Outsourcing sales continues to rise: What we learned in 2019
Outsourcing Sales Continues to Rise
Outsourcing all or part of the B2B sales process is on the rise as more companies realize the power of outsourcing to increase their sales.
According to the 2019 Marketing Mix Report published by Sagefrog Marketing Group, 63 percent of B2B companies were expected to outsource sales and marketing in 2019. In fact, 67 percent cited increasing sales leads as their top priority for the year, while 35 percent said their top priority was converting leads.
Investing in an outsourced sales development team makes sense when you consider that 63 percent of leads will not buy for three months and 20 percent will not buy for 12 months. Using sales development representatives can also increase your close rate by 22 percent.
However, maintaining an in-house team is expensive when you consider salaries, benefits, selling tools, data resources, and more. Outsourcing lead qualification and sales development continues to be a more cost-effective, low-risk way of doing business while allowing companies greater market agility.
More Focus on Agility
A key advantage of outsourced sales is market agility. More companies are embracing the idea of trusting an outsourced sales partner to tap into new markets, test new product strategies, and scale to a global footprint.
Additionally, many B2B companies that are focused on their enterprise and mid-market accounts, yet want to see success in the SMB space, look to a sales partner to become an extension of their sales team.
With fast-paced changes in market conditions and new demands to enhance customer experience, successful companies have learned to master the art of the pivot. Adaptability means having a competitive advantage, and that includes being able to scale and focus your sales resources.
Building new teams internally takes time and resources, whereas outsourcing to a sales partner is faster, more efficient, and involves less risk.
Engaging new markets requires more capacity and infrastructure. Whereas it can take months to hire and train additional sales representatives and scale operations, an outsourced sales partner can meet the need in weeks.
Here at Marconix, we can scale a new sales team of up to 100 representatives in less than 4–6 weeks, offering global reach. Smaller teams can be ramped up and ready to go in 2–3 weeks.
Adopting a sound sales strategy that delivers the elasticity needed to pivot and compete requires thinking differently. There is a reason why the trend of outsourcing is growing and projected to continue doing so.
For example, almost 54 percent of companies are already using third-party customer support, while 93 percent are adopting cloud services to facilitate outsourcing.
Increase in Sales Efficiency
One of the reasons outsourcing to a sales partner has become so popular is the growing need for sales automation combined with a sound sales process.
The tools in the sales stack continue to mature, and rather than buying more software and training sales representatives in new technology tools, B2B companies find it easier to turn to outsourced selling partners whose core competency is sales to research, implement, and maintain the sales stack.
Sales automation is becoming a bigger part of the sales representative’s job while opening up more time for selling. According to a report from InsideSales.com Labs, 63 percent of a sales representative’s time is focused on activities other than selling, and only 18 percent of their time is spent using customer relationship management (CRM) software, where critical customer data resides.
By outsourcing all or part of your sales funnel to a sales partner, such as lead generation and qualification, sales representatives have more time to dedicate to closing deals and customer care.
The big trend in sales automation has been increased investment in artificial intelligence (AI) for sales process recommendations and guided selling. AI is expected to become the next major area of technology investment, with the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicting that investment in sales AI would hit $1.45 billion in 2019.
Marconix and the Growth of Sales Outsourcing
Marconix is a pure-play B2B sales outsourcing partner with 10+ years of experience in developing teams backed by results using the Sales Service model.
To keep pace with the growing need for sales outsourcing in 2019, Marconix underwent several changes over the past year — changes that positioned the company to compete more effectively and expand its Sales Service offering.
As we enter a new decade, you can be sure that some of these trends will continue and new sales strategy trends will emerge.
What will not change, however, is the need to adapt to continually changing market conditions. This is why smart companies will continue to look to sales outsourcing services to gain a competitive advantage.