Many companies today have already started to fully outsource their B2B sales teams.

In this article, I've outlined the reasons why this may make sense for some companies.

But before we jump into the why let's first take a look at some of the different sales functions.

And what they're trying to accomplish.

BDR - (business development representative)

Someone responsible for generating interest and conversations for your business.

This can be through cold calling, cold emailing, or connecting with people on LinkedIn.

With the goal of booking more meetings.

SDR - (sales development representative)

Someone responsible for qualifying leads generated through inbound methods.

This can be through warm calls or follow-up emails sent to interested leads.

The goal of an SDR is to also generate more meetings and interest for your business.

AE - (Account Executive)

Typically a senior salesperson who is responsible for closing sales deals.

They will most likely be working side by side with an SDR or BDR.

Usually, you will see the junior sales reps (BDR/SDR) teeing up meetings for the senior sales reps (AE).

Full-cycle salesperson

This role is sometimes confused with an Account Executive.

In reality, it's a blended role. Meant to be a combination of all three roles mentioned above.

Often you will see a full cycle salesperson hired to a startup or a company with limited resources.

This is so the company can try to achieve all three objectives at a lower cost.

1) Generate interest and conversations

2) Book new meetings each week

3) Close more sales deals

What are the pros and cons of outsourcing your entire sales staff?

PROS:

1) Time to value

Oftentimes B2B Sales Outsourcing Companies market themselves as Lead Generation Agencies.

This means they promise to get you a certain number of leads or meetings per month.

If your company is new to selling, this may sound like a dream. Because you will be getting results fast.

Who doesn't want meetings booked on their calendar and a full pipeline within a matter of weeks?

2) Low costs

Telesales outsourcing companies understand that to be competitive today they need to offer value at a low cost.

Hiring salespeople is expensive. Especially if they turn out not to be a good fit or quit before they are even able to ramp up.

It could even cost your company up to $2 million if you hire the wrong salesperson.

Instead, having a salesforce team ready on-demand to start producing results from day one can be a huge cost saver. 

Without the need to train or onboard them.

3) Expertise and talent

To run an effective outsourced sales team, agencies need to find and source talent.

They'll usually require these individuals to have serious cold calling and outreach techniques.

They're not afraid of picking up the phone or getting rejected.

A lot of outsourced sales staff have acquired years of knowledge and experience. 

And now put this to good use for a multitude of companies.

CONS:

1. Lack of transparency

As with any work that is outsourced to an agency, you never really know what you’re paying for.

Everything ultimately relies on your trust with that brand. You trust that they will deliver the leads and meetings promised.

And you're happy when they produce some kind of results. Because anything is better than having no results right?

2. Low quality

Cheap and fast do not necessarily mean good.

Today it’s common that a BDR has the task of booking around 10 new meetings a week through cold outreach.

When asked if they actually hit these numbers, the answer is almost always “no”.

It makes you wonder. How can an agency that knows little to nothing about your company do it?

When a full-time employee who is trained to know and understand your business inside out can't do it?

Usually, we find that the quality of meetings booked or leads generated is actually quite low.

With many companies stating these meetings rarely turn into real closed-won deals.

3. No long-term strategy

Paying for an outsourced BDR team is like paying for PPC (pay per click) campaigns.

As long as you keep paying an agency, you’ll have some kind of results.

Once you stop paying, however, you’re left without a sales team, process or any kind of understanding of what works and what does not.

What could your company do instead of outsourcing your sales team?

• Build out a sales process with the help of a Growth Officer or external Growth Agency.
• Hire an in-house sales team.
• Document buyer personas.
• Analyze sales activities that led to more conversations and meetings booked.
• Track email effectiveness and what content messaging led to an increase in reply rates.
• Build out reports to understand how many touchpoints (sales activities) it took to generate a sales-qualified lead or a closed-won deal.
• Determine your sales cycle length.
• Measure your customer lifetime value.

This can all be tracked easily in a CRM like HubSpot.

And if your company decides to switch out its salesforce, you’ll be able to onboard new sales reps faster based on all the information you have stored within your CRM.

In Conclusion

When you outsource your BDR function, you will not be able to build on past data.

You’re solely relying on an external party to provide you with results.

And often they will not provide you with the know-how on how they achieved those results.

So the question remains, should you outsource your sales team?