Overcoming the Fear of Outsourcing Sales
Fear can cause inertia, and inertia is bad when you want your business to grow. When you are stuck in one place because of fear associated with doing something different, you’ll never know the heights that your organization can reach.
Here are just a few of the fears that you may have related to outsourcing your sales function along with explanations of why they shouldn’t be fears at all.
Outsourcing Sales is a Bad Idea
Roll the clock back quite a few years and you’ll find that there was a widely held fear of outsourcing. However, over the years, the stigma surrounding outsourcing a wide variety of functions has dwindled. Outsourcing is now the norm. Still, many believe that outsourcing sales is a bad idea, because people know that sales is the lifeline of their business. Why should they allow another organization to handle their lifeline?
The primary reason why outsourcing sales and marketing is a great idea is that you can tap into a specific expertise. To maximize success, you need a broad team of people handling sales. And, it can be expensive to put that team together and keep it performing at optimal efficiency. Working with an outsourced agency means that you have instant access to an experienced team that has proven success. If your organization can’t build and support an effective inside sales function, it makes sense to outsource.
We Are Afraid of Losing Control and Visibility
You may think that if you outsource your sales function you’ll lose control and won’t have the level of visibility that you would if your sales team was in-house. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The world of work has gone virtual with people working remotely. If you have employees that work outside of the office and things are going smoothly, then you shouldn’t have any fears about having a virtual sales team. You won’t lose control or visibility. That’s because you will still have access to the sales data you need to gain important insight into what is being accomplished on a day-to-day basis.
How Would They Know Our Business?
You might be afraid that an outsourced sales provider can’t properly represent your company because they don’t fully understand your business. This isn’t a trivial fear. You know your business better than anyone.
Don’t worry. Your outside sales provider already has a response to this fear. The right provider considers working with you to be a partnership. Part of that partnership is learning your business and the market in which you operate and compete. Your virtual sales team will be trained as if they were internal.
We Are Afraid of the Cost
Cost is a major concern for any business decision, but it’s one that you don’t have to worry about. Here’s why.
You could consider the cost of hiring sales representatives versus outsourcing and think that you are comparing apples to apples. When really, you are comparing apples to oranges. That’s because you probably haven’t calculated all the costs associated with that internal hire such as recruiting costs, training costs, management costs, the cost of their benefit package, the cost of their CRM license, and other administrative costs. When you start thinking about all those expenses, particularly if you are hiring several representatives or you are dealing with high turnover, you may find that outsourcing saves you a significant amount of money.
What If Outsourcing Doesn’t Work?
This is a huge fear. What if you’ve moved passed your fear of outsourcing your sales function and started working with an outside sales provider, and it doesn’t work out like you’ve expected? What do you do then? Frankly, outsourcing isn’t for every organization. Sometimes, not for the lack of effort, outsourcing just doesn’t work.
However, there are always specific reasons for this problem. Perhaps the product isn’t ready to market. Perhaps there is no demand for what you are selling.
Look at it this way, you could build a massive inside sales team, and take on the costs associated with sustaining that team. Then, you find out that the demand you thought was there just isn’t there. In this case, you’ve lost all of the money that you’ve invested. So, even if it doesn’t work, consider outsourcing to be a low-cost test. You’ve spent relatively little money to find out that the demand for your product simply doesn’t exist.
Acquirent Addresses All Your Fears
It helps to have a true partner that understands your business situation and has the experience and expertise to alleviate your fears. Acquirent is the right choice for outsourcing your inside sales function because we have repeatable processes that follow the latest best practices. We also have the right people and infrastructure in place to get you outstanding results.