Building an inside sales team from scratch is no easy task. Hiring quality salespeople is hard enough on its own, but training these people and providing them with the strategic guidance to succeed is what makes a demand generation program tick. Few inside sales teams are realizing their full potential, and even fewer are approaching demand generation in a data and process-driven manner.
However, many organizations continue to invest in inside sales teams that have never performed. This is because most business owners still consider sales to be a vital function that cannot possibly be outsourced. And that’s understandable. Outsourcing inspires a lack of control, and sales is undoubtedly the lifeblood of any organization. However, over the years, we’ve found that firms that outsource their inside sales to a trusted, seasoned agency achieve better business outcomes. In this blog, let’s dive into the three main reasons why it may be time to consider outsourcing.
Mitigating Risk
This may surprise you, but I view an inside sales team as far riskier of an investment than an outsourced one. Especially given the current hiring climate, it is extremely challenging to find great sales talent, and even more difficult to retain that talent. Sales rep churn is at an all-time high, meaning organizations need to be prepared to fill the same SDR role over and over again, with annual turnover sitting at 20%. Unless you have the human resources infrastructure in place to shoulder that burden, outsourcing inside sales proves to be a far less risky and certainly less complicated path. Your outsourcing partner is responsible for staffing your account and providing you with the activity hours you need.
Access to the experts
Perhaps the single most compelling reason to outsource inside sales is that it enables firms to immediately access highly-trained and experienced inside sales professionals, and the tools and processes they wield.
After hiring, the most challenging part of managing an inside sales team is training and managing the reps to ensure only the highest quality people are pitching your product or service. Most sales reps are either straight out of college or have a couple of years of experience under their belts. They need guidance, supervision, coaching, and support. When you outsource inside sales, your vendor is responsible for providing this support and supplying you with only the top talent.
Outsourcing also provides you with immediate access to proven processes and practices. When building your own internal team, you’re responsible for setting up all of those workflows from scratch, and learning from your mistakes. Discovering winning processes takes weeks if not months, and implementing those processes and monitoring adherence is a long-term project. Outsourcing your inside sales provides you with the infrastructure you need to succeed from the start.
Scaling Fast
If you are trying to scale your business fast, hiring and training internally will undoubtedly take longer than outsourcing. The interviewing, hiring, and onboarding process is a multiple-month process, at best, and hiring in a time crunch is tough. You’re essentially forced to hire talent that you may not otherwise want because you need to hit certain activity numbers.
Outsourcing your inside sales allows you to access top talent networks quicker and add new reps to your account within a matter of weeks, as opposed to the typical 3-month ramp time for an internal hire. Best-in-class outsourcing partners offer 100% uptime, so you don’t have to worry about lags in activity during vacation-heavy seasons. At FullFunnel, we’ve found that companies planning for or undergoing periods of high growth benefit greatly from an outsourced team that can flex as needed and provides the activity hours they need, guaranteed.
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At the end of the day, sales is a numbers game, and very often outsourcing makes for a better equation.
If your organization is considering outsourcing your sales function, schedule a free consultation to learn more about FullFunnel’s approach and how we’ve built successful outbound sales programs for hundreds of organizations across the globe.
