I wanted to take this Sunday to break from the program and spew for a moment about something I am very interested in. We are moving into a seamless realm where we no longer have to be in the same office, let alone the same zip code or hemisphere to be connected to the same phone system, CRM, data center or management tools. With e-mail, texting, smartphones, and cellular internet, the office has moved from the desktop to the car on the interstate, the airport bar, and anywhere else you can pause for a moment and jack in to your virtual office. From a financial and operation standpoint, the breakdown of the “everyone on the same team is headquartered in same office” has benefited the fixed costs of doing business. Even traditional outside sales forces have changed in the face of network visibility and multi-headed communication.
With the next major push of software applications and productivity tools moving to a SAAS model (Software as a Service); it is even easier to maintain a sales team that is not located in the same building as its management team. Maintain is the key word, for while the freedom is a benefit to the representative, it compounds the struggles involved in coaching and mentoring. Phone conversations, web seminars, and video conferences all have their place in this new global community; however some of the benefit of sitting in the same room is lost in the translation.
There is another side of the equation that is even more attractive to the Startup and Fortune 500 alike. The outsourcing of sales is becoming more and more attractive as sales organizations are popping up across the country. For a young company that has built a product it is exhausting to build out a sales organization. Most modern companies are built from the engineering up, and then the risk of finding the right sales executive to make things happen is there. On the other side, many companies that are established, find that they have either are stuck with practices or concepts that have them falling behind the competition, or that their sales force is content and no longer interested in improving their skills. Usually every company that grows from start-up to small, small to medium, or medium to large, flat-lines. What comes next is costly; executive fallout, mass retraining, or system overhauls. The type of executives, managers, sales representatives, as well as the quantitative mix of hunters, gatherers, communicators, and collaborators changes with these needs. This need for change has always been accepted as a necessary evil for a growing company.
This is where companies that focus on sales outsourcing make their mark. Companies like Sales Surge have seen the basic move towards companies outsourcing the areas of business that are not their core strengths and leveraging a team with experience. As the rest of our professional lives move towards virtualization, owner Greg Bautz is counting on companies turning to the outsourcing of sales alongside the already abundant amount of outsourcing for IT, development, and finance. With the new concepts of efficient sales outsourcing, we can move away from expectations of rebuilding models and teams, of attrition and hiring struggles, and of executive shake ups to maintain and continue growing a company. It takes an experienced outsourcing group very little cost and support to quickly build a team of sales representatives. It also takes very little time or energy to show people in a sales only organization a career path that feeds to training and mentoring. The most critical piece of the puzzle however is the ability to change the dynamics of your sales arm quickly and efficiently.
Here is an example of how a growing company expands its sales team and how outsourcing can maximize the efficiency of a growing start up. Let’s say you launch a product and outsource three sales representatives and a manager. The team will have to be talented in lead generation and prospecting, as you try and penetrate the market and get your name out there. Well if there is success, a large focus for your manager will be to continue to hire and train new reps. This alone can take up all of their time, and now the time needed to mentor the existing employees is a challenge. Even if the challenge is met, there will be a new dynamic as the company experiences more success, the talent of your sales team will have to change or new people of a different ilk must be hired. Why? Because now you have customers, and someone has to either get them to renew, continue to buy, or up sell them new products and services to maintain the health of the company. Also, once your reputation grows, there will be a need for higher level sales reps to go after larger and more fruitful accounts. Entire recruiting departments can be dedicated to building this team and maintaining a talented workforce. The lack of execution in any area can cost a new company dearly.
Let’s take this example now and move the sales team offsite to a company like Sales Surge. You are ready to start selling your product. Three sales reps are sourced to start working your product. The management structure at this point is an hourly contracted rate to keep them trained and efficient. Already, you have saved time and money on hiring, training, and management. The same model applies and your product is a hit! With a predetermined metrics, revenue, or goal design you implement a strategy to add reps; an automated plug in because your outsourcing company has the resources available. You do not start paying for them until they are trained and ready to go. Finally, you need retention or renewal specialists, again an easy plug-in. The recognition begins, and you need an outside sales team to go after those larger accounts. Again, a company like Sales Surge utilizes its network to build out your higher level sales team. One critical element here is that you are not responsible for managing this arm of the sales team, meaning you do not have to build out another management arm, costing you even more recruiting dollars.
So things are going well, but the growth pace is in danger of flattening. Here is where an outsourcing agency really pays off. The shakeup is not going to cost you an exuberant amount of money. You can rebuild your team quickly and easily and not bear the burden of firing executives and managers, layoffs for reallocation of payroll, and all of the other painful and time consuming tasks that have you explaining to your board that the dip in sales is going to be necessary to turn around the company. Instead, you design the next phase of the company, and send it to your partner to make the changes. From a philanthropic stand point, you also are not costing anyone their job, as the Sales Surge’s of the world can take that human capital and move it to other programs. A win cubed for your company, Sales Surge, and the employees.
This can also work for the established company that has lost touch with their sales force. By slowly moving the team to another company’s management structure, it will allow for the expectations to shift from the daily concern of the company. All one has to do to see if this will work, is look at how operations has been outsourced since the ’70’s. It works as a cost benefit in these models; the critical difference is that those savings are singular to the bottom line. With outsourcing sales you are matching that cost benefit and raising it with a consistent growth in revenue. In this time of global competition, who would say no to that?
