Last updated on July 17th, 2015 at 03:05 pm
A syndicated post by Wilson of the Inspire Beats blog team on the pros and cons of outsourcing sales. Reprinted with permission.
Closing deals is not easy. It was never meant to be easy. The sales process includes lead generation, lead research, prospecting, negotiating , closing, lead nurturing and all the difficult stuff in between. A great way to grow your SaaS app is to outsource your sales, but is it the best way to go and should you do it?
Having in-house employees is best, but there are times when outsourcing will make more sense for your product.
Let’s talk about a few reasons why you should outsource your sales. One of the biggest mistakes early stage startups make is hiring one sales guy and expect them to do it all without a structure. As Aaron Ross would say, “AEs shouldn’t be prospecting and SDRs shouldn’t be closing.”
1. Sales Reps Are Expensive
The average salary of a SDR (Sales Development Rep) is $65,000 in the U.S. Most OTE (On Target Earning) annual salary can range from $90,000 to $120,000. An SDR handles the prospecting, lead generation, lead research, list building, and following up. You can outsource this process for a fraction of the price.
2. Quality Leads
A lead in general is a specific person that has either the interest, authority, means, or motivation to purchase a product or service. A qualified lead on the other hand, is a targeted lead based on filters/targets that have a strong interest in using your product. Using a high quality lead generation service will allow you to easily gain access to accurate and reliable leads that have a strong buying signal for your product.
Check out our previous article on what defines a qualified a lead.
3. Time
Time is important. You want to be able to move quick, but at the same time put in stellar quality work. On average it takes an SDR three hours a day to do lead research. This does not include list building, prospecting, or following up.
On average that is $84 that you are paying a SDR per day to do. Just outsourcing the lead research portion of lead generation itself could save your SDRs 2-3 hours per day and that time could be used for prospecting and actual engagement.
4. Training
Training is one of the most important thing when it comes to onboarding a new staff. Large corporate companies send their new staff for training for months and also provide ongoing training. The biggest problem with training is that it takes time, resource, and a lot of money.
All sales reps for all positions require in-depth and on-going training with the latest sales tools, the sales process, info on how to
approach prospects etc. Training takes a lot of time and can cost additional money to the actual cost of the salary. When you
outsource, you will save that time and money by using a service that already have experience and expertise in this field.
With all that said, does this mean that large sales teams should not outsource their sales? You can always supercharge your sales teams with qualified leads or outsource the lead research to save your team a lot more time.
For example, if you require your SDRs to send out 50 new emails a day to 50 new prospects, it is almost impossible for them to do the entire list building and lead research, while crafting personalized emails. To speed up this process, you can outsource your sales lead research and use a list building tool.
You want your prospectors to craft very personalized and quality emails and not just use a sales template to fill in the blank.
Regardless if you decide to outsource your sale or not, you should start building an in-house sales team from day one. Start hiring talented AEs to do the closing, hire prospectors, inbound reps to deal with the inbound leads, but make your team’s life easier with quality leads.
Want to know how to double the quality of your B2B inbound leads? Read this previous post we published via the Inspire Beats blog
Photo via Flickr user Jon Evans
