Even when companies are fortunate enough to make a hire, this typically comes with hefty recruitment fees, time spent training and onboarding, HR risk, capital costs and the ever-present risk of resignation. Furthermore, with salary inflation remaining as one of the few areas where inflation is not subsiding, the cost of growing a team can be prohibitive.
With all of this in mind, companies are looking around for solutions and one of the options that comes up is sales outsourcing. It can be hard to weigh up the pros and cons of an outsourced option, so in this article, we dive into the top four reasons to consider working with a company such as Pipeline Professional Services, according to our clients.
1. Cost
As touched on above, hiring is an expensive business activity. When looking at hiring sales professionals an employer has to factor in recruitment fees, salaries, commission, Employers’ National Insurance, capital costs associated with equipment, sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave and the potential costs associated with lost revenue, should the individual’s performance not be as hoped.
With so many layers to the cost base for each hire, many of which are variable, cost is a major reason for considering an outsourced sales personnel solution. With a set monthly cost, agreed for a certain period of time, companies can budget with precision and confidence. Knowing exactly what your sales team is going to cost over a defined time period is a huge benefit of outsourcing.
Reducing costs without affecting output is what all business leaders are aiming to do, and outsourcing your sales function is an excellent means for achieving this.
2. Time
Next up is time. Our clients tell us that saving time by working with an outsourced sales team versus in-house hiring, is a major benefit. When looking for full time sales staff, an employer has to consider the time needed for sifting through CVs, the time needed for running first, second and maybe even third round interviews, the time needed for onboarding and training, the time needed for ongoing management and lastly, the time and energy needed if an HR-related issue were to arise.
When broken down in this way, one can see that the time investment is massive for each in-house hire. An outsourcing option removes the majority of these time requirements; a company such as Pipeline has already hired and trained its staff, it manages them on an ongoing basis, deals with any HR issues, pays their salary and applicable taxes, manages their leave and so on and so forth. As an employer, your only time commitments will be a brief onboarding session with your exec any weekly meetings that are required by you.
Outsourcing is great in this sense, as it provides all of the output of great salespeople, with very little time needing to be input from you.
3. Risk
Our clients tell us that another major upside to outsourcing is the reduction in risk. Since the fees associated with taking an employer to tribunal were removed, there has been a vast increase in the number of employers being taken to tribunal. If it is not working out with an employee, for whatever reason, and you need to let that person go, you run the risk of a very expensive and time-consuming ordeal at tribunal, usually with a no-win-no-fee lawyer on the other side of the fence.
Outsourcing removes this risk altogether; if you need to stop working with your outsourced sales company, you can do so without any HR recoil. The contract expires, a handover is conducted and both parties move on without any repercussions. This is a significant point of value provided by outsourced sales companies.
Another ongoing risk is that of resignation; you have spent a lot of money and time bringing someone into your team and then they get a better offer (which is likely in this fiercely competitive market) and off they go. With an outsourced option this will never happen. Even if the sales rep working on your account were to become unavailable, if you were working with Pipeline Professional Services, we will place a new rep on the project that same day, so you don’t lose any momentum. The same is true if your rep is unwell, we fill in the gap with another member of our team, to ensure zero downtime.
4. Flexibility
The final primary reason for considering an outsourced sales option is the matter of flexibility. With in-house staff, an employer has pretty much no flexibility. Whether you are launching a new product, or the nature of your business is cyclical, or if there is a downturn, the inflexibility of permanent staff can be a substantial challenge for employers. Outsourcing offers a solution to this problem, by allowing businesses to scale or reduce their sales workforce in line with the ebb and flow of their business operations.
To have that space to plan precisely headcount and associated cost, or move things around as the market evolves, is a considerable benefit, especially when the erratic nature of the global economy is taken into account. Outsourcing your sales team provides valuable flexibility when navigating the choppy business environment.
Summary
As with all business decisions, there are pros and cons when thinking about outsourcing some or all of your sales operations, but the general feedback we get from clients is that the benefits of outsourcing do outweigh the negatives and as such it is a solid investment.
There is no such thing as a perfect solution and outsourcing does have some drawbacks, but if you can find an excellent outsourcing business, it is likely that you will enjoy highly positive outcomes.
At Pipeline we specialise in developing high-performance sales professionals, who our clients can access on-demand. This means all of the output, with very little input. For companies struggling to find the right talent, or which are looking for a low-risk option with manageable and predictable costs, then outsourcing their sales operations to Pipeline is an excellent option.