How Sales as a Service Fills the Gaps in Your Sales Team

Try as they might, most sales organizations are playing catch-up in some form or another. Whether they’re short-handed, using obsolete tools, or working off old or missing data, there always seems to be some gap in the process that hampers growth.

Fixing these gaps traditionally requires a heavy investment in time, resources, and money, and may even complicate the issue if done improperly – such as in the case of poor hiring practices.

Fortunately, outsourcing sales operations is an increasingly viable solution for organizations, whether they’re ramping up their team or streamlining an already established sales engine.

Let’s review how sales as a service can fill in the gaps.

Bridging the Personnel Gap

Team composition is one of the biggest factors in a sales operation’s success, and yet it takes a long time to find, hire, and train effective employees. Sales as a service providers are uniquely placed to assist companies in this area.

Fight churn

Sales development representatives (SDRs) are one of the highest-churning positions on a sales team. Most SDRs spend just 15.5 half months in the role and companies have to keep a constant stream of new hires if they are to have enough SDRs available to fill out the team.

When you outsource sales operations, you no longer have to worry about departing SDRs. Your sales partner will have their own team of experienced SDRs and will manage them behind-the-scenes so that you get uninterrupted service all the time.

Ability to scale up or down

Need a temporary boost in capacity to catch seasonal sales? If you’re hiring a new SDR to be a stopgap, then you’ll have to plan months in advance. An SDR takes an average of 3 to 4 months to ramp up. That’s not ideal if you’re only hiring for a role that will be scaled down after the season.

But sales as a service is a plug-and-sell solution, where SDRs can instantly be added to a team and be downscaled just as fast when they’re no longer needed.

More experience for less

The more experienced a salesperson is, the more expensive they are to recruit. And while this is only to be expected, some companies may not have the budget to hire them. It becomes a catch-22 scenario: how can you hire an experienced sales team if your sales aren’t strong enough to afford them?

Sales as a service providers break the loop and offer companies with tighter budgets a way to access experienced sales reps. Sales agencies have affordable price structures, whether it’s pay-per-appointment or a dedicated resource.

Bridging the Technology Gap

Sales outsourcing companies don’t just solve personnel problems; they can also make it easier to round out your tech stack.

Access to the latest sales tools

Cutting-edge sales technologies can be prohibitively expensive for growing companies–but that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from them.

Many sales outsourcing companies already have the latest tech in place for their own agents. That means the people who hire them benefit from the efficiency, productivity, and insights that these technologies provide without having to invest in it themselves.

But don’t worry if you already have a tech stack you like, the best sales partners can work with your existing tools too if that’s what you’d prefer.

No training or license costs

Of course, software costs aren’t restricted to simply purchasing and setup. The best sales platform in the world can’t help you if your people aren’t trained in its use. Training costs time and money (especially if you get the vendor’s “official” training program).

Licenses are an issue as well, as many tools must be paid for each and every user on the system. These are normally paid annually, so if an SDR leaves mid-year you can get stuck with an empty seat until you manage to hire someone new – if you hire one at all.

Using your outsourced sales team’s tech stack helps you dodge this challenge, because all of the training and software license costs are being managed by them. Their sales team joins your operations fully-trained and with the appropriate licenses already sorted out.

Bridging the Information Gap

Information gathering and data management are some of the most subtle ways a sales as a service company can help you, but also one of the most valuable.

Build prospect lists from scratch

Growing businesses or companies entering a new market have grand plans about their go-to-market strategy, but don’t automatically know how to find their ideal prospects (let alone their contact information).

Oftentimes, internal reps are left with vague directions on how and when to prospect may even have to rely on luck or personal judgment on who they should call next. This results in a haphazard sales campaign with little to no conversion.

But outsourced sales companies are experienced at analyzing new markets and building prospect lists from scratch. They will be able to efficiently identify potential customers and assemble them into lists that both of you will be able to use in call campaigns. If you work with a partner that’s experienced in your industry, they probably already have substantial proprietary data on potential customers and their likelihood to be ready to buy.

Yes, a CRM can track thousands of prospects and grant you access to that data at the push of a button, but the CRM is only as good as the data inside of it. If nobody is keeping that data up to date, then your CRM is worse than useless – it’s detrimental. But maintaining the CRM data is thankless, time-consuming, and menial.

Enriching records

CRM records are both the best and worst thing about sales. Yes, a CRM can track thousands of prospects and grant you access to that data at the push of a button, but the CRM is only as good as the data inside of it.

If nobody is keeping that data up to date, then your CRM is worse than useless – it’s detrimental. But maintaining the CRM data is thankless, time-consuming, and menial.

With an outsourced team of SDR’s, however, you can delegate database cleanup to a third-party. They will take care of validating the information that’s currently there while also updating it with information found over the course of the campaign.

Genuine product feedback

It’s easy for companies to exist in an echo chamber when it comes to your own product. You work so hard to develop, market, and sell it that you assume that you have a good grasp of your product’s strengths and weaknesses.

But how you perceive your product and how prospects perceive it can be very different. The latest feature might actually make your product feel bloated. Or there might be one small feature that would make the product more valuable to the majority of your customers.

Beyond features, potential customers can also give you great information on the effectiveness of your message. What value propositions or benefit statements are truly resonating with your target audience?

All this and more can be discovered by an outsourced sales team as they work through the prospect list. They’re experienced in taking note of these insights and passing them along to you so that your organization can improve your product and adjust your marketing strategies as required.

Fill the Gaps Today

Sales outsourcing does more than just put warm bodies in seats. Sales as a service supplements your team with additional skill, experience, technology, and customer data. When you partner with an outsourced sales team like Inside Sales Solutions, you’re supporting your internal organization and maximizing internal resources.