Didn’t Happen

Inspect what you expect.

Set up shared dashboards—CRM-integrated—with real-time visibility. No “we’ll send you a spreadsheet every Friday”. Make your reports verifiable.

Sample dashboard metrics:

• Calls completed
• Call quality (duration, talk ratios, notes)
• Lead quality
• Conversion rates
• Revenue influence

Bearworks has a suite of sales performance metrics:

• Individual and team metrics
• Historical performance tracking
• Call outcome analysis

Go one level deeper: performance by agent. If one rep is booking 3x the meetings of another, figure out why—and fix it fast. This is where good reporting becomes an essential management and self-management tool, not just a scorecard.

4. Define Operating Rhythms — Sales is a Sport, Not a Report

High-functioning sales teams don’t just perform. They review. Improve. Align. Constantly.

Build your operating cadence before onboarding the partner:

• Weekly sync/review: Pipeline health, feedback loops, campaign tweaks.
• Weekly standups: Typically on a Monday or Tuesday. Get the team excited. The partner usually runs these if you don’t.
• Training: New products, new scripts, new objections. Kickoff meeting, followed by weekly reviews. Set up a Slack or Teams group for feedback and learning.
• Quarterly reviews: Strategic alignment with your internal team. Segment leaders in the loop.
  
  

Simple rhythms are non-negotiable. Multiple, goal-oriented rhythms are what separate the great partnerships from the good ones.

And yes, Slack/Teams can cover the basics. But for the important stuff? Meet. Talk. Zoom - meet as a group. Sales is human. Outsourced sales is sales too. Outsourced teams want to feel like they’re part of the local team. Treat them as such.

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The Bottom Line

Sales partnerships is an under-utilized lever to grow your revenue. Get it right from the beginning, and you’ll double or triple your net new revenue, while keeping costs manageable. The ROI on getting the details right early is massive.

Interested to learn more about sales partnerships? Check out Influx sales or Influx support teams - who can help with inbound calls. Here’s how one company generated $1.6 million+ net new revenue in five months using an outsourced model.