Should Service Companies Outsource Sales Development?
The success of any business depends largely on its sales success, but more demanding buyer expectations, accelerated sales processes, and the need for greater scalability (among other factors) are driving many organizations to outsource sales development — including service companies.
If your company is a service business, you might be questioning that decision. After all, selling services isn’t like selling products. It’s a complex conversation, one that requires total in-depth knowledge of offerings and hyper-alignment with individual customer needs.
It’s true that outsourcing sales development comes with unique considerations for service companies, and it isn’t right for all of them. But it is right for many, and in this guide, we’ll tell you why — plus how to determine if outsourcing is a good option for your business.
Quick Takeaways
- If your business relies too heavily on referrals, your sales team is overwhelmed, or you lack a dedicated sales leader, it might be time to outsource sales development.
- Productizing service offerings makes them more tangible for buyers and easier for SDRs to sell.
- A quality sales outsourcing team will take time to understand and demonstrate knowledge of your company’s unique needs.
- Outsourcing sales can provide a cost-effective alternative to building an in-house team. It can save money on salaries, benefits, and tools while still driving lead generation and business growth.
- Outsourcing can lead to challenges like losing some control, facing communication gaps, and potential data security risks.
Why Do Companies Outsource Sales Development?
For one, sales is a stressful business — that’s nothing new.
What is new is a considerable shortage of quality sales talent felt across industries, while at the same time sales best practices and buyer expectations are evolving at a more rapid pace than ever. It’s tough for many companies to keep up with, and in many cases it makes more sense to outsource than continually lag a step behind the pack.
And while outsourcing requires an initial financial investment, the ROI quickly comes back in spades. Outsourcing saves companies up to 30% on operating costs, and 79% of sales teams say they’ve been able to scale faster and more efficiently by outsourcing.
It’s a cost-effective option, particularly when considering the overhead expenses of building and maintaining an internal business development team — think salaries, benefits, training, and tools. In contrast, outsourcing provides instant scalability at a lower cost. We’ll go deeper into the cost comparisons between an internal team and outsourcing in just a moment.
Despite these clear benefits, service companies have unique considerations to keep in mind when they think about outsourcing sales development. The good news is that service companies can and do outsource sales — it just requires the right preparation and approaches.
Let’s dive into a few of the most important things for service companies to think about as they explore outsourcing possibilities, plus how to decide if it’s the right decision for your business.
How Do You Know It’s Time to Outsource?
There comes a time when it makes sense to stop trying to do everything in-house. If any of these scenarios sound familiar, outsourcing your sales development might be just what you need:
Your Business Relies Almost Entirely on Referrals
If your entire growth strategy is built on the hope that existing clients will sing your praises, that’s a lot of eggs in one basket. Referrals are great, but they’re also unpredictable. By outsourcing, you can create a more reliable, active pipeline of leads that aren’t waiting around for word-of-mouth magic.
Your Team is Struggling to Keep Up
Is your sales team looking a little overwhelmed? If they’re constantly trying to juggle prospecting, follow-ups, and closing deals, something’s bound to slip through the cracks. Bringing in an outsourced partner takes the pressure off by handling the heavy lifting on lead generation, so your in-house team can focus on converting those leads into wins.
You Don’t Have a Dedicated Sales Leader
Trying to grow a sales team without a true leader is a bit like driving without a GPS—sure, you can get somewhere, but you might not like where you end up. If you’re lacking someone with the expertise to guide your business development efforts, outsourcing can be the shortcut to bringing experienced pros on board who already know what works.
Scaling In-House is Draining Your Budget
Maybe you’ve tried to grow your team internally, but hiring, training, and maintaining a full sales development squad costs too much. Outsourcing offers a way to scale without the huge financial burden of onboarding and maintaining a big in-house team—more leads, less overhead.
You Want Fresh Ideas (and Fast)
Feeling a little too “inside the box”? An outsourced team brings fresh perspectives and new tactics that can help you break out of your routine. Plus, they have experience with what works across multiple industries and are ready to suggest strategies you might not have considered yet.
