In 2020, many small to medium-sized businesses had to close down and make significant budget cuts to stay afloat due to COVID-19. As businesses start to recover, many B2B companies are getting out of survival mode and transitioning into growth mode. Outsourcing sales reps for part of your sales process gives your company the opportunity to expand business opportunities and achieve sales goals for a fraction of the price of one internal sales team member.
In this blog, we’ll highlight the following topics:
What Is the Role of an Outsourced Sales Department?
Outsourced sales departments are responsible for finding prospective businesses that could benefit from your product or service and nurturing relationships with them until they’re ready to make a purchase. Outsourced sales departments use various sales tools, technologies, and strategies to convert leads into customers. When you outsource sales reps, your internal team doesn’t have to worry about finding new business opportunities. This gives them more time to craft their sales presentation effectively for appointments set by outsourced sales development reps.
Understanding the Cost of an In-House Sales Team
While many businesses prefer to internalize their sales efforts, it’s not always the best or most sustainable option for lead generation. By outsourcing portions of your sales team, you have access to all the latest sales tools, technologies, and experts for the price of one internal sales development representative (SDR).
Sales tools and technologies are a significant component of your B2B lead generation strategy. However, they are costly and risk damage to your company’s bottom line. When you outsource your sales team, you gain access to a variety of platforms that optimize the way you generate leads.
For example, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform is a great sales asset to implement into your sales process. CRM platforms like Salesforce enable you to contact and nurture leads in your sales pipeline effectively. Without a sales technology solution, you risk significant business opportunities falling through the cracks.
In addition to the price of sales tools and technologies, it also takes a significant amount of time to teach internal teams how to use these platforms. By outsourcing a team, you gain sales reps who are already well-equipped with the platform and understand how to use it to its full advantage. This ensures that you get more high-quality leads at a quicker rate.
How Do Outsourced Sales Teams Approach Outbound Lead Generation?
While many businesses have their own approach to outbound lead generation, some techniques are more successful than others. Onboarding an internal sales team takes a lot of trial and error before figuring out what strategy works best for your market and industry.
With outbound sales team outsourcing, your reps will have the experience to know what lead generation tactics are most successful for your market and industry. This allows more time for SDRs to pitch prospects and get the leads you want without constantly adjusting your strategy. When you outsource sales reps, they practice the following outbound lead generation strategies:
Strategic Prospecting
Strategic prospecting is the process of determining which leads in the sales pipeline are the most likely to agree to a sales appointment with your company. This process is crucial to outbound lead generation because it ensures that nothing falls through the cracks and that sales reps are following up with the right lead at the right time.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, a prospecting strategy also ensures that outsourced sales reps aren’t calling a lead back too frequently and turning them off from your company. Through strategic prospecting, outsourced sales reps increase the likelihood of setting sales appointments. This is because they’re following up with prospects when they are toward the end of their buying cycle, looking to reevaluate contracts, or wanting to make a change.
Lead Qualification
Contrary to popular belief, not every lead you get from your lead generation efforts is a high-quality lead. When outsourced sales reps prospect potential customers, they make sure that every lead they chase meets your qualifications. Without lead qualification, you risk scheduling sales appointments with prospects that would provide little to no value to your business.
Many B2B companies have specific criteria a potential customer must meet if they want to do business together. For example, many commercial cleaning programs require that their clients need cleaning services at least three days a week and have at least 10,000 square feet of cleanable space. When outsourced sales reps call prospective businesses, they ask key decision-makers (KDMs) how often they clean a week and the square footage of cleanable space. This way, they know that the sales appointment meets the client’s ideal sales qualifications.
When outsourced sales reps pitch prospective businesses, they ask various questions to make sure they’re qualified for your company’s product or service. During the lead qualification process, SDRs ask prospects a variation of the following questions:
- Are you the key decision-maker? This ensures that whoever you’re setting the sales appointment with has buying authority over a particular product or service.
- Do you have a budget? If there’s no budget for a specific product or service, there’s little to no opportunity to close a deal. This wastes the time of both the prospect and your company.
- What is the size of your company? As mentioned previously, B2B lead qualification is commonly determined by the square footage of the commercial building. However, lead qualification can also be determined by the number of employees. For example, many managed service providers identify their qualifiers by the number of workspaces.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is one of the most critical components of developing a healthy and sustainable sales pipeline. Many internal sales teams fear the lead nurturing phase because they’re afraid of rejection. Although rejection is intimidating, most B2B sales appointments are set during the lead nurturing phase of an outbound sales program.
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with cold, warm, and qualified leads in the sales pipeline. Most prospects say “no” to an appointment after the first point of communication—that’s expected in the sales industry. However, after several follow-up calls, outsourced sales reps have the opportunity to add new pieces of value to every conversation they have with prospects. This could include company history, your product or service line, or case studies that align with the wants and needs of the prospect.
With an effective lead nurturing campaign, outsourced sales reps have the opportunity to discover prospect pain points and showcase how your company can provide relief for those issues.
How Do Outsourced Companies Nurture Leads?
With continuous advancements in communication channels, outsourced sales reps can nurture prospects through a variety of platforms. When you hire an outsourced sales department, SDRs traditionally follow up with prospects through the following avenues:
- Cold calling: Cold calling is the preferred method of communication to follow up with prospects because it’s a direct form of communication. This allows SDRs to add value and persuade them that your company is the one prospects need.
- Email marketing: Email marketing is a great lead nurturing strategy because it’s more subtle and enables prospects to reach out when they’re ready to progress in their buyer’s journey. In the meantime, email marketing is ideal for generating top-of-mind awareness and encourages them to view your site and various forms of marketing collateral.
- LinkedIn connections: While LinkedIn is an ideal social media platform for connecting with like-minded professionals, it’s also a great platform for nurturing leads. Today, many sales and marketing teams take advantage of LinkedIn to connect with prospects and share thought leadership articles.
How Do Sales Outsourcing Services Align With Your Internal Sales Team?
Many businesses believe they need to choose between an internal or outsourced sales team. However, we’re here to tell you that you can have the best of both worlds.
Outsourced sales reps are significant additions to your B2B sales strategy because they can prospect, nurture, and set sales appointments with leads that meet your company’s qualifications. When you hire outsourced sales reps to take care of these responsibilities, your internal sales team has more time to develop a custom sales presentation for the potential customer. This gives them a greater opportunity to research and relate with the prospect and ideally close more business deals.
In addition, hiring sales outsourcing services also gives your internal team more time to prioritize current customer satisfaction. They can connect with long-term clients to identify aspects of the company that they’re happy with and areas that could use some improvement. This will provide greater satisfaction for your current clients and add value for potential clients.
A common misconception about sales outsourcing services is that it’s a hands-off approach to generating new leads. However, for the sales and marketing partnership to be effective, your internal sales team must work directly with the outsourced sales reps. When internal and outsourced sales teams collaborate every month, each team has a chance to learn from each other, discover market trends, and make adjustments to the sales pitch and messaging.
Key Takeaways
When you outsource sales reps, you have the opportunity to achieve more than if you were only to have an internal sales team. In addition to cost savings, benefits of outsourcing sales reps include:
- More time for day-to-day company operations
- Access to advanced sales tools and technologies
- High-performing sales experts
If you’re ready to maximize your sales process with outsourced sales reps, reach out to Abstrakt Marketing Group today!
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