Many people consider Outsourced Sales and marketing work come to me with some preconceived notions about what they would like to do.
One thing I hear over and over again is the desire to produce outsourced sales or marketing functions using a pay-for-performance model. While the intentions of using a pay-for-performance model are usually good, in practice, there are several reasons why it doesn’t work well for outsourced sales.
The first is in regards to the cost of resources. Let’s take cold callers for example; cold callers are an extremely expensive resource (especially if they are full-time). Cold callers can also require a lot of training before they can become effective.
If everyone is in agreement that cold callers are valuable resources, why would an outsourcer agree to invest in those resources without any guarantee of return on that investment? From a business perspective, it just doesn’t make sense.
Another reason why pay-for-performance does not work well for outsourced sales is that it puts the focus on short-term goals rather than long-term success.
For example, I often get asked if we will take compensation for each appointment set. From a sales reps perspective, this incentivizes the sales rep to ‘hit his number’ by setting as many appointments as possible, regardless of the quality of those appointments. Because, if the only performance metric being looked at is the number of appointments set, the rep has no motivation to put in the extra time and effort to only set meetings with quality prospects that he thinks will eventually close. With no reason to think past hitting his numbers for this week/month, a pay-for-performance sales rep is focused on his short-term goals, not your long-term success.
If you would like to know more about the value of outsourcing B2B sales, read Scale Your Business for Sales with B2B Sales Outsourcing. To learn how we price our sales and marketing outsourcing services, you can visit our services page and click on the different boxes for pricing details.
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
