Companies are looking to sales outsourcing as the perfect solution to their revenue challenges: let someone else worry about all things to do with sales. There are lots of great reasons to look at sales outsourcing and a lot of reasons not to outsource your sales. Based on my experience, understanding your sales processes and creating a collaborative plan is the best way to have a successful outsource sales engagement.
What does Outsource Sales mean to you?
When we started our business, we called our offering part-time sales versus outsource sales. We felt that for a successful engagement there needs to be a collaborative process, hence why we selected this terminology. This is especially true for growing businesses and startups. There are many benefits of sales outsourcing, but that doesn’t mean creating a siloed approach is necessary.
Understand the steps in your sales process
In order to outsource sales it is important to understand the steps of the sales process. This allows you to set-up your outsourced partner for success and also allows you to identify the points in the cycle that you want to play a role in.
Consider the length of your sales cycle
One of the big issues when working with prospects is level setting around the time for the first win. If your typical sales cycle takes 6 to 18 months then your outsourced partner will not likely have any wins in the first 3 months. Understanding the sales cycle will allow for the realistic expectation on when sales will happen.
What are your goals?
Revenue and closes are the desired outcomes, but what targets proceed the revenue. For B2B SaaS sales that could mean meetings, demos, or proposals. Setting those targets for your outsource sales partner can help make sure they stay on track and also predict revenue.
Economics of the engagement
There are lots of different flavours of sales outsourcing. This could include a mix of commission, retainer, and hourly billing. You need to understand the economics not only to make sure that it is profitable for you, but also to ensure that there is a beneficial relationship with the partner.
Pick the right partner
In my view picking a sales outsourcing sales partner should be like hiring an employee. Yes. the economics and fee structure should work, but you should also be hiring for a cultural fit with your business. They should have experience with similar solutions and selling to your target customer.
VA Partners has worked with over 130 startups and growing businesses since our founding. If you are looking to see if sales outsourcing could be a fit for you please contact me.
