Outsourcing can be an extremely useful business strategy at times. There are businesses where having an in-house sales force makes perfect sense. For others, the investment price is either too high or not warranted at this time in the company’s development. After all, it costs an average of 1.2% to 1.4% of an employee’s annual salary to properly onboard, train, and retain them. If you don’t have access to capital like that just yet, outsourced sales development representatives may be your best bet.
Of course, you can’t just go ahead and hire a third party to handle your sales development. It’s a method, a strategy, and it requires some planning and forethought to determine the best course of action for your company.
What exactly is “Sales Development Outsourcing”?
The term “outsourcing sales development” refers to the practice of contracting with an external team or third-party source to handle sales development on behalf of an organization. When it doesn’t make financial or logistical sense to hire new salespeople, this is a terrific alternative for companies who require immediate access to a seasoned sales team to generate new leads.
Outsourced SDR solutions can scale with your organization without adding unnecessary costs, making it an excellent choice for those looking to expand. Now that you have a foundational understanding, let’s examine nine strategies for outsourcing sales development.
- Have your new social media marketing’ lead generating handled externally
As a company expands, it inevitably faces the problem of having more marketing initiatives than sales staff to handle them. Outsourcing can be helpful in situations like these. Your outsourced team can perform as many marketing campaigns as you like, be assigned a certain set of leads, or both.
- Make use of sales development services to generate leads from outside sources
You must be quite busy. Do you have the time to study and master lead generation as well? The good news is that this is not necessary. You may free up time to focus on other aspects of your business by having a third-party service handle your lead generation. why you don’t have enough salespeople, inbound lead generation can be difficult. This is why outsourcing comes in handy.
- Think about contracting out for more than just inbound sales
Maybe you’ve always wanted to avoid making cold calls, and now you can. You can hire an outside firm to do all of your sales outreach and support work for you, providing you with all of the leads and contacts you need to close the deal. In addition, many of them may assist with additional activities throughout the sales pipeline.
- Take use of SDR services for lead qualification and nurturing
Does your sales team have trouble keeping up with leads? You may require assistance if you are very good at finding prospects and making initial contact with them but never go past that stage. Sales development representatives (SDRs) who are outsourced will have the knowledge and experience to properly nurture and follow up on leads. If you’re looking to expand, you should pursue every possible lead until it’s no longer useful.
- Some SDRs can aid in the closing and implementation processes
One would wonder why they would outsource the shutting to a third party. Not ideal, but proficiency is key. The sole focus of outsourced sales representatives is conducting business over the phone. That’s why they’re more qualified to sell for you than anyone else on your sales team. If you’re having trouble closing the deal, consider hiring a third party and seeing if you can learn anything from their process.
- Use outsourcing to enter a new market when your resources are already tapped
When you’re at capacity in one area, outsourcing can help you break into a new industry.
Similar to the first social media scenario, there will come a time when all available resources are exhausted despite the imperative to continue expanding. Outsourcing can be helpful in situations like these. It’s a smart strategy for testing out new markets before committing significant time, money, and manpower. Furthermore, they can have superior strategies for entering new markets than your own.
- Prioritize functionality before price
This is more of a factor to think about than a method of sales outsourcing, but it’s crucial enough to include. For sales outsourcing solutions to be effective, they must provide top-notch performance while also maintaining a steady flow of leads into your organization. You can get all the best features for less than you’d spend on an employee, but if you only look at the price tag, you’ll miss out.
- Contract out the creation of sales channels for novel items
Your present sales team may not be able to handle both new product launches and maintaining relationships with current clients. Instead of hiring more people right once, you can use outside sales development professionals to manage the promotion of new products and the pursuit of sales leads. You can use this to find out what the market thinks of your new product.
