Filling your sales pipeline is one of the major challenges that most of the business have to face. A lot of firms rely on the sales workforce to carry out business development activities. However, sales reps may feel burned out due to workload, and major business activities may affect greatly. For this reason, companies prefer business development outsourcing to make sure that their employees will focus on more important activities like closing sales.
Business development outsourcing is a big decision that you shouldn’t make hastily. Take your time to evaluate all aspects of business needs and what you want from an agency.
Things to consider while outsourcing business development activities
We have scoured a list of some important things that you should consider while choosing the outsourcing firm to hand over the business development process.
The cost of outsourced business development reps
A substantial monetary investment is needed to put more efforts into business development. It is better that you should weigh the cost to the benefits to make sure that you can get a realistic return on your investment.
Thus, you should take into account the cost to build your in-house team to realize the long-term goals and your timeline to achieve the set goals. This comparison should give you a better understanding of the path that you should choose to get the desired results.
You will be able to calculate the cost of outsourcing to get an idea of whether or not it fits in your set budget. However, you should not forget to ask your prospective business development representative team about hidden fees or costs before signing the contract.
The time needed to get results
Recruiting business development representatives and setting up an in-house team can take a lot of your time and resources. Though business development outsourcing also takes time, it gives you instant access to a team of talented professionals. You will rest assured of having the process streamlines to effectively generate more leads complying with your needs and requirements.
Your outsourcing partner can start working with your customer journey and messaging right from the first day. They already have market experts onboard and the required infrastructure to handle the load. You might have to arrange a few meetings with the outsourcing firm to discuss your goals and target market. After that, they will be able to set up the campaigns and get them running in less than a month.
Your efforts to ensure success
No matter how experienced the outsourced team is, you need to get involved with them. However, the extent to which you should be involved in the business development processes depends on your chosen firm and their expertise. You may need to provide them with a huge amount of information that might require a lot of efforts on your part.
If you don’t put in the efforts, you will not get the qualified appointments you have hoped for. You should assess the time and energy needed from your side while choosing the business development outsourcing firm.
Alignment to a shared goal
Every business has unique needs and requirements that they want to fulfil to achieve success. Ensure that the company you have shortlisted has some experience working with other business of the same niche or businesses having the same requirements or pain points.
The best way to do so is to go through their use cases that started with a situation similar to yours. By doing so, you will get confidence in the abilities of the BDRs. Besides, you can ask the following questions to assess their potential:
- Which techniques and tools are your BDRs using?
- Do you have documents or something to support your claim of a positive track record?
- Do your KPIs align with the business goals?
- What average conversion rate should I expect from your BDRs?
- Can you demonstrate that you completely understand our needs and pain points?
- Have you previously worked with firms in the same sector or industry?
When you shouldn’t go for business development outsourcing
Though business development outsourcing is a good option, it isn’t one solution that fits all. If your business is undergoing the following situations, then outsourcing business development activities is the right choice.
Sales functions need amendments
Motivated and experienced salesforce works as the backbone of the process as they will follow up with leads to come through. Business development outsourcing can really hurt your reputation if it is just a side bet for you. When sales processes aren’t committed, and you have non-competitive sales managers, and your in-house team will fail to follow up with emails and calls, all effort of BDRs will go in vain.
Thus, it is important to ensure that your sales team and account executives have streamlined processes to ingeniously follow up with leads. As BDRs will bring in volumes of leads, make sure you have enough resources to handle the volume.
When cost outweigh the benefits
As we have already discussed that you should make a comparison of the cost versus benefits, it can be the deciding factor here. Pricing for different outsourced firms will typically start from thousands of dollars a month. No matter if you are going for outsourcing the first time or have done it before, pricing is the most common concern among all.
If you think that it is costing a fortune and are afraid that you will lose control over the business development process, don’t go for it. Investing a hefty amount into another firm that you don’t know much about can be a scary thought. That’s why considering all the factors is crucial to make the right decision.
You worry about losing control
Sales development activities are crucial for the success of a business, and the idea of losing control over your sales development activities can give you goosebumps. The outsourced BDRs will be in direct contact with your prospects. At that point, you will not know if they will be able to represent the true image of your company or not.
Ideally, no business wants to mess up with the company’s reputation in the minds of prospects as negative words of mouth can bring irreparable damage. Though dedicated BDRs are self-managed and have the capability to work on their own, it still can be risky for some business. You should check the system for supervision to make sure that you will have authority over the whole process. However, when the shortlisted agency isn’t providing the option to keep up with sales BDRs, and you are somewhat shaky about the decision, you shouldn’t go for business development outsourcing.
Your business model won’t work
While deciding whether you should outsource business development or not, don’t forget to assess the scope of your business model. The idea of outsourcing any part of the sales process will not fit well with B2C, B2B2C, or B2C2B models. The main reason behind this is the price factor of the product.
If you choose an average contract that value less than $1,000 will not bring the desired results. Additionally, your business model will be a bad fit for business development outsourcing if you have a large pool of leads or a short sales cycle.
The Verdict
Whether business development outsourcing will work for your business or not depends upon the unique business needs, the industry in which you are operating, and the business model. Every business wishes to make an investment that will bring more benefits. Outsourcing business development cannot be the perfect solution to all the pain points of a business. You should analyze the business needs wisely and then decide if you should outsource the business development or not.
