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2 Sales Functions Every B2B Company Should Outsource
I recently spoke with a colleague who was overly excited about a recent sale he made at his company. When probing a bit deeper he explained that this deal, in particular, had been a 9 month work-in-progress. Sourced, prospected, nurtured and sold by him. At face value, this is a common process as over 50% of today’s B2B sales teams have one team member manage the entire sales funnel.
This is flawed.
Building a predictable sales pipeline is essential to realizing revenue growth as an organization. Peeling away the layers of successful B2B teams, you find a commonality that fuels these pipelines. More meetings = more sales. To deliver "more meetings” and to do it at scale, you shouldn't jumble every sale's function into a single sale's role. Instead, you should look to specialize sales roles.
You can’t scale if your sales roles aren’t specialized. - Aaron Ross
This is often times difficult and costly to set-up. Most businesses just aren’t at the size or run-rate to allow for the economic investment required to establish a successful in-house sales development team.
As you look to increase sales opportunities you should consider outsourcing two foundational sales functions:
Outsourced Lead Generation
Maintaining a stable sales pipeline is contingent on high-quality leads being funneled in at the top. Successful lead generation is about dissecting your Ideal Customer Profile, identifying sales triggers, and finding personalized lead attributes.
There are really two options to achieve this:
- database leads; or,
- custom researched leads
It’s been found that, in option #1, over 34% of purchased database leads are bad; in that, the details are just out-of-date (er. inaccurate). Using poor data can instantly injure your sales reputation, not only on the open market but in email deliverability and domain reputation.
This leaves the best path to lead generation being hiring outsourced lead researchers. The main benefit of outsourcing to a lead generation company is that you get a dedicated researcher who has vast experience in generating leads. This means you gain a remote specialized team member, who is supported by leading technology and performs one specific function to perfection. Generating qualified leads!
Outsourced Sales Development
Prospecting should be performed by Sales Development Reps, not by your salespeople. In a typical office, sales managers spend less than half of the day actually selling. This immediately raises two questions:
- Why are you paying a salesperson to spend their day in support roles?
- Are your sales conversion numbers suffering?
Ideally, you’d want more than 60% of your sales team's day spent directly moving a sale toward a close. This means spending less time prospecting, something a successful support team can accomplish.
An outsourced Sales Development Rep allows the implementation of a KPI driven sales specialist who is experienced in adopting company culture, who is utilizing the latest sales tools & technologies and is managed by experienced sales experts.
The average SDR annual salary is $55K and when added to existing sales costs, accounts for a higher price per appointment. Moving to remote outsourced SDRs allows you drastically reduce this cost, as well as:
- Receive an experienced and specialized salesperson
- Opportunity to scale quickly, not having to worry about HR requirements
- Reduce the cost-per-appointment
- Establish specific KPI goals for each outsourced SDR to warrant the engagement
- Measure each stage of your sales funnel effectively
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As you look to increase your pipeline opportunities, realize that a sales development team is the most effective way. Engaging in a sales outsourcing service that specializes in lead generation and sales development will allow you to hit the growth numbers you're forecasting by providing sales resources, consulting with you to understand your ideal customer, strategizing best outbound sales campaigns for your product, and establish clear success measures and triggers.
When probing a bit deeper he explained that this deal, in particular, had been a 9 month work-in-progress. Sourced, prospected, nurtured and sold by him. At face value, this is a common process as over 50% of today’s B2B sales teams have one team member manage the entire sales funnel.
