We’ve seen it before: B2B sales are complex. Additionally, 73% of marketers agree that capturing leads today is more difficult than it was a year ago. There are a lot of moving parts in your sales department, and it’s often difficult to know where to begin setting up your sales team – let alone know how to maintain that team once it’s up and running.
What’s more, the cost of doing things in-house has skyrocketed so high over the past decade that 59% of businesses outsource to cut costs. It is no secret that keeping a sales team in-house can be expensive and time-consuming from the organization’s perspective. On the other hand, sales outsourcing can help you save time and money while also freeing up much-needed time and resources to focus on more important things.
In this article, we’ll break down the concept of B2B sales outsourcing and what sales functions need to be outsourced to the experts. More importantly, we’ll go over how an outsourced sales agency can supplement your team’s efforts so that you have more time to do what you do best – selling.
What is an Outsourced Sales Team and How Does it Work?
An outsourced sales team is a group of outside experts that work together to assist your in-house sales team. The outside sales experts may focus on one specific area of sales, such as lead generation or delivering leads to your doorstep, or a mix of different sales functions. But no matter how you look at it, an outsourced sales team works with one goal: generating high-quality leads for your company.
In most cases, outsourced sales teams are non-employees who are contracted to find new opportunities on behalf of your organization. They are hired because they have the skills and expertise to sell your products/services – skills that you may or may not possess in-house.
What are the benefits of B2B sales outsourcing?
- No growing pains for your in-house lead generation team
- Focused on strategic growth
- Outsourced sales teams free up more time for your in-house sales team to close the deals
- They help you realize your strategic goals faster and more efficiently
- Outsourcing provides access to highly-skilled expertise that you may lack in-house.
Outsourced teams are often made up of people from different backgrounds, from marketers to entrepreneurs who have the desire to sell and become part of a team that loves to sell.
What are the Main B2B Sales Team Functions?
You must outline your main sales functions to kick-start your team into the right trajectory for the year. Your main functions are the things that you must accomplish to help your team achieve its goals.
These sales functions can be broken into two broad categories: customer-facing functions and non-customer-facing functions:
- Customer-facing functions – These sales functions directly impact your ability to interact with and sell to your customers. These include lead generation, lead management, and customer service.
- Non-customer-facing functions – These are the sales functions that don’t directly impact your interactions with customers, such as product/service quality control.
The main functions of the outsourced team will depend on the products or services offered by the company but will usually include:
- Lead generation – This is the process of initiating interactions with prospects that result in future selling opportunities for your business. In lead generation, the end goal is to get potential customers to take the next step in the sales process, such as providing their email addresses and phone numbers or scheduling a meeting with you.
- Lead qualification – This is the process of determining how likely your leads are to purchase your product or service. This process can be challenging due to the prevalence of lead-generation websites, spam emails, and marketing lists that make it difficult for businesses to identify interested prospects.
- Lead nurturing – Customers who have enquired about your services or products but cannot commit to making a purchase at that moment may need some persuading before buying from you. Lead nurturing includes companies’ strategies to educate potential buyers on how a product/service can help them overcome their challenges.
- Pipeline management – A sales pipeline describes your customer’s journey from initial purchase to deal closing. Salespeople are responsible for creating a workflow to monitor each lead or opportunity stage, keeping a database of all leads and opportunities, and updating customer data regularly.
Every company will have its own unique sales process, but most B2B sales teams will have general sales activities in common. For example, selling a product or service will usually start with lead generation, which is finding and engaging with potential customers to uncover their needs. Next follows a detailed analysis to figure out which of your offerings might solve those needs.
Lead generation often happens via cold calling or email but can also be done through professional social media platforms such as LinkedIn. For example, if you’re selling software, you would need to create a couple of blog posts that introduce it to the world and demonstrate its functionality and benefits to the prospect during various sales process stages.