Dear Readers,

Sales outsourcing is a great opportunity to augment your sales team and grow your business.

Yet organizational leaders are often reluctant to outsource any of their sales functions, since these disciplines are looked upon as core competencies to their overall sales strategy. Relinquishing any degree of control over an aspect of the sales process can be tough, particularly when sales leaders are on the hook for hitting performance goals.

In other cases, there’s a fear of the unknown. Business leaders, for example, have a hard time envisioning another company representing their brand well. Leadership feels they need to manage and control the customer experience. Yet despite these concerns, there are numerous business and operational advantages to outsourcing sales activities.
 

What sales outsourcing can do for your company

Buyers may have access to more information than ever, but knowledgeable sales professionals are still needed to answer questions and provide a human touch when an automated or self-service system isn’t enough.

Also, many sales organizations struggle to increase lead generation, improve conversion rates of qualified leads, and shorten protracted sales cycles. Along with a lack of product or vertical industry expertise within the sales organization, these constraints hurt overall sales execution. Consider that nearly two out of five (37 percent) sales reps fail to make their quotas, according to CSO Insights. While there are a number of reasons for these shortcomings, the findings underscore rich opportunities for using outsourced sales resources to strengthen operational and business results.
In our experience, companies can benefit from an outsourcing sales solution in four key ways to accelerate sales:
 

1. Sales outsourcing can help you target new or underserved markets

Small businesses, mid-market, and even enterprise companies are often stretched when it comes to having the right number of salespeople to cover different territories and vertical industries. In addition, companies often have numerous business leads available to them that they’re unable to pursue due to resource constraints.

As part of your market strategy, outsourced sales resources can focus specifically on developing vertical or geographic markets that require greater attention. Meanwhile, companies can also use an outsourced sales team to test new approaches to sales and product positioning. From there, the results can be analyzed and fine-tuned before being extended to a larger base of customers and prospects.

2. Sales outsourcing can help you leapfrog technology constraints

Investing in the latest tools is one thing. Having the knowledge and expertise to leverage those tools is another. It’s not just about having the tools, it’s about knowing how to get the most value out of them, which is why you need experts.

Companies can achieve time-to-market benefits by outsourcing to a partner that has built and maintains state-of-the-art data and technology environments. For example, companies can benefit from the use of an outsourced partner’s analytics tools. Data science and analytics platforms can help salespeople determine the best time to call a customer or to extend an offer, among other actions. Also, artificial intelligence combined with analytics can help sales leaders analyze thousands of data points to gain a deeper understanding of prospect needs and employee performance issues to take corrective actions that can strengthen operational and business results.

3. Sales outsourcing can help you break out of silos

Outsourcing allows companies to manage to outcomes in a more direct way than can be sometimes done in an internal sales organization. The reality is many teams operate in a silo. Most internal sales teams, for instance, don’t regularly collaborate with marketing or other departments. Additionally, each team may not approach issues holistically and instead maintains a laser focus on departmental tasks. An external team is better positioned to work cross-functionally within an organization, to improve the overall sales execution. An outsourcer may also be able to work with shorter timeframes that are difficult to accomplish internally.

4. Sales outsourcing can help support new product rollouts

One of the greatest advantages to outsourcing is that it can allow a company to use an outsourcing partner as a sandbox environment to test out new campaigns and promotions as part of their sales strategy.

For example, a technology company partnered with us to call customers and prospects about new products it’s testing. The company then analyzes the results and determines whether or not to launch the product into the market or make revisions based on feedback it has received. In some cases, we help to assess how a product is being received in the market, determine an effective price point, and evaluate what the sales cycle is going to look like for that product.