Should You Outsource Your Sales Team or Hire An Internal Team?

SMEs engaging external partners to support key business functions, such as finance, sales and marketing or IT, have been increasing in popularity, with spending in this area predicted to reach a staggering $731 billion in 2023. 

The Biggest Challenge In Sales Right Now

It’s the biggest challenge in most facets of business. People. Recruitment, training and development and holding on to great staff is proving extraordinarily difficult in the current environment.

If you committed to the decision to hire somebody today, how fast do you think you will have that person in the role? 2 weeks? 2 months? It could be up to 4 months before you have the sales team up and operational and then around a year to assess if the investment is starting to bear fruit. In this climate, it’s no wonder a company like Revium is seeing clients from almost every type of B2B industry choose us as the safest pair of hands.

Prospecting, setting up interviews, assessing candidates and then hiring the right candidates. In today’s climate even that is not guaranteed with 39% of candidates rejecting job offers at the negotiation stage, only slightly better than 2020 levels. Of course, at the point of recruitment, you then only have to train and develop them and, if they are good, hope to keep them.

Job openings surged to record highs throughout 2021 and have since stabilized at levels nearly twice as high as the pre-pandemic norm. Yet the recovery in labor force participation has been much slower, leaving the labor market with a massive gap between supply and demand that persisted, pushing labor costs and wages higher.

An extremely tight job market with economic uncertainty swirling means high performing salespeople are not apt to change jobs. In this current market it tends to be last in, first out, so the risks are big for job switching. It is now more expensive than it was pre pandemic to source, train, and maintain your own sales team.

All in all, it is one of the riskiest investments you could make in the current environment. Your best opportunity to avoid risk or hedge could be to outsource some of the sales functions to a team that does nothing but that.

The Benefits Of Outsourcing

Cost Control

There are several benefits to outsourcing the sales operations. First, you'll save money by not having to pay salaries, benefits, technology stack and overheads. Not to mention paying for employees who aren't contributing to your bottom line.

Specialized Skills

Second, you'll gain access to specialized skills that you might not have available within your organization. A company like Revium not only has the team, but the technology and know how to help companies revamp their entire sales processes.

Our tech stack is something 99% of companies either cannot or won’t invest in because justifying it for one element of business is not as economical compared to companies like ours focusing on that niche, yet overlooked, element of sales generation.

Concentrate On Your Core Business

Third, you'll be able to focus more attention on growing your business instead of managing day-to-day operations that sales requires. Revium has a proven track record of freeing up 80% of the essential sales activities so you can concentrate on what matters most.

The Challenges Of Outsourcing

However, there are also some challenges associated with outsourcing. Many business owners would argue that members of the sales team are the most critical hires for any B2B company’s success.

First, there is a need to prospect, focusing on reaching and qualifying new leads through processes like cold calling. Then, those qualified leads need to be nurtured through the sales process. Both steps are highly visible and trackable to the entire organization, so having the right sales team and process in place is vital for the overall health of the business.

Trust

If outsourcing, you need to make sure that you're hiring the right company for the job.  It’s your business and trust is a key ingredient many founders and CEOs struggle to relinquish control of because, at the end of the day, it’s their company’s own reputation on the line.

For all intents and purposes, the outsourced company will represent your company to potential prospects so it’s vital to tread carefully with your choice. Factoring the cost savings of internal versus outsourced should not always be the primary motive. You may pay much, much more in the long run if mistakes are made here.

Quality Control Oversight

If you choose to outsource, you should ensure that you're getting the same quality work or preferably higher from the outsourcer as you would from an employee. Also, you need to make sure that the outsourcer has the necessary tools and skills to perform the task effectively.

A Fair Price For The Right Service

You need to ascertain that you're paying the correct amount for the services agreed. Companies that make outlandish claims on how many leads they will generate or new business won need to first match the company goals and, secondly, be assessed for true quality metrics.

It’s about quality over quantity. The danger with quantity metrics and cost on those performance indicators will have its own extra costs on vetting how good these prospects really are and the time lost trying to close leads that actually had little hope of converting.

Companies that claim they will 10x your business with zero context might give flashy marketing, but no two companies have the exact same reputation, business model or potential audience they can serve. Sure, we can give averages on industry and deal size, but that’s why honesty up front will save both parties a lot of time.

What should you be asking any potential outsourcing company before considering them as a viable option?

What are the payment terms?

Some companies work on commission models, others on time spent/activities completed and some have fixed monthly costs. It’s therefore vital the sums work for both parties. You need to know what the deal size would be if converted versus the potential outlay and how many sales qualified leads, not just marketing qualified leads, you need them to generate to sign on the dotted line. Also, can the company help you at that final close stage to increase your % of success?



Revium has seen some clients use other external agencies that charged per lead and spent way over budget to win only 2 deals. When the sales costs were factored in, the ROI turned out to be far more expensive than our monthly rates.


It is important therefore to be crystal clear with the outsourced team about what constitutes success and, if the company cannot reach your goals, what does the exit process look like? No outsourced company worth their salt wants to see clients exit, but the contracts need to work for both parties.

Source Of Outsourcing Talent

The biggest gripe customers can have with outsourcing is losing culture and potential language barriers. Businesses that outsourced abroad services like their call centers soon learned that cheaper is not better as cheapening the customer service of your business, cheapens the whole business. 

In sales, relationship building is even more important and so you have to consider your target audience. Would they prefer to engage with people representing your business in America, Eastern Europe or Asia etc.

Revium's sales delivery team is fully located in the United States working in our main office in Pittsburgh as well as support from New York, New Jersey and Colorado. 

Brand Protection Measures

What are the company's safety measures to protect your business? Warming up cold contacts is as much an art as a science and, unfortunately, so many companies claim they can target X amount of people to sell your product or service. Think about two things here.

Firstly, how comfortable would you be if the company blasted through a giant network of potential leads with what is known in sales as the ‘spray and pray’ method. You might generate a batch of leads, but the company may have turned off a far greater number of future prospects with an ugly lead generation campaign.



Secondly, what protections are they taking with your domain? Cold outreach to prospects, at the end of the day, is not for everybody and poorly executed campaigns can risk your domain reputation. We have seen companies first hand lose out on $10 million dollars because they hired the wrong outsourced company.

The Pros And Cons Of Hiring A Specialist Sales Team Vs. Hiring Employees

There are pros and cons to both options. As mentioned before, outsourcing allows you to save money by not having to pay benefits, payroll taxes, and other costs associated with employing employees.

You also gain an entire team with the know-how to get you up and running fast. For instance, Revium is up and selling for your company in 14 days. You should be seeing a proper return on your investment within four months.

Outsourcing allows you,  within a single purchase - to outsource an entire function (leadership, sales development reps, technology), whereas when building your own team, you need to start from zero and build block by block.

On the other hand, outsourcing means that you'll have less control over how things are done. If you choose the wrong company, you may see lower quality work and have oversight blind spots . Measuring performance can be hard if they don’t have the full picture, so vet your potential vendor carefully and look not just at reviews online but go deep with them and see if they align with your sales vision.

Conclusion

If you would like to find out if your sales vision can be improved by Revium, book a free demo and take 15 minutes to learn about our processes, our people and how we can be the partner to help your company get scalable revenue.

Revium’s mission is to create a platform that gives people access to the strongest sales team and revenue technology in the world, giving everyone an equal opportunity to generate revenue at scale.