Outsourcing Your Sales Team to Maximize Your Time Without Hurting Your Bottom Line

This is a guest post by Matthew Ellis

As a business owner or sales manager, you may be looking for ways to increase your bottom-line by outsourcing your sales team. This is a good business practice for many reasons.

First and foremost, since you are only one person trying to do a multitude of sales tasks, you can get a lot more accomplished with a distributed sales team. From cold calling for new leads to visiting existing customers, having an outsourced sales model can enable you to get more done in a lot less time; speeding up the process from leads to sales to revenues.

Secondly, you can more easily roll out strategic sales campaigns when you have several people to delegate tasks and clients to. By assigning specific people to certain duties or territories, you can cover more area and get things accomplished in short order. This helps you to reach sales goals faster and run campaigns for shorter, concentrated periods of time to maximize earnings.

Steps for Outsourcing a Sales Team

To get started with outsourcing your sales team there are some steps you can take.

Step 1: Evaluate what sales roles can be outsourced and what skills are needed to handle them. Before you can start outsourcing your sales functions, you need to truly understand all the processes that go into place for each sales effort. Develop a checklist of what each sales campaign looks like, as you will use this as a guide for identifying what tasks you will outsource and to whom. Do an inventory of the critical skill sets needed to be successful as a sales consultant in your industry.

Step 2: Bring on subcontracted sales professionals on a commission-only structured plan.
Initially, outsourcing sales functions takes time and can cost your business in terms of salaries. However, one way to offset these costs is to develop a compensation plan that is commission only for the first few months. Bring on subcontractors who are independently responsible for their own expenses until they have proved their worth to your company. These will be the folks who can commit to your success for the long term.

Step 3: Train all subcontractors, create accountability, and set sales goals for the first 30 to 90 days.
The key to being successful with sales outsourcing is carefully training and monitoring all subcontractors for peak performance. Start all salespeople with a consistent training program and assign mentors to each person to help build accountability and continue their development. Set realistic sales goals for the first 90-days to give contractors time to get past the learning curve and start generating sales numbers.

Step 4: Provide base salaries and incentives for top performing sales consultants.
Once the initial three months have passed, choose your top performing salespeople for promotion as salaried consultants. This can be a great incentive for those who are looking for long-term sales success, and you will have earned your investment in each person by this time. Set regular sales goals and continue to foster skills development in your team of outsourced sales professionals.

Outsourcing a sales force can be a bit nerve-wracking at first, but you will find that it brings many rewards to you personally and increases the selling power of your organization much faster than by yourself.

About the author: Matthew Ellis covers all things Acquirent, a company that provides outsourced sales services. Acquirent is always on the lookout for outstanding sales people for sales jobs in Chicago.