For a business owner, outsourcing sales efforts means entrusting tasks like marketing, cold calling and client tracking to another company, with the hope that the service provider would implement effective ways to generate revenue in the long term.
If you are an entrepreneur, consider outsourcing your marketing initiatives to save money and refocus on things you company is good at. Paul Reisner, a business development executive and marketing outsourcing expert, has noted various reasons why you should outsource your organization’s sales efforts.
These reasons run the gamut from cutting operating costs and increasing revenue to sharing risks and filing process gaps in areas where your business is not competitive.
1. To Cut Operating Costs
By outsourcing sales efforts, you reduce your company’s sales payroll. This is because what the service provider would charge you invariably would be less than the cash your business would fork over if you hire full-time salespeople.
Imagine if your business needed manufacturing, if you’re still just starting, it would make sense for you to outsource it to a manufacturing companies in developing countries (reliable companies like AsianProSource.com) than carry the overhead expense of maintaining a manufacturing facility in-house.
In addition, you would pay more on everything from salaries and bonuses to training programs and incentives. Other areas you would also save money include health insurance and retirement benefits.
2. To Refocus Your Business
As an entrepreneur, the last thing you want is your business to spend an inordinate amount of time on activities that do not add value and do not bring any cash in the corporate coffers. So outsource everything your company is not good at – including marketing efforts – and refocus on activities at which it is adept.
3. To Access Excellent Capabilities
If you outsource your sales initiatives, chances are that you would tap into world-class capabilities that service providers have developed and improved over the last several years. With the advent of the Internet and its mishmash of electronic features, a service provider can give your potential customers quality service and a better response time.
4. To Free Internal Resources
You need to free internal resources to make money and innovate and do everything needed to outmatch the competition. For example, the training program for marketing efforts can be redirected toward another function, say, research and development.
5. To Fill an Operational Gap
You also can outsource the prospect-seeking effort – same thing as sales effort – to a service provider if your business does not have the internal capabilities nor skill sets. For example, if your business deals with high tech products, it may make economic sense to outsource the sales initiative rather than trying to build up that department from scratch.
6. To Quicken Re-engineering Advantages
If your company engaged in IT re-engineering – the kind of initiative you spearhead to improve everything from software to servers – it would be tactically sensible to outsource the sales effort. That way, your company has fewer processes to embed in the new IT infrastructure, which is always a good thing because IT re-engineering requires process consistency across a company’s platform to be successful.
7. To Generate Cash
By transferring the coordination and management of marketing initiatives to an external provider, your personnel can focus on generating cash – more of it, more often. The provider would refer new clients to salespeople, who then would take care of processing orders and do everything else needed to retain and satisfy the customers.
8. To Share Risks
Come to think of it, your company saves money by sharing operational risks when it outsources its sales efforts. If, for example, an adverse event wreaks havoc on your company’s operations, your marketing initiatives would still be ongoing because your company and the service provider do not possess integrated systems.
–Recap
To effectively outsource your company’s sales effort, think about the pros and cons as well as how the decision would impact the corporate bottom line in the long term. The idea here is not to curb sales expenses and make a quick buck but to implement strategically sensible ideas that will attract customers, provide them with better products and services, and help the organization make money many years from now.