Outsourcing: The No-Excuses Sales Remedy

When a soccer team takes to the field, its coach knows that each of their players is vital to the overall success of the group. But in soccer, as in business, the person who scores the most goals - or seals the most deals - is paid the most. This is why your salespeople are so vital to the success of your organization. 

Are you getting the most from your star sellers, and could you - by outsourcing some key, but time-intensive sales functions - liberate them to perform at their consistent best in driving revenue into the company?

Here we’ll look at how you can maximize the performance of your sales and marketing back-office functions, allowing your salespeople to keep closing those big deals and driving the business forward.

Should you consider outsourcing at all? What are the risks of outsourcing? Which functions are ideal for outsourcing, and how would doing so impact your sales team? What will the future look like for your company if you outsource? These are good questions, and you deserve answers.

Let’s go!

When Using In-House Sales and Marketing Back-Office Functions Makes Sense

You’re running a small business, and have no plans to scale. You’re happy with your staff, who show no signs of wanting to move elsewhere. Your average contract value is $1000 or less. You’re happy with your level of sales, and your business (and therefore your life) is running exactly how you want it to. You’re golden - why are you even reading this?!  

What Can Go Wrong With Outsourcing?

There are numerous high-profile examples of outsourcing going wrong. Rather than focus on individual companies, let’s take a look at some guiding principles to consider when thinking about outsourcing - if you don’t get these things right, you’re going to run into problems.

1. Clearly Defined Objectives: without this, your outsourcing partner - and maybe even you yourself - will not have a sound grasp of why you’re outsourcing, and what you want to achieve. Both you and your partner need to make sure that your mutual expectations are realistic, deliverable, and aligned with your goals.

2. Picking the Right Outsourcing Partner: if you don’t thoroughly research and choose a reliable outsourcing partner or vendor, you’re as close to guaranteeing failure as you would be if you took your annual report to a kindergarten to be signed off. You might get lucky. You probably won’t. 

Without evaluating their expertise, experience, testimonials, and wider reputation, you have no idea whether they can meet your specific requirements and deliver quality results.

3. Cost-effectiveness: cost reduction is often the primary driver for outsourcing, it is vital to evaluate the overall cost-effectiveness for your business. Think not only of the financial aspects (although you must consider these!), but also the long-term impact on your business operations, quality, and customer satisfaction. Buy cheap, buy twice!

4. Clear Communication: you should insist upon effective communication channels with your outsourcing partner. Be explicit about your expectations, project requirements, timelines, and key performance indicators (KPIs). If there are no regular updates between both parties, you won’t know about any issues that will later come back to bite you.

5. Intellectual Property (IP): It is crucial to ensure that proper legal agreements and confidentiality clauses are in place to protect your sensitive data, intellectual property, and trade secrets. Discuss and agree on data security measures and non-disclosure agreements to safeguard your interests. You know the world of pain that awaits you if you don’t take care of your IP.

6. Culture: There’s a good chance you’ll be outsourcing to a different country. You need to be aware of any cultural nuances that may affect communication, working style, and business practices. Take the time to understand and respect cultural differences to foster a productive and harmonious working relationship. Most of these differences can be navigated pretty easily, but your business is unique - this issue needs to be addressed if you are to avoid problems down the line.

7. Performance Benchmarking: How do you know how your outsourcing relationship is working if you don’t regularly review, measure, and benchmark the activity taking place? Clear metrics and KPIs should be established to assess the progress and quality of work delivered by the outsourcing partner. Regularly monitor and evaluate their performance against these benchmarks to ensure adherence to agreed-upon standards.

8. Contingency Planning: The former British prime minister, Harold MacMillan, when asked what was most likely to blow his plans off course, replied, “Events, dear boy, events”. Things happen that you haven’t anticipated. The solution? Anticipate them! If you don’t develop contingency plans to mitigate potential risks or disruptions in the outsourcing process, you’re in trouble.

You don’t know what the ‘events’ are going to be exactly, but if you consider factors such as changes in regulation, vendor-related challenges, or unforeseen events that may impact the outsourcing arrangement, you have a great chance of averting major upheaval.

Which Functions Can Be Successfully Outsourced?

What Effects Your Frontline Sales Team Will Get When You Outsource?

See how outsourcing your sales development functions can save you time, money and efforts. Check out customer success stories.

‘Outsourcing ’ isn’t the catch-all term it first appears to be, particularly regarding sales and marketing. It is, of course, possible to outsource entire departments, but you are more likely to have a specific function (or functions) you need help with to enable your growth. 

Appointment Setting

A salesperson can get lucky on a cold call by having the decision-maker pick up the phone. It doesn’t happen very often, and it’s not a recipe for regular, predictable success. What they need is a steady flow of meetings with qualified leads, with a good chance of closing a deal. 

Easy, right? You know that’s not true. Getting (the right) prospects to agree to an appointment takes specific skills, persistence, tenacity, and - most of all - time.

By outsourcing appointment setting, you can delegate the responsibility of scheduling meetings and appointments with potential clients to a specialized team of professionals. 

This will enable you to focus on core competencies while ensuring your sales pipeline remains active, healthy, and productive. Outsourcing appointment setting will provide you with access to skilled agents who excel in communication, with targeted expertise in engaging potential leads. These professionals use strategies like cold calling, email campaigns, or even social media outreach to generate leads and secure appointments.