Outsourcing gives you the bandwidth to keep your sales engine running smoothly while letting you and your internal team focus on what really matters: closing deals and driving growth.
Outsourcing Considerations for Service Companies
It’s Easier When You Productize
Products are tangible — they’re easier to evaluate and thus easier to buy. If you’re looking to outsource sales development and want to think about ways to streamline the sales process for your SDRs, consider productizing your offerings either in packaging or delivery.
Productization is the process of putting defined pricing and parameters around service offerings so that they can be sold much like products. It’s proven to have several sales-related benefits, including accelerated growth, lower customer acquisition costs, streamlined sales processes, and greater scalability.
Here are some productization suggestions:
- Give each service a title and description — This helps buyers understand each component of your offerings and exactly what they’d be getting from investing in each.
- Package your services — You can create service “products” by offering varied service packages that meet different customer needs.
- Emphasize product-like components — For example, do you create project roadmaps? Deliver monthly KPI reports? These “products” can add a more tangible element to your offerings.
The more you can make your service look and feel like a product, the more likely you’ll be able to generate curiosity and conversations. Further, the SDRs at your sales outsourcing agency will have a clearer sense of how to describe, position, and pitch your solutions.
Besides productizing your services, it’s critical to ensure continual development. As industries evolve, so should your offerings. This is where outsourcing becomes a strategic advantage. An external partner brings a fresh, objective perspective, often identifying gaps or weaknesses that in-house teams may be too close to see. By not being tied to internal biases that might impede growth, these actionable insights can help refine your services and keep you competitive.
Your Target Audience Must Be Well-Defined
Your agency will have the most success selling your services if they know exactly who to target. A great agency, of course, will have the right sales tools, technologies, and methods in place to get to the right buyers for their clients. But first, it falls on you to provide the right information about your target audience.
If you’re thinking about outsourcing sales development, it’s a good idea to revisit your ICPs and buyer personas to make sure they’re updated, complete, and aligned with your current offerings. Once they’re finalized, document them in shareable ways so your agency and their SDRs have easy access to them as a strategy and sales enablement resource. This external perspective can often lead to uncovering new customer segments or reevaluating the effectiveness of your current personas.
Beyond helping your sales team, matching your solutions with specific and well-defined buyer audiences is much more effective for services companies than taking a wide-net approach.
A Sizable Market Helps
Product companies can generally churn up conversations with “right company, right person” targets, but services almost always have to manage a third variable — right time.
What this means is that your sales strategy could target the exact right buyers and your SDRs could do everything right, but if the timing is off on the buyer’s side (for whatever reason), the deal will likely fail to close.
This is sort of just the name of the game for service sales, and a big market makes it possible to turn over more rocks in search of those that are the right fit.
And while you can’t necessarily change the size of your market, you can honestly consider it in your decision to outsource. Does your potential sales volume make it worthwhile to outsource sales development to an agency? If you’re not sure, outsourcing may not be right for you.
Your Partner Should Understand Your Niche
Even large service providers have niche offerings and audiences across their portfolios — much more so than product companies. Your sales partner doesn’t have to be an expert specifically in your industry or field (they’ll be pros at applying best practices in different markets), but they should be adept at learning about your unique brand, offerings, audiences, goals and needs.
Sales agencies typically work across various industries, meaning they are constantly tuned into the latest trends and best practices. They can share this knowledge with your business, offering valuable, up-to-date advice on where the market is headed. This external perspective also makes it easier to evaluate your current performance and adapt to changes objectively.
That said, it’s a key capability to evaluate as you meet with short-list potential agencies. Ask yourself: Is their team taking time to learn about what we do? Do they have any similar clients? Are they showing a clear understanding of our company?
When you outsource sales development, you should feel 100% confident in your agency’s ability to represent your brand well and engage with potential buyers successfully.
