Should You Outsource Your Sales Team?

Written By Dave Lavinsky
beige house with balcony

Every good plan for massive growth will address how you intend to generate leads and turn them into sales. Unless 100% of your sales take place online, you’ll need real, live people to take phone calls, process orders, and follow-up after the sale for retention and support.

Who is going to do this? Not you personally, if you plan to grow.

Not an in-house sales team of employees, either, for many business owners who prefer to outsource these positions to freelance sales reps or call centers.

Outsourcing your sales staff is becoming more popular because:

#1: It’s less expensive than hiring and paying employees. It’s easier to pay independent contractors by commission without a base salary, which you’ll probably need to do with employees to comply with your state’s laws.

#2: You’re not that great at sales yourself. There’s nothing wrong with this, but if your company is going to have salespeople, someone who knows how to get the job done effectively is going to need to train and manage the team. If no one else in your company is qualified, it’s just easier to go with outside specialists.

#3: No managing a team. Like I said above, someone will need to manage the sales team. This takes time to do and I don’t blame entrepreneurs for wanting to pass it on to another company. If not you, who in your company could take charge of that responsibility? Can you bring in a sales manager or new partner to handle it?

For these reasons, it seems like outsourcing your sales is the way to go. And maybe it is. But it depends and has its downsides like anything else.

The biggest downside to outsourcing your sales

But assuming we’re talking about filling an ongoing need, my experience is that most of the time, the companies and individuals you outsource selling to just don’t get the same results as an in-house team.

They can do well, but the companies who have tested sales from in-house teams versus outsourcing the sales usually show that you can make more doing it yourself. If you had 25% more revenue for each precious dollar you spend on advertising, you might do the math and see how much more you can make.

Some of the possible explanations are that outside salespeople often make sales for multiple clients, so they aren’t focused on selling your product. They may push other offers with higher commissions or make more time one week for someone else, neglecting your customers.

And although they usually take some time up front to get acquainted with your product’s details and how it’s marketed, the salesperson is the last chance to make the sale as your customer goes down the marketing funnel. They have got to know the product inside and out to be able to answer any question a prospect could ask without giving them a reason to say “No.”

So which is better? It depends…

How quickly do you need to set up and for how long? If you’re in a rush, there are places that can get set up to take incoming calls or start setting appointments for you within a few days-not weeks, as it would to run ads, process applications, interview, and train a team on how to sell your product.

If you’re just testing a campaign that involves a salesperson, you may not want to invest in a whole team of people you may not need anymore in a few weeks or months. You could also outsource it at first to get the ball rolling and then take your time building a terrific sales team to replace them.

It’s up to you. You’re the leader…you make the tough calls. But hopefully now you’ve seen the pros and cons of both ways and can choose how you do it with confidence.

 

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