Your sales development reps (SDRs) lay the foundation for success within your company. They are the first contact your potential clients speak with, making them the face of your brand and the voice of your company. With such a large impact on revenue operations, it’s critical you have the best set of SDRs representing your company.
Unfortunately, great SDRs can be difficult to find. And once they are finally trained and ready to perform, they don’t tend to stay in those positions for long. So, how can you expand your internal sales team while building a strong sales pipeline?
Internal Support: Outsourced Sales Development Teams
Many times, people think of outsourcing as a replacement for hiring an internal sales team. And while startups and new companies are some of the first to use outsourcing due to their time and budget constraints, larger enterprises are reaping the benefits of having an experienced partner on their team.
Companies looking to get their sales team off the ground have to consider factors such as structure, budget, training, tools, and that’s just the start. Because when you’re at a certain size, or especially when your business is growing, hiring more SDRs while maintaining your sales pipeline can be complicated. Investing in outsourced teams while you build, can help you scale far beyond that point.
Outsourcing as You Hire and Train
We know the traditional reasons companies choose to outsource – to save time, money, and resources. Companies today seem to be using outsourcing for those reasons, but also to sustain competitive advantage, going the extra mile to constantly revise their entire outbound and cold outreach strategies.
1. To Test the Market
While you are building your internal sales team, you can also be testing the accuracy of the market. Meaning, how exact is the industry, title, phone number, etc., of the market you are reaching out to?
SDR outsourcing allows for more targeted efficiency as you increase your sales, without having to pay for more users on your expensive sales tech.
And instead of your internal team wasting valuable time over trial and error, an experienced lead generation team can quickly test and compare the data in these fields to help you narrow your market, test your market data, and clean your contact information. Chances are, even if your internal SDR team was ready and trained on the latest tools, they still wouldn’t be able to gather this information as effectively as an outsourced SDR.
2. To Test Product Fit
What part of your product will be relevant to the market? Nailing your product-market fit often requires setting aside what leadership thinks they know, and testing your thesis directly with customers. Any common patterns, like constant rejection, will emphasize the need to further detail your segmentation, decision-maker persona(s), or buying behaviors.
Especially, if you are looking to scale or enter a new market, an outsourced SDR can help your company accelerate a way to test your product-market fit. Through their constant contact with your market, outsourced call teams are able to build deeper connections with your prospects, allowing for more in-depth research and conversations.
With more qualitative questions and honest feedback, you gain a better understanding of your target market and buyer personas, helping you to identify areas where prospects get lost in your sales cycle.
3. To Test Your Cold Messaging
How well will your message resonate with your prospect? You just got done detailing your target market and crafting all your buyer personas. You have your prospecting list and you make your first cold call. They are the perfect customer, but, your messaging just didn’t work with them. Next call, same thing. And the same after that too.
When it comes to cold calling or cold emailing, testing your messaging is one of the most important parts of the process. You need to make sure the language you are using connects and resonates with your prospect enough to move them ahead to your defined next steps.
Outsourced SDRs have a proven process and sales methodology that helps you analyze your market and product to come up with the best formula for this messaging. This helps extract important feedback while building a connection with your prospects based on trust. As this happens more and more, you are able to refine your messaging as industry or market changes occur. Start your internal sales team off with a successful script that has shown success.
4. To Test SDR Fit
How well can the SDR call into your specific market to deliver the message of your specific product? Not all SDRs should be considered the same. While you focus on hiring, onboarding, and quality control, an outsourced SDR partner can help you better test SDR fit within your market.
For example, here at Superhuman Prospecting, we have a daily call schedule that lists all the client campaign calls that are needed that day. Our SDR leadership team looks at that call schedule and chooses which callers to put on what campaigns.
This allows us to identify any backgrounds, skillsets, or other areas of advantage that an SDR might have that will best suit your company, to get the best results. As you build or expand your internal team, you can use the information gathered from our SDR leadership team to help you form conclusions on characteristics and personalities that have the most success in your industry.
5. To Test Internal Processes
Is your sales process leaking your leads? You want a team that has done it before and distilled its years of experience and success in completing projects into a set of best practices, accelerators, methodologies, and tool kits.
Outsourced SDRs are expertly trained and equipped with the data and tools needed to help you move leads through the sales pipeline effectively. From prospecting to qualifying and nurturing, outsourced SDRs can help you put together a better sales process. Being ahead of the curve and having these assets will accelerate your quality efforts and reduce time to market.
Companies are realizing the importance of adding value and reducing costs while delivering their offering to customers smoothly and efficiently. A transparent outsourced SDR partner can help you build and customize your top-of-the-funnel strategies to keep your pipeline strong as your hire.
