Outsource Sales Roles and Increase Revenue
It’s great to have an internal sales team where you know all the players well and can develop them over time to improve performance, but some organizations that have benefited from outsourcing their sales team – and even if you do have an internal team, you might face situations where it can be useful to outsource some of the work.
For example, if you need to scale in a hurry – or scale temporarily – to penetrate a new segment of the market or support the launch of a new product, outsourcing can help you bypass the lengthy hiring and onboarding process to hit the ground running.
Similarly, there are some roles that lend themselves more naturally to outsourcing, whether they’re not essential long-term or because they don’t rely on in-depth internal relationships to succeed (as sales rep positions do), and the cost savings of outsourcing can be significant.
To evaluate whether outsourcing aspects of your sales team, we use the following considerations.
Great Sales Roles to Outsource
Lead Developers – With most of their time spent defining personas, gathering intel, analyzing data, and qualifying leads, lead developers are less likely to need to build long-term relationships or develop extensive knowledge of the product.
It’s likely that you’d be able to hire an external lead developer or two and get them up and running on your specific needs quickly.
Sales Development Representatives – Traditionally, SDRs have been cold callers responsible for finding leads through outbound prospecting that are then handed off to an Account Manager. This inside sales position doesn’t rely on long-term customer relationships which makes it an easy choice for outsourcing.
SDRs represent your organization to the market, finding problems your product or service can solve and then connecting prospective customers with your sales agents, who will take it from there.
This frees up time for your internal sales team, allowing them to focus on developing accounts and closing business instead of mining for leads, and because this initial step doesn’t require in-depth knowledge of the product or service your company offers, or ongoing relationship management, it’s a great opportunity to outsource.
Sales Support – This is another role that’s more of a facilitator than a relationship manager, which again makes it a great candidate for outsourcing. Sales support works behind the scenes to help sales reps with product stock, shipment or scheduling availability, and tailored price quotes.
This operational role is focused on the kinds of details that rarely change from sale to sale makes it an easy position to contract out. If a contractor has experience as a customer service rep or other support personnel, they’ll likely be well positioned to slot right into your sales process with relatively little guidance.
Now that you have a sense of which roles are best suited for outsourcing, the next step is figuring out how to find and hire the right consultant, external team or contractors and how to get them up to speed quickly. Here are a few of our favorite tips for getting that right:
Strategies for Finding, Hiring, and Onboarding Your External Sales Roles
Assess your budget honestly. Before you begin the process of outsourcing, be honest with yourself about what you can afford. Are you looking to hire a full external team or bring on a consultant, or do you need to do more of the legwork and management yourself in exchange for hourly contractors who might cost less?
Decide whether you need the cream of the crop, someone more mid-level, or someone who’ll provide the bare-bones support you need – then investigate options within that range.
Look at examples to gain an understanding of what they can do for you. If you’re hiring a full external team or consultancy in your industry, they should offer case study on their website that highlight the results they’ve created for companies like yours.
Ask them for recommendations or a paid work sample so you can assess whether they’re a fit for your needs.
Incorporate them into your team. Make sure that your new resources will have the internal connections and necessary support they’ll need to be successful. Ideally this will include one or two point people whose responsibility it is to keep the new resources updated on any changes to the process or sales goals and check in with them regularly.
Sales meetings should include the new resources to ensure everyone is always on the same page.
Train, train, train. It’s worth the time up front to make sure any new resource has an understanding of what you’re selling and is informed of your team’s tools, software, processes and best practices. m
As a best practice, put any external resources through the same training as internal resources. At a minimum, prepare a brief training program that includes a collection of materials and references, such as playbooks, templates, talk tracks or scripts, email samples so they can answer some of their own questions as they get on board and self-serve solutions as they settle into their role.
If bigger revenue targets are on your plan, consider outsourcing as a strategy, like this client did, to scale sales quickly and help you grow your bottom line faster.
Prime 8 Consulting takes a programmatic approach to helping companies develop profitable sales strategies and tactical growth plans. When building a solution for you, our holistic framework considers all aspects of sales and the sale cycle, including alliance relationships, partner selling, operational optimization, business intelligence to find new opportunities, and sales enablement learning programs to build high performing sales teams. We’d love to hear more about your needs. Reach out to our revenue experts today for a free consultation.
