Utilizing sales outsourcing companies should be considered by any firm, whether you are a startup or a multi-million dollar operation. Outsourcing as a function is utilized heavily in businesses – look at accounting services, custom application development, cleaning services, sewer maintenance, painting…this list is big and in many cases the reason for outsourcing activities including your sales are similar.
Successful owners and business managers know that focussing on what you are best at is what drives success. So focus on it. If you are a great product development or engineering company and you have no expertise in sales nor do you have the time or resources to build out a sales organization, then utilizing a sales outsourcing company may make a great deal of sense.
Lets look at the key reasons why outsourcing your sales and marketing makes sense:
Focus on your Strengths & Keep Costs Low
If you and your current team are not strong at sales, i;[t will be hard to build a sales organization right away. Focus on your strengths, leverage an outsourced sales service to get things up and running, build out the sales process, infrastructure and associated messaging and ultimately do the sales. This is going to be a lower cost option with less risk than having you try to lead the sales effort blindly. Like anything though, choosing the right sales outsourcing firm is important so be sure to do your due diligence.
Faster Growth
As the business owner you are wearing multiple hats. You are the product expert, the finance lead, the fund raiser, customer service rep…and right now you have to be intimately involved in these areas. What happens though is that your time allocated for sales and building your sales funnel dissipates. Having an outsourced sales company working on the outbound sales process for you fills that void and helps to drive fresh leads and ultimately revenue in through new customers. Oftentimes, these firms can scale up or scale down to meet you budgetary needs. Remember, in the B2B sales world it takes 6 to 18 months to close anything of significance and it normally takes 8 to 13 (or more) touches to close a deal.
Hiring Excellent Sales & Marketing Talent is Challenging
Many entrepreneurs don’t have a lot of sales experience. So can you hire a strong sales person if you have had limited exposure to it? It’s easy to hire anyone, just hard to hire someone good.
Also remember, hiring a sales person, just like any other key position can take a significant amount of time. Time is money as they say and if you combine no experience with sales and then the time taken to hire, there is a money losing proposition waiting to happen. In addition, remember for your sales person to be successful you have to have the right sales infrastructure in place – how familiar are you with sales CRMs, have you managed a sales funnel before, what are the expectations for daily activities, how about the value proposition and messaging development? Sales collateral – who is responsible for this? All very important aspects of doing sales well.
Cost Effective
Outsourcing a part-time sales resource is often much less expensive than hiring a full-time person. In addition to a cost savings, there are additional benefits such as no employment burdens (especially now with CIPP going up in Canada), no vacation pay, no benefits and a much easier termination process.
Flexibility
A big benefit of outsourcing is flexibility. An outsourced sales resource will normally be much more flexible in their engagement with you (or they should be). At VA Partners we provide clients with the flexibility to scale up and down in hours per month, we can provide flexibility on commission structures where needed to ensure projects in competitive industries are won.
Continuity
Another reason to consider a sales outsourcing company is to bring continuity and persistence to your outbound sales effort. The largest challenge many owner run and start up companies face is that they have so many hats, sales gets forgotten until they are in famine mode. Then the work and time it takes to drive new revenues is often a killer. Utilizes a sales outsourcing company to provide this level of consistency from a lead generation and closing perspective is the key to long-term success.
Ultimately, the main reason for bringing on a B2B sales outsourcing company is to engage a specialist that can help you with an area you are under resourced at. Adding an outsourced resource that brings the skill set, methodology, process and executional acumen are going to be the key components that drive the success of the engagement.
If you’re looking for outsourced sales and marketing assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us. For great insight into startup sales and marketing, feel free to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter.
