Everything You Need to Know About Outsourced Sales Leadership

Key Takeaways

• Outsourcing sales leadership allows businesses to welcome positive sales prospects, thus providing enough room for scalability.
• Effective communication is an essential prerequisite of an ideal outsourced sales leader.
• Businesses can minimise costs by outsourcing sales teams instead of hiring in-house teams.

Introduction

Ever wondered why global tech giants like Google, WhatsApp, and Slack still consider outsourcing part of their work to other companies?

From virtual assistant work to beta testing development tools, these companies have relied on outsourcing to make their job easier.

Moreover, outsourcing can help find the right individuals with adequate experience to perform complex functions before launching their product.

Outsourcing sales leadership is also in vogue with a business’s regular sales operations. In this blog, we will investigate the bare essentials that make sales leadership outsourcing a part of a robust sales strategy.

Defining Sales Leadership Outsourcing (Why Outsource?)

Growing at a constant rate of about 8% annually, the global sales outsourcing market is worth about $92.5 billion. But how exactly can sales leadership be outsourced?

Most small and medium business enterprises often employ their own CEOs and marketing specialists to meet the growing sales demands. But experts believe that a lack of experience in sales leadership and spending too many resources in harnessing new prospects may impede growth.

Sales leadership outsourcing is hiring an external company or individual to manage and lead a company’s sales team. Companies may outsource their sales leadership for various reasons, such as a lack of internal expertise or resources, a need to focus on core business functions, or a desire to reduce costs.

Outsourcing sales leadership can also provide access to a wider pool of talent and specialized sales expertise and help companies quickly scale their sales teams as needed.

Additionally, outsourcing sales leadership can provide a more flexible and cost-effective solution than hiring a full-time internal sales leader.

The Basic Traits of an Outsourced Sales Leadership Team

Sales outsourcing enables leaders to create, develop, and execute sales strategies from scratch.

This revenue-driven approach ensures that your sales operations and processes are aligned with your marketing strategies thus putting more emphasis on capabilities than cost. But how exactly can you identify the basic traits of an expert outsourced sales leader?

Here are three fundamental characteristics of an ideal outsourced sales leader.

1. Communication

Communication is a fundamental trait of outsourced sales leadership.

Effective communication is crucial in building and maintaining client relationships and providing clear direction and feedback to sales teams. It enables sales leaders to effectively convey their vision and goals to their teams and communicate clients’ expectations and requirements to ensure that all parties are on the same page.

Additionally, communication lets sales leaders stay informed about their client’s needs and respond quickly to any issues or concerns.

Data shows that 71% of employees in an organisation recognise the importance of effective communication.

With it, outsourced sales leaders can guarantee productivity, engagement, and retention. Even amidst a hybrid work model, you can expect a revenue increase of about 20-25% by outsourcing sales, according to McKinsey.

2. Uninterrupted Evaluation

Outsourced sales leaders should continually evaluate their teams’ performance to ensure that they meet their goals and objectives.

This can be done through regular performance reviews, where the leader can assess the team’s sales figures, customer feedback, and overall performance metrics.

Additionally, regular meetings and check-ins can be held to discuss any areas of improvement or success and ensure everyone is on the same page.

By continually evaluating the team’s performance, outsourced sales leaders can identify issues and make adjustments to improve overall productivity and success.

Outsourced sales leaders can also help evaluate performance by gauging every interaction between potential prospects and customers. Evaluation involves providing quality assurance programs that use a data-driven approach to leverage the sales prospects.

Sales and marketing intelligence groups claim that proper assessment of all essential variables can boost your sales performance by about 32% annually.

3. Efficient Usage of Sales Enablement Tools

Sales enablement tools are critical for outsourced sales leadership as they help to streamline and optimise the sales process.

By using tools such as customer relationship management (CRM), sales automation, and marketing automation software, sales leaders can ensure that their team is utilising best practices and staying on top of key metrics such as lead generation and conversion rates.

Additionally, these tools can help to improve communication and collaboration between sales and marketing teams, leading to more efficient and effective lead nurturing and sales follow-up along with also building a robust sales pipeline.

Outsourced sales leaders should be proficient in using these tools and should also be able to train and mentor their team members to use them effectively. This will help to ensure that their team can maximise their productivity and achieve their sales targets.

Additionally, outsourced sales leaders can bring about significant change and educate your entire sales and marketing teams on handling difficult situations. They can organise weekly training on specific themes like handling sales data, working with sales enablement tools, etc.

Furthermore, a successful outsourced sales team helps prepare for the worst and helps make proposal guidelines and call scripts that can improve your sales performance.

Cost Effective?

There are multiple grounds on which outsourcing sales leadership looks profitable in the long run. But how can you evaluate the efficacy of an outsourced sales leader? The answer is cost-effectiveness!

But before discussing how cost-effective outsourcing sales leaders is, let us look into the cost of maintaining in-house leadership.

1. Recruiting

The cost of recruiting, sourcing, and maintaining an in-house sales leader is not minimal. Add to it the management costs, costs of advertising, background checks, etc. In addition, hiring a single candidate who can motivate the entire sales team requires up to 10 weeks and it can take a few months to train them well.

2. Employee Benefits

Hiring a competitive and passionate sales leader usually costs more than any sales professional. Data obtained from labor statistics show that in addition to the monthly compensation, you must provide them with employment benefits like health insurance and travel allowances. Additionally, you need to consider employment taxes and additional overheads.

3. Cost of Resources

Apart from imparting motivation and having innate selling skills, your in-house sales leader must be tech-savvy and analyse data obtained from various sources. To facilitate the same, you require an office with well-maintained telecommunication equipment and expensive software licenses.

The expense of hiring an outsourced sales leader, however, depends directly on your sales approach. You might be looking for a dedicated performance-enhancing leader who can assign responsibilities to your in-house team or a prospect-specific leader for a particular geographic location.

Outsourcing costs can follow a definite resource model that charges a specific monthly fee. Some outsourced sales leaders charge on a per-appointment basis, where you will pay only for appointments that generate positive leads.

Bottom Line

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

Confidence, motivation, and uninterrupted optimism are some basic traits that an ideal sales leadership should possess.

A high performing sales leader combines quality with quantity and fixate on targets that might otherwise sound unachievable.

Furthermore, a high-performing sales leadership helps maximize the performance of the entire sales team because they select individuals who can build relationships above everything else.

There is a common misconception that sales prospects plummet beyond imagination during severe economic circumstances like recession or hyperinflation. If you have enough capital to carry out regular business functions and managing a quintessential sales leadership, your sales will maintain traction.

For best results, leverage your technological assets and outsource your sales leadership for a more promising future.