To generate consistent revenue for your business, you need to bring a constant stream of warm leads to take through your sales funnel. Lead generation can be incredibly tedious, which takes a tremendous amount of time and effort every day. This is why a cost-effective way to handle your business’s lead generation efforts is to outsource the process to a sales development agency.
How Sales Development Benefits Your Business
Sales development is a crucial business process that ensures consistent revenue. Sales development representatives (SDRs) are responsible for identifying, contacting, and bringing in potential buyers with a high probability of purchasing your product or service. These buyers are called Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). Once a lead is qualified, they can then be passed on to an account executive or an account manager that takes care of the rest of the sales process.
SDRs are tasked with engaging with your leads and determining if they are worth spending further resources on. They are experts on phone-based, email, or even social media outreach—all the best ways to reach out to a potential buyer. Once they connect with SQLs, they gather the information needed before advancing to the next steps of the sales process.
To confirm potential leads, SDRs collect the following qualification criteria:
Budget – If the lead has available funds for your product or service
Authority – If the lead has the power to make a decision on purchasing your product or service
Need – If the lead will benefit from purchasing your product or service
Timeline – When the lead will be able to make a final decision regarding their purchase
Once all the critical information is collected, SDRs schedule a one-on-one meeting between the lead and your salespersons. SDRs are not meant to close a business; instead, they should connect with as many leads as possible within their work period.
Outsourcing Sales Development is a Cost-Effective Solution
Generating and bringing in just one qualified lead takes tremendous time and effort. Cold-calling research has shown that:
- It takes an average of 8 call attempts to reach a prospect (93% of converted leads are reached only by the 6th call)
- 80% of sales require five follow-up calls (60% of customers reject offers four times before saying yes)
- Salespersons have 5 to 10 minutes to convince prospects (the average length of a successful cold call is 7.5 minutes)
- 42% of customers are more likely to make a purchase if they are called back at the agreed-upon time
With the amount of resources you spend, it will take your inhouse team hours upon hours of work before reaching your target goals This is why outsourcing sales development is the most cost-effective solution for the following reasons:
- Dedicated resources – Having a dedicated team to bring in vetted leads to your salespersons is crucial to your success. An experienced salesperson’s time is very precious, and they should be spending it on leads that have already gone through a thorough qualification process. They should not be spending most of their workday trying to wrangle cold or uninterested leads.
- Follow-ups – The follow-up process is crucial to closing sales. It takes several touches to reach a prospect and qualify them as a lead. A standard follow-up process involves further phone calls and incorporates email marketing and social media touches on top of that. Combining digital touches with cold calls generates higher conversion rates, and your salespersons should not be expected to juggle all that responsibility.
- Market research – Sales development teams bridge the gap between your marketing and sales departments. You can depend on SDRs to collect accurate and comprehensive data to help with your marketing efforts. To follow through with this, your sales team will be more focused on closing deals with potential leads.
- Overall productivity – When you delineate responsibility between sales representatives and SDRs, you’ll find an increase in productivity levels in both groups. Salespersons already carry the responsibility of pitching, proposing, and negotiating with your leads. The burden of weeding through your prospects should be offloaded to a different group that has the time and resources to complete the task effectively.
- Higher conversion rates – Across the board, research has shown that businesses with dedicated sales development teams convert leads at an exponentially higher rate than those who do not.
Choosing the Best Outsourced SDR Service
Effective sales development requires highly specific training, coaching, and full-time management. It is very different from the standard sales cycle, so when it’s time to choose outsourced SDRs, your requirements and the desired outcome should be very specific.
The outsourced SDR industry is very crowded, and it can be challenging to choose the best service for you. Here are some key factors you should consider before making a final decision:
1. Balance Cost vs. Ability
Sales development agencies are not hard to come by—a simple Google or LinkedIn search will bring you numerous results from all over the world. One of the more important things to consider is the experience and quality of their team.
Don’t be tempted to avail of a cheap outsourcing staffing agency that’s new to the market—it will likely end up costing you more in the long run, despite the cheap subscription cost. Your sales development team needs to be as skilled as possible to bring in prospects and turn them into sales opportunities. The better SDR agencies charge a premium price for their service, and they are a worthy investment.
2. Experience and Qualifications
Sales development processes are very different across industries, so you should choose an SDR service with significant experience relevant to your business. It’s important to make sure that their qualifications align with your business needs.
Identify what you need from your sales development team and talk to your potential SDR agencies about how they can deliver in terms of output. There’s nothing wrong with shopping around for the best service available before signing up with a specific vendor.
3. Good Track Record
As previously discussed, the sales development process is crucial to your business’s long-term success. This is why it’s vital to choose an outsourced SDR agency with a proven track record in your specific sector. Your potential vendor’s website and social media pages are good places to look for reviews and testimonials from other businesses. You will likely be working with your SDR vendor for a long period, so don’t be afraid to invest some time in the screening and selection process.
Conclusion
Deciding to outsource sales development is the most productive and cost-effective move for your business. The next step is to find an agency that will provide the output you need. Make sure to do your due diligence before hiring a vendor—ask the right questions and find out everything you can about their expertise and the tools at their disposal.
CrewBloom is a remote staffing agency that can bring your business the best sales development representatives to take your lead generation and overall sales revenue to the next level. We hire only the top 2% of global remote professionals, so you’re sure to get top-caliber talent. Schedule a call with one of our growth experts today!
