Outsource Sales?!?

I recently put an advertisement on craigslist looking for some sales help. Craigslist is great because you never know what you’re going to get. This time was no exception. I got the usual resumes, inquiries, and spam. One email, however, caught my attention. It was from a company that wanted to do my sales for me. This guy wanted me to outsource my sales!

Since my company handles business tasks like bookkeeping and IT project management, we can be categorized as an outsourcing firm. Rather than doing the work in-house, companies “outsource” to us to complete day-to-day business activities. It would be super-hypocritical of me not to hear this guy out since I am always trying to convince business owners of the benefits of outsourcing.

Being the researchaholic that I am, I decided to investigate the concept of outsourced-sales. I came across this interesting article that gives advice on outsourcing your sales. It is a good read that gives all the benefits of outsourcing your sales, as well as some advice on how to do it correctly.

As with all outsourcing, the biggest benefits are:

Cost. Outsourcing any function, as a general rule, is less expensive than hiring a full or part-time employee to do the same task. As any business owner knows, employees cost a lot more than their base salary.
Expertise. A company who’s core business is the task you are trying to complete gives you access to more resources than just one employee working in your office.
Management. The fewer employees you have to manage, the fewer office conflicts, wasted time, and mistakes you will have to manage.

Sales outsourcing should be no exception to the above benefits. Having a company do my sales will give me access to more locations than a single employee, and the service is scalable to my needs in any given month. The biggest problem I see is that business to business sales is relationship-driven (this is not like selling student loan consolidations), and my customers would be forming relationships with another company.

Enter outsourced appointment setting. This service makes all the cold calls for you, qualifies the leads, gets to the right person, and sets a meeting for you. You still handle the actual sales work and keep that relationship-building in house.

Yes, I’m still on the fence. If I do decide to outsource any part of my sales, though, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Mike Freeman
Pursue Business Advisors