Outsourcing vs. Building an In-House Team
An in-house sales development team doesn’t come cheap. The full range of costs goes beyond just salaries and commissions – you’ve got bonuses, PTO, onboarding, training, insurance, tools, and more. Here are a few costs associated with an internal team:
- On average, a sales development rep (SDR) in the U.S. earns around $60,000 annually, with total compensation often including performance-based bonuses and commissions. The median stands at $55,000.
- Health insurance, PTO, and other benefits can account for 30-40% of the employee’s salary, adding up to $18,000–$24,000 annually.
- The cost of training and onboarding new hires averages $1,500 per employee.
- CRM, automation, and sales tools like Salesforce or HubSpot can cost $1,000–$3,000 per user per year, depending on the number of seats.
- Factoring all of these in, maintaining just one SDR can easily surpass $100,000 annually.
In comparison, outsourcing with SDR-as-a-service tools like RevBoss offers a much more cost-effective alternative. RevBoss starts at $2,500 per month, which covers the full platform, prospect data feeds, and custom multi-channel marketing workflows.
Every subscription includes The RevBoss platform, which drives your prospecting efforts with custom data feeds. And you’ll be fully operational with outbound marketing campaigns (emails, display ads, etc.) in 2 to 3 weeks.
That’s because our AI-powered reply management system handles responses and schedules meetings like a seasoned SDR. Plus, you’ll have a dedicated account manager (or “RevBud”) to keep things on track so that campaigns meet benchmarks.
If you already have an in-house team, don’t worry—RevBoss doesn’t replace them. We complement your current efforts, giving you extra bandwidth, speed, and lead generation when needed.
The Potential Challenges of Outsourcing
Outsourcing can be a game-changer, but it’s not without its hiccups. Here are some potential bumps you might hit along the way:
You Might Lose a Bit of Control
When you bring in an external partner, you give up some control over how things are done. That can feel uncomfortable – especially if you’re used to having your hands in everything. While you’re outsourcing to let experts handle things, it’s important to set clear expectations and maintain open communication to avoid feeling like you’re completely out of the loop.
Communication Gaps Can Happen
Outsourcing often means working with teams that aren’t in the same office (or even in the same time zone). Miscommunication or delays in feedback can slow things down or lead to misunderstandings. The trick here is to establish consistent communication channels and set up regular check-ins to make sure everyone’s on the same page.
Data Security Could Be a Concern
When you’re outsourcing sales or marketing, you’re often sharing sensitive information, like sensitive customer data. That opens the door to security risks if you’re not careful. Make sure your outsourcing partner follows strict data security protocols and is compliant with industry regulations like GDPR or CCPA to keep your data safe.
You Might Feel Disconnected from the Process
There’s a possibility of feeling out of touch when you aren’t the one directly managing the sales development process. This can be frustrating, especially when you want things done a certain way. To avoid this, look for an outsourcing partner that not only updates you regularly but involves you in key decisions along the way.
Cultural and Process Differences
Outsourcing often means working with teams that have their own unique processes and, in some cases, different cultural approaches to business. If those differences aren’t addressed early on, they can lead to friction. The solution is to find a partner who can easily integrate with your existing systems and values.
While these challenges can seem discouraging, they’re usually easy to overcome with the right partner. Outsourcing doesn’t mean relinquishing control but creating a collaborative, efficient system where both sides work toward the same goal.
So — should services companies outsource sales?
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t 100% yes or no. As you might have guessed, it depends on the specific company and a variety of other factors. The key for you is to know how to evaluate your own company and potential providers to make the right decision. Remember:
- Think about productization. Are your service offerings sellable?
- Be sure your target audience is well-defined and accurate.
- Consider the size of your market. Is it large enough to warrant outsourcing?
- Evaluate agencies’ ability to show understanding of your company.
Outsourcing delivers significant benefits to your business and empowers your teams to focus on other mission-critical and growth-oriented business priorities without worrying that your pipeline will suffer. With the right preparation and the right choice of provider, you can be sure that outsourcing sales development will take your business to the next level.
At RevBoss, our outbound email software and lead generation services are custom-built for startups, consultancies, marketing agencies, and other B2B organizations. Schedule a quick call with us and find out how we can help you win more clients.