Don’t Hire the Wrong Outsourced Sales Professionals: 6 Handy Tips
There are many levers a sales leader or organization may pull to gain scale, accelerate revenue, drive cost savings, or augment sales team structures. A viable and proven option is handing over some or all of your sales efforts to outsourced sales professionals.
It’s true that outsourcing your sales to a third-party provider can yield favorable results. However, the process may not happen smoothly without preparation and the shaping of expectations by both parties.
There are many outsourcing companies, but which of them can actually hold a sales quota and get results?
How can you be sure you’re choosing the right one?
Will partnering with an outsourced sales provider really impact your top and bottom line?
And once you select a sales partner, how can you be sure you’re getting the most out of the relationship?
Consider the following do’s and don’ts to make sure you select the sales solution provider that best fits your needs, and starts building revenue.
1) DO place more emphasis on capabilities than cost. 2) DON’T get lost in the selection process. 3) DO play an active role in the partnership. 4) DON’T expect immediate results. 5) DO ensure sales and marketing are aligned. 6) DON’T engage with a basic call center. Find a true sales firm.
1) Do Place More Emphasis On Capabilities Than Cost
When it comes to choosing a sales provider, the cheapest solution is not always the best solution.
When you select the low-cost option, you sacrifice expertise, leadership, and the ability to execute. Is it more important to save a few dollars on a subpar partner or invest in a specialized team that possesses the expertise in a particular channel?
There are many factors you should consider as you assess potential partners for augmenting or extending your sales team.
Clearly define what you need, especially in terms of outcomes.
Understand the capabilities of the partner you choose to align with.
Maybe you’re looking to augment your in-house sales team with lead qualification or renewal management. Perhaps you are expanding into the SMB space and have not been able to gain a measurable return.
You might need a team to handle your entire sales process in a new region. Once you know exactly what your business needs are, it’s critical to understand how a potential sales provider’s processes, expertise, and tools can benefit your particular scenario. Ask them to prove it to you.
Questions to ask your future outsources business partner during screening:
What are your core sales competencies? Eg, consumer sales, B2B sales-specific, or other?
Can you outline your organization’s sales expertise in my particular vertical/channel and demonstrate that depth of knowledge?
Can you illustrate your firm’s proven track record of selling in the enterprise, mid-market, or SMB segments?
How will your company support and enable expansion into a new geography or market segment? (Go To Market Strategy)
Does your team possess the depth of experience to have executive and decision-maker business conversations?
What tools and technologies do you leverage for successful sales acceleration and why?
What level of return can I expect from our engagement, and are you willing to share risk relative to results delivered?
2) Don’t Get Lost In The Selection Process
With so many options in outsourced partner sales, it’s easy to get lost in the process of analyzing the best fit.
While you don’t want to rush into selecting the wrong partner, dragging out the selection process is also a deterrent. It will essentially burn your opportunity to generate revenue faster than your ability to impact your top and bottom line.
Questions to consider during the selection process:
How well does the provider drive thought leadership and creativity during the proposal process? Are they just speaking to what you asked for or are they providing innovative ideas for how to reach your sales goals? This is a good indicator of what you can expect from a partnership.
What would my sales team look like and what is the ratio of managers to reps? Who will be managing them?
Does this provider understand my needs and specialize in the area of sales that I need help with? If you need expertise in selling to the SMB space, do they have current teams actually selling to SMBs?
Are we aligned on KPIs, and does the sales partner have the right metrics and evaluation tools to properly measure results?
3) Do Play An Active Role In The Partnership
Once you select an outsourced sales provider and complete the onboarding process, you can’t assume that the ship will drive itself.
That’s a recipe for failure. Success comes from a fully engaged and vested partnership. Devote your time and energy to build better business relationships with your new sales partner(s). Continued communication as the partnership advances benefits both parties.
Just as you constantly interact with and guide your internal team, you need to be an active participant in your newly formed sales partnership.
