You have heard about all of the benefits of outsourced sales. Outsourcing sales can save your business money. Outsourcing sales can increase your business’ profitability. Outsourcing sales can help you grow your business. Blah, blah blah…
You have heard that spiel over and over and over again. But you are still not sure that outsourcing sales is right for YOU and YOUR business. It is important to examine your mindset before outsourcing your organization’s sales to an outside entity.
“If you believe all sales people are evil, you’ll likely have a bad experience because you’ll hire someone that will ultimately fulfill your expectation,” says Springboard CEO Karin Schwartz. Sales outcomes are a snapshot into the organization itself, if there’s a problem in sales most likely it’s not the only department in trouble.
So before you think about outsourcing sales, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you need to see the person every day to believe they are working? If you need to see a salesperson each and every day, you may be a micromanager. Micromanager has a negative connotation but let’s face it most of us business owners are to one degree or another, a micromanager. And if this is true, outsourced sales may not be right for you. Remember, the more a salesperson is in the office, the less work they are actually doing.
- How long is your sales cycle? If your sales cycle is short where price is the dominating factor (transactional sales), then outsourced sales may not be right for you. You need volume not relationships. If your sales cycle is longer and dependent on building relationships (relationship sales), then outsourcing may work for you and your business.
- Will your salesperson perform multiple tasks on a weekly basis? Do you need someone who can take on service and account management as well as sales? Most likely you are better off hiring 2 different people as these tend to be different skill sets but if you absolutely cannot do that, then focus on growing existing clients and hire someone who thrives on building relationships, who wants to take care of their clients, and who can ask for referrals. This would be a full time hire.
- How technical does this salesperson need to be? It really doesn’t matter provided your sales person has access to someone who is technical who can assist them when the time comes to get into the highly technical details.
- What are my expectations of a sales person? As we said earlier, if you believe all sales people are evil, you’ll likely have a bad experience because you’ll hire someone that will ultimately fulfill your expectation. That being said you need to determine and communicate how this person will be measured. It’s certainly easier to “measure” the activity of a full time sales person.
So when should you outsource?
“You should consider outsourcing when you need someone with existing connections and relationships and you see value in the introduction but can handle the rest in-house,” says Schwartz. “Since we tend to be more cost effective than hiring full time and our consultants are fully entrenched in the areas our clients do business we can be far more efficient so essentially for the equivalent of hiring one full time business developer we can create of team of 3-6 highly experienced business development professionals who are having conversations with your prospects daily.”
If you have any questions about Outsourced Business Development, please contact Springboard Business Development by calling 410-832-7560 or click here today!
Located in Baltimore, Maryland, Springboard offers outsourced sales solutions for businesses in the professional services arena. Our approach to business development makes it easy to find new clients without the financial burden of an in-house business developer.
At Springboard we know sales!
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