After contemplating the question though I wanted to provide my view on the subject.
There are quite a few things to consider when outsourcing sales.
Sales is first and foremost the first point of contact between a company and what might be the next customer. Clearly...first impressions count...and Sales is what makes the first impression.
Hence the question of outsourcing sales should not be taken up lightly...it does require some hard thinking as to what the KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) are which need to be hit.
The very first step in the process should be to conduct your needs and define the KPI's. In order to do so the following should be asked:
Why do you feel the need to outsource sales ?
Potential reasons can be:
- You want to rapidly increase sales and/or meet demand spikes
- The company lacks the infrastructure to increase sales (either technically or resource wise).
- Company wants to focus your internal resources on operations and rid yourself of the sales process
- Elimination or reduction in staff turnover
- Lack of Senior Sales management which can drive the sales process internally
- Reduce costs associated with the sales process
- There might be other factors to consider unique to your business, identify them here.
After a self examination which addresses all the weaknesses and objectives you want your external sales team to address and/or rectify you will need to find the right partner for your outsourced sales process.
The sales partner is tasked to be your brand ambassador....he/she will be the very first contact any potential customer will have with your business. As such proper selection is key to make the venture successful.
In the analysis of whether or not your potential Sales Partner suits your needs use the afore mentioned Key Performance Indicators to conduct the review.
Questions which need to be answered are:
- Does the Sales Partner have related industry experience ?
- If so, what was their documented success, track record working for companies like yours?
- Will there be a learning curve , and if yes, how steep will it be ?
- Do the sales people posses the right skill sets to level with your customers ?
- Can the Sales Organization be up-sized (or downsized) if and when needed?
- Do they have experience with your target audience ? (B2B or B2C, industry experience?)
- How does the Sales Partner structure its reporting to the company ?
- Does the Reporting Structure suggest that there is a willingness to be accountable for failures ?
- Consider the costs. Actual deployment costs as well as human capital costs within your organization.
- Once again, there might be questions unique to your company, make sure you address them
If the above questions are answered to your satisfaction you might want to consider the idea of outsourcing Inside Sales. A good option to branch out into Outsourcing Sales is the deployment of a Hybrid Model. A lot of organizations run such a hybrid model whereby some sales is being outsourced and then bench-marked against the performance of the In House team.
A Hybrid approach is often times the best solution to start the process of outsourcing. If done right it might foster competition and makes the entire sales team (Inside and Outside) more productive.
At the end of the day the decision is just not about dollars and cents. Sales is the driver of any business and having an organization that can be authentic in conveying a message is often times the most important part of the sales process.
Only if and when a business feels that it will not loose its authenticity vis a vis a customer the decision to outsource sales should be made.