How to maximize engagement with your new partner:
Understand their selling process—from generating leads to closing deals.
Train the extension of your sales team as you would internal hires. Make sure they are educated on your business’s strategies, processes, goals, and KPIs.
Provide the team with relevant and available sales enablement materials, so they don’t waste valuable time searching for or recreating content.
Meet with your outsourced team on a regular basis, and challenge them and their activities, objectives, and results. Participate in weekly touch-base meetings to stay connected on performance, gaps, and key initiatives.
Loop your outsourced sales team management into internal meetings that cover forecasting, business strategy, and key sales/marketing objectives.
When you set goals, hold the outsourced team to them. Evaluate the reality of those goals often. Work closely with your outsourced team to drive alignment on what success looks like. Don’t do this only once a quarter.
4) Don’t Expect Immediate Results
Just as you account for a learning curve period with internal hires, you should also allow your outsourced sales provider appropriate time to learn your business.
While it’s true that you’ll save a lot of onboarding time by plugging in an as-a-service sales team, the process isn’t turnkey. In general, it will take a new team around 90 days to learn your value proposition, hone their pitch, create sales sequences, build a pipeline, and begin to deliver results.
How to onboard your outsourced sales team smoothly:
Use a variable compensation model that includes some level of fixed compensation, as well as a way to reward success. This gives sales reps stake in the relationship and incentive to deliver results.
Thoroughly train reps up front on your products and brand and encourage your provider to use the information to actively coach reps.
Establish an open channel of communication so your outsourced sales team feels comfortable contacting you when needed.
5) DO ensure sales and marketing are aligned
It is imperative that you have constant alignment with your extended sales team.
Also, it’s important to connect them and insert them into your marketing processes. If you didn’t previously have an in-house sales function before adding an outsourced sales arm, your new team can easily become disconnected from your company’s marketing strategy.
Sales and marketing must work together to achieve the same goals. They can help each other reach their individual performance metrics more quickly.
How to align your internal/external sales and marketing teams:
Invite key members of your marketing team to regularly interact with your outsourced sales team. Insights from the frontline salespeople who have more customer interactions than most will become a valuable asset to your organization.
Work together to develop buyer personas to ensure that both teams are targeting the same audience. If your marketing team has already developed buyer personas, have them present the data to sales in order to ensure consistent understanding.
Encourage your sales team to regularly report their findings to marketing. For example, sales can inform marketing on what makes a lead higher quality and why. Marketing can in turn use this information to improve their lead generation/qualification process.
6) Don’t Engage With A Basic Call Center. Find A True Sales Firm
There are many consumer-facing call centers masquerading as experienced professional sales providers. The difference between a call center and a sales center is that a call center typically focuses on inbound general customer care or technical support, whereas a sales provider is trained to directly drive revenue.
Expect your vetted sales partner to:
Have active sales teams that are carrying quota.
Have the ability to either scale or augment what your internal sales teams are currently doing.
Cover new geographies or time zones that you didn’t previously have access to.
Provide an integrated lead development process that feeds you opportunities, not just warm leads.
Have established sales methodologies that simplify the level of complexity of the modern-day sales motion
Have processes in place that drive quota attainment with predictability.
Provide a sales stack that is innovative, but flexible enough to incorporate your own proven tools.
Provide analysis and forecasting—not just reporting—to guide strategy.
Outsourced sales is a thriving and proven trend that involves: hiring, onboarding, coaching, process development, and high-yielding sales expertise.
A partnership with a third-party sales provider has the potential to boost current revenue and create new revenue streams faster and more efficiently than you can from scratch.
Whether you’re considering augmenting your existing in-house sales team or completely outsourcing your entire sales process, follow the do’s and don’ts above to get the most return out of your partnership.
Original post: https://medium.com/saleshacker/dont-hire-the-wrong-outsourced-sales-professionals-6-handy-tips-be85993f6c4c