Why You Should Outsource Your Inside Sales

Inside sales is an inside job…right?

In today’s society, it’s increasingly evident that inside sales is actually a job best outsourced for companies looking to generate opportunities quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively.

Let’s take a look at the up-front investments for hiring an inside sales team:

Investing in Inside Sales

In a 2016-2017 talent shortage survey, employers found sales positions to be among the most difficult roles to fill, beating out even engineers, management, and executive roles. Hiring inside sales employees is a big investment. The hiring process takes time away from your current team—and consequently, their projects and pipelines—to search for candidates. There is typically a 30- to 90-day hiring investment, followed by a period of 4 to 6 weeks for initial onboarding and foundational training. It then takes a salesperson an average of 6 months to get up to speed within the position.

The expected average inside sales tenure for those employees in sales who pass the hiring and onboarding process is only one to two years. On a company-wide level, the Harvard Business Review reports, the average annual turnover in sales is close to 30 percent. From an investment standpoint, this requires the organization to hire and train the equivalent of their entire sales team every three to four years. Direct replacement costs for a single telesales employee range from $75,000 to $90,000. However, costs could potentially reach as much as $300,000 (without quantifying lost sales in the interim).

The investment for inside sales extends beyond employees, too. The technology and tool infrastructure necessary for a salesperson to properly execute their job must be extensive and up-to-date if you want a competitive advantage. When you add up automated dialers, databases, sourcing tools, and other software, it can be very expensive.

How Outsourcing Your Inside Sales Works

This is where outsourcing inside sales can reduce costly investments. By contracting out your sales team, you can significantly lower the overall hiring and training expenses. This is possible because the external provider has already hired, thoroughly vetted, and trained entire teams of sales professionals. As a result, you not only have immediate access to the right talent, but also immediate onboarding. This way you don’t miss out on qualified sales opportunities that might slip through the cracks if you were to purely manage the sales team internally. Outsourcing inside sales inherently guarantees that you experience no turnover, since you’re using a company that employs lifetime cold-callers. If an individual leaves your sales team, outsourcing protects you from having to restart the hiring process. Both the inside sales infrastructure and technology stack are already established, which further reduces costs.

Consequently, all of this allows your organization to focus your attention exclusively on your company’s core competencies, the quality of your product or service, and customer retention.

What DemandZEN Does

DemandZEN is a company that your organization can turn to for outsourcing inside sales. We specialize in sales and marketing partnerships with a focus on cold calling and data-driven, multi-faceted marketing strategies. Decades of experience guide our highly trained professional sales team. We quickly adapt strategies tailored to your specific business and industry. Learn more about our cold calling services, or hear what one of our clients has to say about DemandZEN’s approach.