Effect on your salespeople: This is win, win, and win again for them. They no longer spend hours chasing down and nailing meetings. This means they have more time to spend honing their pitch and putting compelling presentations together for the appointments already in their diaries.

Content syndication

This is a great marketing tool that will maximize user engagement in the assets you have already allocated time and resources to. There are a couple of key words in the previous sentence that will emerge as something of a theme here: time and resources. There are so many ways you can modify and augment what you do, but where will you find the time, and how much is it going to cost?

It makes perfect sense to outsource content syndication. By partnering with the right content syndication partner, you can leverage their expertise in content distribution to target specific audiences and generate more qualified leads. You will be empowered to tap into a broader network of potential clients and increase brand awareness by reaching individuals who may have yet to encounter your brand.

Effect on your salespeople: what’s not to like?! Increased awareness of your company, brand, and expertise means selling just got a whole lot easier.

LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn is the biggest professional network in human history. If you’re not making the most of it, you’re leaving money on the table. As ever, though, your in-house people have roles to perform, and spending hours each day making connections online doesn’t appear in anyone’s job description.

Outsourcing LinkedIn marketing will provide you with access to experienced professionals who are adept at leveraging the platform's features to generate leads and build meaningful connections. Your LinkedIn marketing experts can optimize company profiles, create engaging content, manage advertising campaigns, and engage with targeted audiences effectively.

Effect on your salespeople: this is all about the quality of the leads they have to target. The more qualified lead, the more chance of a successful sale. 

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

It’s the dream, isn’t it? Your marketing and sales teams working in perfect harmony towards a common goal. Your experience tells you that it’s an unattainable dream.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Using a skilled, experienced, well-resourced B2B ABM agency, you will be collaborating with an organization that specializes in identifying and engaging key accounts. Outsourcing ABM  will allow you to develop personalized marketing campaigns tailored to the needs and preferences of targeted accounts. This approach enhances the likelihood of building strong relationships, driving conversions, and maximizing return on investment. You will be able to leverage expert knowledge, resources, and technologies to execute targeted campaigns efficiently and successfully.

Effect on your salespeople: once again, this process is delivering high-quality, qualified leads. They just need to do their job now!

Demand Generation

This is simple, right? Creating demand for your company’s products and services should be the number one priority for your marketing team. And almost certainly,  it is, but this is a very specific way of building awareness and intrigue around your brand. Guess what? It takes up a lot of the two things we have already identified as being in short supply: time and resources.

Working with a brilliant demand generation agency, you can tap into specialized expertise in lead generation, content marketing, advertising, and campaign management. You can leverage the knowledge and skills of professionals who understand the intricacies of b2b demand generation tactics, such as SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and advertising. Outsourcing will enable you to generate a steady flow of qualified leads, increase brand exposure, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

Effect on your salespeople: selling to people who want to buy? That’s a great day at the office.

Sales Development

In terms of outsourcing, this is as close to a no-brainer as you’ll see. Hiring and keeping good sales development representatives is tough. New recruits that do well will soon be looking to move into a pure sales role. Those that aren’t good, well, you know how that’s going to play out.

But this is a key role in connecting your marketing efforts with positive sales outcomes. You need it, and you need it to be done excellently. 

Picking the best-in-class sales development agency to work with will allow you to partner with a dedicated team that specializes in lead qualification, cold calling, email outreach, and appointment setting. Outsourcing will enable you to leverage expertise in sales tactics, tools, and techniques to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your lead generation. You can streamline your sales processes, increase productivity, and free up internal resources for other critical activities.

Effect on your salespeople: all the troublesome work has been done for them. Now they can just do what they’re good at.

Lead Nurturing

It is a sad fact that, no matter how perfect your offer, how beneficial it will be to entire industries, sometimes people just aren’t ready to buy at the same pace as you want to sell. There can be any number of reasons: budgets, timetables, differing priorities. All genuine, all frustrating for you. You know you need to keep hold of these highly-qualified leads until they are ready to buy. How? There are many ways, but your key issue comes back to our old friends, time, and resources.

Working with an elite lead nurturing agency will provide access to professionals that can leverage marketing automation tools, email marketing, content marketing, and personalized messaging to engage leads and move them closer to a point of purchase. You will benefit from specialized skills and strategies that maximize the potential of converting leads into customers while maintaining a consistent and valuable customer experience. 

Effect on your salespeople: the client will only be delivered to them when there’s a great chance of success. What’s not to like?!

The Future of Your Business Post-Outsourcing

The future looks great! Outsourcing provides you with immense potential for growth and success. By leveraging the benefits of outsourcing, you can redirect your focus and resources toward innovation, research, and strategic initiatives. You will have access to specialist knowledge, and cutting-edge technologies, and you will have the key to scalability and flexibility offered by external service providers. This opens up avenues ahead to enhanced efficiency, productivity, and cost-effectiveness.

As for your sales team, there will be no excuses for not delivering record-breaking results for you. You've made their lives easier. Now it’s time for them to do the same for you.

All that remains for you to do now is make one good decision. Work with the right outsourcing partner, and this future can be yours. It’s never too late and it’s never too soon. Get in touch today. It’ll be the best decision you can make for your business.