4 Things You Should Ask A Sales Outsourcing Group During an Interview
Not all outsourced sales organizations are made the same. Below are 4 things to consider when interviewing a sales outsourcing group:
Will your outsourcing sales and marketing company assign a go-to-person to deal with day to day management of your dedicated sales representative?
Imagine you are a recently hired sales rep. You stroll into the workplace on your first day and nobody comes to welcome you. There’s no introduction or onboarding process and no exchange of objectives. From the looks of things, you don’t have an assigned supervisor. What is your shot of being successful?
An outsourced sales firm is no different. When seeking an outsourced sales relationship, you will need a sales manager to bolster the daily execution. In a perfect world, this individual should have prior and proven sales management experience and domain expertise in the verticals you will be selling to.
Does your outsourced sales company have domain expertise selling to your decision maker business function/buyer persona?
Not all decision makers are the same, simply because different types of decision makers have different personalities. Look at your own organization, does your technical group have the same personality as your marketing team and sales team? You should expect your outsourced sales organization to have experience selling to both technical buyers and business buyers. If your sale is highly technical you should expect to be able to supply a sales engineer to help develop and in some cases take over the sales process once a lead has been qualified.
Is your outsourced sales partner using the latest technologies?
As more and more products are first bought through digital education and then sold with a systematic process, following up with digitally scored leads now requires automation platform and other sales technologies to be successful. Here are a handful or question you can ask:
- Are they using a CRM to capture what happens on each call
- Are they using a lead scoring tool to help prioritize what buyers are ready to buy
- Are they using an email engine to automate lead development
If your outsourced sales partner is not using these tools they may not be optimizing your investment
Can your outsourcing sales company provide you with transparency?
Building on the point above, this new age of digital education and integrated sales and marketing processes metrics are now critical to successful results especially as you are are initially filling the sales pipeline.
Is your outsourced sales and marketing provider willing to share metrics:
- eMail conversion metrics
- eMail click through data
- Call to connect ratios
- Connect to conversion ratios
- Call verbatim reports
- Call recordings
- Weekly success scorecard
Your outsourced sales partner should be committed to your collective success. Success will require teamwork. Teamwork requires transparent and direct communication
Does your outsourced sales team see itself as a permanent fixture of your company?
Outsourced sales companies are a great solution for fast growing and stagnant companies. They help to accelerate revenue while minimizing the expenses associated with empowering internal sales reps.
However, all good things must come to an end at some point. As your business matures you may want to bring your sales or part of your sales function in-house.
If your outsourced sales partner does not have the automation tools mentioned above and has not been transparent throughout, your engagement transitioning will be difficult.
We recommend you address your provider’s willingness to transition prior to starting and engagement to avoid being held hostage years later.
Conclusion
Sales outsourcing needs to begin by level setting what you can expect in both the short-term and the long-term to ensure both short-term and long-term success. Make sure to ask these questions of your potential provider to ensure your success.
To learn more about how sales outsourcing can help you, read more here.
