Opinion: Outsourcing your sales team saves you enormous amounts of time and money, but it might not be for you!
Wait a sec before you come at me with pitchforks and torches!
Ramping your business by outsourcing your sales team shatters into gazillion pieces unless you align it with your business model and goals. Also, it’s worth noting that outsourcing sales is a better fit for some industries, though there’s enough cake for everybody.
With the tell-tale signs covered in this guide, you’ll precisely know when opting for in-house sales is better, when outsourcing makes sense, and what shortcomings you MUST avoid when outsourcing sales.
Outsourcing sales — things you should know before taking the red pill
Outsourcing your sales team is like shopping for your dream car. You want certain things to be checkmarked before going in with the purchase. These things often are:
- It aligns with your goals and capabilities.
- It’s built by the most experienced professionals with a proven track record.
- It’s super reliable without the slightest chance of ditching you when most needed.
If your goal is to bootstrap your business but can’t afford an in-house sales team, outsourcing is the way to go. But don’t just hire a third-party sales company and expect magic to happen.
That would be ludicrous!
Communicating your sales capabilities, needs, and expectations will produce a more proactive relationship with your sales company. A better relationship often means more dollars coming your way, and growth goes through the roof.
A winning combination, right?
Well, not every time! Many sales companies will mask the dirty stuff with politeness and niceness, so you will only ramp up your business if you take a look at their track record and who’s behind the phone.
You don’t want call centers or customer support. You WANT a mean, lean, high-performance sales team engaging with your leads! That doesn’t mean you should go with the first high-performance sales teams you stumble upon, though.
Here’s why: Just because they are high-quality, it doesn’t mean they are high-quality for your business. Knowing they have expertise selling in your niche will speed up your growth. But there are other factors to keep in mind.
Ask yourself: Do they have your preferred sales methodologies set in place? What kind of evaluation and sales measuring metrics do they use? What kind of sales pipeline do they use?
With those tell-tale questions, you’ll test their expertise and see if they are a match made in heaven for your business.
Okay, you’ve found a well-known, highly professional DFY (Done For You) sales company. But one question looms over your head: How can you ensure they won’t drop you as a client and go for a bigger fish?
Outsourcing your sales team to a reliable agency
This is a dream come true for any business, but it’s not a permanent solution!
Over time, your sales needs will change, and so will your relationship with the sales company. It’s wiser and more profitable to adjust that relationship to meet your new expectations than to go with a new third party.
Warning: The misleading expectation many business owners have with outsourcing sales teams are lightspeed results. Just because you’re delegating people management, you can’t expect to see spectacular results the day after!
Outsourced salespeople need time and onboarding to get the ins and outs of your products and business values before they bring you millions.
When does outsourcing a sales team make sense?
Outsourcing your sales team speeds up your business under these circumstances:
- Your business is newly-born, and budgets are super-tight. Starting an in-house sales team is a big NO-NO since you barely have enough cash flow to pay your accountant.
- It’s incredibly hard to find skilled salespeople for your industry, and even if you find them, they won’t be satisfied with breadcrumbs.
- Your current sales team is swamped with all the new leads coming in, and you need gallons of coffee to keep them from falling apart.
- You want to chop down overhead employee costs and focus those funds on marketing capabilities or unchain internal resources.
- You have multiple product distributions, and your current sales team can only cover some of them.
- Your goal is to 10X your revenue growth and expand your business capabilities.
- You want to liberate your current sales team from lifeless data entry tasks and train them towards customer support and retention.
Going sky-high by outsourcing your sales team — is it worth it?
Yes and no!
Outsourcing your sales team will expose you to unexplored markets, the ones your in-house team couldn’t touch.
Want to venture into the Indian, Chinese, or perhaps African marketplaces but don’t have the expertise and know-how to pull that off? Outsourcing sales in those places is your go-to.
Outsourcing sales teams also improves business flexibility. Knowing your sales team is alive and well, while your business withholds too harsh climates and unpredictable situations, will save you from countless sleepless nights.
Fact: According to a recent survey, most salespeople are focused on selling just two days a week. The rest of the time, they are focused on mundane Excel sheets, scheduling, and water cooler small talk.
By outsourcing your sales, you can fully tap into the tremendous potential, and leverage elite professionals and software with a laser focus on sales — no more pipeline entry, lead generation, or sheet making. No BS. Just sales in their purest form.
But everything’s not peaches and cream. The dark side of outsourcing your sales team is potential trouble in scaling.
Let me explain: Outsourcing your sales at the beginning sounds like a wise idea. And it is! Eventually, that growth will be accompanied by increased revenue. But if you get “addicted” to new leads coming in, without turning them into profits, your scalability takes a hit.
You see, outsourcing companies will take you past Jupiter’s orbit in 10x-ing those sales numbers. Still, the business won’t even reach the Moon unless you carefully use the potential they bring you to turn those leads into profits.
Profits lead to scalability, and thus the upwards spiral begins. Before you say “SALES!”, you’ll have a multi-million dollar business with the help of a sales company!
FAQ
Can you combine in-house and outsourced sales teams?
Yes, you can!
Combining your in-house sales with outsourced sales is a killing combo. But with one requirement — you have a monster of an in-house sales team.
Imagine this: You’re a big company that recently launched a complex new service, but you’ve hit a wall. Your elite in-house sales team struggles to bring in new leads, and sales are barely existent. That’s when asking for a helping hand from a sales company can be crucial. Their professional know-hows help you go over that wall, no matter how perplexing your service might be.
Is having an outsourced team more costly?
Outsourcing a sales team will save you thousands of dollars compared to finding, training, and retaining a sales talent. But you can’t be cheap as hell when outsourcing, either.
That’s one of the biggest shortcomings many business owners have. Outsourcing sales to professionals requires a company budget to absorb a hit. Period!
You can’t be a cheapskate here and expect to receive top sales professionals that ramp up your revenue and growth.
