Our latest blog comes from CPM Ireland, which shares their experience on Why Companies Outsource.
Sales Outsourcing is essential in order to deliver sales continuity, allowing organisations to focus on core business activities and delivering the most cost-efficient route to market. Given the variable nature of the environment ahead, Strategic Sourcing is a better terminology for what outsourcing can do for businesses in this new age. Here are 5 key reasons why companies should outsource with us.
Expertise – Top-quality Sales Talent, Dedicated to your Growth
Companies are experts at delivering their core products. Sales outsourcers are experts in delivering sales. Strategic outsource companies have a strong pool of expert talent which companies can access to support brand growth, offering expertise that you need, but may not have.
Leveraging a sales outsourcing partner enables companies to draw on the best talent and practices and lessons learned from a partner’s vast experience with other clients across multiple industries. This is extremely valuable for picking up new ideas on sales techniques, new ways of working and cross-industry pollination of sales expertise. It’s also a great way for sales leaders to add bench strength with sales reps who have demonstrated experience in specific vertical industries (e.g. healthcare, financial services, technology, retail). Adding an outsourced sales partner to work alongside an internal team provides an external benchmark for excellent performance that can help raise the performance level across the board.
Flexibility - Set a Pace that suits your Business
What happened with the COVID lockdown is a perfect example of how unforeseen events can disrupt your business plan. In these urgent times, your outsourced sales team remains committed to selling your product or service, scaling up and down resources in line with the market dynamic. Sales are very much required on-demand. This flexibility applies to other scenarios, such as if your sales work is seasonal, if you have a new product to publicise, or if a competitor is making gains that you need to respond to. Sales Outsourcing means that when changes occur, you have expert talent available to do what you need most when you need it most. As your needs change, you can adjust your outsourced sales efforts accordingly.
Outsourcing enables you to ramp up or ramp down your sales efforts at points that suits your demand. Organisations can start with a team of zero and scale to 100+ within weeks, gearing up for a product launch, competitor defence, anticipated demand, or a fully-realized segment push.
Laser Sales Focus – Consistent and Unaffected by Other Issues
Peter Drucker’s “Do what you do best and outsource the rest” perfectly sums up why organisations should focus on their core capability and partner with Sales experts to focus on driving sales. Outsourcing your sales function allows your outsource partner to laser focus on driving growth, allowing companies to focus on driving product development and internal operations. Often sales focus and priorities to drive sales are diluted by competing internal priorities. Integrating a strategic sales outsourcing partnership sees external sales teams well-positioned to work cross-functionally within organisations, driving activity to improve overall sales execution. Outsourcers’ singular focus on driving sales means we often work to shorter timeframes that are difficult to accomplish with internal sales teams. Sales Outsourcers are experts in using cutting-edge sales and analytics tools to optimise sales time and achieve time-to-market benefits. Read our blog 'what happens at night'.
Speed of change – are organisations fast enough for tomorrow?
The market has brought many changes to the table in recent years – Brexit, GDPR regulations, digital and its socioeconomic impact. Companies have focused on preparing their business for these challenges. All the while sales outsource partners have had an unwavering focus on sales growth, while in tandem feeding into solutions for these important initiatives.
Outsourcers can react with focus and immediacy. In house teams’ focus can get diluted by other often equally important internal issues – manufacturing, supply, customer complaints, HR and IR issues. Where an unionised workforce exists, outsourcers are experts at developing ways of working with unions to be able to react with pace to any dynamic, without losing valuable sales time.
Cost – Variable models for a variable world
Recent external factors such as COVID, inflation and the geopolitical situation causes organisations to look hard and fast at all expenditure. Budget forecast practices to date do not fit the variability and risk of the future. Organisations will need to seek and embrace propositions that support delivery and cost control in a variable landscape. Rent vs Buy will become a requirement.
Sales outsourcing is a natural fit for this challenge. Sales outsource providers offer multiple commercial models, offering companies optimum financial control vs fixed in-house models. Fixed price models offer cost certainty, however in the current variable landscape organisations will likely look to embrace variable cost models, most likely with a risk and reward element to ensure sales outsource partners are invested in partner organisations’ success.
CPM has over 30 years of industry experience in Ireland and over 80 years globally, delivering for some of the world’s largest brands. Our average customer tenure in Ireland is 13 years, cementing the fact that we deliver for our clients. Working in partnership with our clients leveraging data, insight, technology and great people to influence and grow sales, is what makes us so successful.