Outsourcing a portion of your sales operation is inevitable.

Great things happen when you apply the right resource to fix the problem you need to solve. Whether these resources are yours or someone else’s matters less.

It has become commonplace for companies to outsource functions like logistics, finance, human resources, marketing, and product development. Sales too. In fact, third-parties have been providing outsourced sales services reliably for years.

Why outsourcing sales is a natural fit.

Building and running sales operations is complex, costly, and hard to sustain. This is much more than transactional services like so-called “warm” lead generation.

We are talking about a modern, dedicated, high-performance sales team that applies expertise, process, and best practices daily to your business.

The cost of doing it yourself is bigger than you think.

Let’s start with the obvious costs of building and managing a sales team yourself. Consider a few of the big-ticket items:

Recruiting is costly. This is 15 to 20 percent of a new hire’s base salary. Get ready to spend more soon because the average time in the role of a sales professional is 19 months.

Payroll and benefits add up fast. A competitive base salary, health care premiums, bonuses, and commissions can put you well into the six figures.

Onboarding takes time and money. Activities include the actions and processes to integrate new sales professionals into your organization.

Each sales professional must receive ongoing training to represent your product or service. A confused rep can’t sell – and a confused customer won’t buy. But training is hard to execute well internally and expensive with outside trainers.

Management costs include the overhead associated with hiring and maintaining a sales manager. Another six figures goes out the door annually once you add up base salary, hiring costs and benefits, bonuses, and commissions.

Add sales productivity tools to the mix. A computer, CRM license, prospect and engagement tools, and other enablement software can easily cost $5,000 annually per salesperson. Configuration, integration, and support are extra.

Keep in mind not one phone call has been made yet.

Market factors add complexity.

You are deploying this costly internal resource into a hyper-competitive market. While everyone thinks they can beat the odds, the statistics are grim. Your sales team is facing this environment the day they start.

• The email response rate is 1.9% … and decreasing
• 2% of cold calls that result in meetings
• Reps spend 35.2% of their time on non-revenue generating activities
• The cost of acquiring new customers has increased 50%

As a result, content that persuades, calls to action that motivate, and automated processes that scale are critical to return on investment. Building this expertise and improving it everyday with data requires special skills.

The big impact of opportunity costs.

The hidden costs are 10X the obvious ones. For example, trial and error waste time and money. Mistakes are costly. Employee turnover can erode hard-won gains overnight.

More often than not the sales model is not optimized, sales strategy needs a refresh, and messaging is off-key.

When it is time to try something new.

The tell-tale signs to watch for are inconsistent results or regularly missed sales goals. Others are the lack of a structured, disciplined sales process or an inability to convert many “good” conversations to closed deals.

Anatomy of a great outsourced sales team.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of turning to an outsourced sales service like ours is we know precisely how to build and nurture a great sales team. It starts with assembling and motivating talented salespeople, then creating the conditions for them to thrive.

A sales team should radiate energy, warmth, and charisma – collectively and individually. Without it, they will appear cold, inauthentic, and untrustworthy. It is critical to hire people who are naturally able to connect with and put prospects at ease.

They are naturally curious. Successful sales teams thrive in environments where they continually learn and are encouraged to seek knowledge. This skill enables reps to explore buyers’ problems and indicates that they’ll put in the work necessary.

They make a habit of always being prepared.

They have structured goals … and they’re not afraid of big ones. Every successful sales team should have goals that are regularly assessed and easily measured. Likewise, managers should never be afraid to increase and stretch goals.

They communicate and collaborate well. This not only builds team rapport, but ensures everyone is on the same page and has what they need to play their part well.

They possess excellent time management skills. Truly effective sales reps manage their time carefully. They plan their day in advance, prioritize tasks, organize pipeline, and always find new ways to work more efficiently.

B2B outsourced sales is here to stay.

Use of outsourced sales development by companies to achieve revenue goals is normal. In our case, you get a best-of-breed, custom-built inside sales operation making calls in less than 45 days. In many cases, this is less time than it takes you to recruit one new sales hire.

You get it all with our turnkey service: recruiting, training and coaching, playbook development, sales tech stack, sequence creation, dashboard reporting, and management. Our ebook explores these critical success factors and others.

Want to learn more about the cost of outsourced sales compared to doing it yourself? Using industry data, this article unpacks the costs for you.

If you’re curious to learn more, email us at info@getraas.com.