What Is Sales Outsourcing, and Why Do Companies Do It?
Sales outsourcing means that a third-party provider partially or fully manages the sales process. These partners can manage lead generation, customer outreach, appointment setting and even closing. Businesses choose sales outsourcing for several reasons:
- Cost savings: Outsourcing often reduces overhead expenses tied to recruiting, training, salaries, and benefits.
- Access to expertise: Outsourced sales teams are trained to adapt quickly to new markets, products, and buyer behavior.
- Faster scaling: Companies can expand into new territories or markets without the delay of building internal teams from scratch.
- Focus on core business: Delegating sales efforts frees up leadership to concentrate on product development, operations, and growth.
Benefits of Sales Outsourcing
If done right, sales outsourcing provides significant benefits for a business:
- Speed to market: External teams typically have relevant experience and established networks, which directly reduces ramp time.
- Lower Risk: Fixed contracts or performance-based models have a lower financial risk compared to having many employees in-house and maintaining large internal teams.
- Flexibility: Companies can adjust the size of outsourced teams based on seasonal demand patterns or other upticks in demand, depending on market trends
- Technology Access: Many sales outsourcing firms come equipped with new CRM systems, advanced analytics, and sales automation platforms.
The Risk: Losing Brand Voice and Customer Trush
Outsourcing your sales comes with risks. Without a plan, companies can lose control over how their brand is represented, which can have a profoundly negative impact on the relationships they have established with customers.
Brand Voice: Why It Matters in Sales Conversations
Your brand voice is more than just the copy on your website; it is a reflection of the values your company stands for and what customers can expect from you, including aspects like tone and intention. When there is inconsistency around brand voice during sales conversations, it can result in a confusing customer experience around key factors. It is essential to note that brand consistency is more important than ever, as customers are increasingly mindful of authenticity and consistency across all touchpoints.
How Customer Trust Can Erode With the Wrong Partner
Choosing the wrong partner can lead to many issues, such as:
- Misaligned messaging: Sellers making promises or commitments to prospects or customers about products or services that they can't fulfill erodes trust.
- Poor customer experience: A rushed and impersonal sales process makes customers feel undervalued.
- Security risks: Mishandling customer data can result in a breach of GDPR or CCPA privacy laws, damage your reputation, and potentially expose your business to legal action.
How to Choose the Right Sales Outsourcing Partner
The partner you choose will act as an extension of your brand. When you're selecting a partner, every little detail matters.
Ask About Onboarding and Brand Training
A thorough formal onboarding process should be non-negotiable. Before any calls or emails can start, your partner needs to be able to recognize your brand story, value proposition, and significant differentiators. Likewise, the third party should understand your buyer’s journey along with all customer pain points. Similarly, the partner should align with your sales process and methodologies.
Review Communication and Reporting Practices
Transparency also creates trust internally. Ensure that your partners can provide you with regular reports on activities, outcomes, and feedback on the work done. They should also provide open channels for collaboration and coaching. There should also be flexibility to adjust the strategies based on the results.
Maintaining Brand Voice with an External Team
Even after you've selected a partner, you still have to manage and protect your brand voice continually.
Create a Sales Brand Style Guide
Just as marketing teams have brand books, a sales team needs a sales brand style guide that ensures consistency across every customer interaction. The guide should include key message pillars, tone and language guidelines, product positioning, and templates for handling objections.
Offer Continuous Training and Feedback Loops
The initial onboarding is just the starting point. Ongoing training can keep the external team aligned with product updates, new offers, and changing customer expectations. Regular coaching based on call reviews and feedback loops will also help fine-tune messaging and reinforce brand value. The ongoing engagement ensures that the outsourced team grows alongside your company.
Collaborate on Messaging and Offers
Instead of giving the outsourced teams a rigid script, companies can involve them in refining the messaging based on real-time customer and market feedback. Collaboration should also be done in creating custom offers for different segments. Additionally, testing and tweaking outreach approaches and strategies can also help in maintaining outsourcing sales without losing trust or brand voice.
Building and Preserving Customer Trust
Trust is built through time, and every interaction with a customer either contributes to or weakens that trust.
Align on Customer Success Philosophy
It is necessary to ensure that both the outsourced team and you are on the same page and share an active interest in customer focus.
Key points to make sure you agree on include:
- Making sales that are appropriate to the customer's needs.
- Focus on long-term relationships instead of short-term wins.
- Handling objections and complaints with utmost professionalism and trust.
Use Technology to Bridge Teams and Track Quality
Utilizing CRM platforms and communication tools can provide excellent access to teams functioning together. Communication tools can also help you monitor customer interactions, track the progression of deals, and take follow-up measures. Additionally, you can quickly identify coaching opportunities and get real-time dashboards. Call recording reviews can be valuable in maintaining quality and accountability.
Collect Customer Feedback Regularly
Several methods can be used to gather feedback from prospects and customers, including short post-call surveys and Net Promoter Score (NPS) tracking. Feedback can also be collected through verbal feedback during onboarding or support interactions. This feedback can be used for tweaking sales strategies, messaging, and sales team training programs for continuous improvement.
When Sales Outsourcing Works Best
Sales outsourcing can be a powerful tool, but it works better in some scenarios than others.
Situations Where It Adds the Most Value
Sales outsourcing can add the most value when entering a new market. Businesses turn to outsourcing when they plan to launch a new product and need to increase sales without spending months on hiring and training. For some companies, it’s useful during seasonal demand spikes, when temporary support can handle the extra work without long-term hiring.
When You Should Be Cautious
Sales outsourcing can be an effective strategy for your business, but there are times when a more cautious approach is required during sales outsourcing. Suppose the product is highly technical or requires a deep, concentrated sales effort. In that case, it might be difficult for an external team to deliver the right level of expertise without involving your internal team. If you operate in a heavily regulated industry, such as finance or healthcare, any missed step in communication or non-compliance can have extreme negative consequences. In those cases, outsourcing may still be possible, but it often works better as part of a hybrid model. The external team can support the top-of-funnel outreach, and your internal in-house expert can handle more sensitive conversations.
