Sales outsourcing means leveraging sales professionals through an outsourced partnership. It's a process that allows you to explore untapped opportunities. In the food & beverage industry, outsourcing sales is one of the best ways to grow a business. As tempting as it may be to control each and every aspect of your company, realistically you cannot do this if you want to increase productivity and improve results.

Here are 7 reasons to outsource your sales and a few suggestions on how to maximize the return.

1. Greater performance

Adding an outsourced sales team to work together with your internal employees will provide an external benchmark for top-notch performance that can help improve the performance level across the company. In other words, an outsourced sales partner can motivate your internal teams to ramp up there. 

Plus, an outsourcer comes with new perspectives, best practices, and fresh ideas. For example, if you need to implement a digital marketing and sales plan for a brand of cereal, a third-party sales team can offer you insightful suggestions based on the practical experience they've had with other clients.

2. Targeting new markets and developing new approaches

Oftentimes, companies are stretched when it comes to having enough sales experts to cover different markets. Furthermore, firms usually have numerous business leads available to them, yet they're unable to pursue because of resource constraints. 

A sales outsourcing team will focus on developing specific geographic or vertical markets, as well as new approaches to product positioning and sales. From there, you can analyze and fine-tune the results before extending the strategy to a larger base of prospects and customers.

3. Increased profits and revenues

By outsourcing sales solutions, you can use data insights in order to increase profits and revenues. You can use customer analytics and data to create statistical models that can be used to identify the best prospects and customers, as well as developing an effective touch cadence during the customer lifecycle.

4. You can forget about technology challenges

While anyone can invest in the latest technology, few people have the expertise and knowledge to leverage it. Therefore, it's not just about owning the technology, it's about knowing how to get the most value out of it. This is one of the reasons to work with sales experts who master state-of-the-art analytics and sales tools.

In addition, by outsourcing sales to a partner with cutting-edge technology and data, your company will save precious time and achieve time-to-market benefits.

Data analytics, for example, give sales teams insights such as the best time in the day to call a customer. Besides that, the combination of analytics and artificial intelligence will help sales professionals quickly analyze countless data points. This will allow for a better understanding of prospects' needs.

5. Valuable expertise

An outsourced sales team has experience working with several clients across numerous industries. This can enable your company to draw on the best practices and lessons your partner has learned over time. 

This is very useful for coming up with new sales techniques ideas and an excellent way for sales leaders to add bench strength with sales reps who have demonstrated experience in the food & beverage industry.

6. Accountability and analysis

When working with an outsourced sales partner, the payment conditions mainly depend on whether they successfully closed deals with new clients. Therefore, outsourcers are usually paid on a success fee basis. This means that outsourced sales teams are motivated to be accountable for the sales process. Moreover, they have all the reasons to bring more ideas to the table - ideas that are meant to constantly improve their sales efforts' results.

7. Lower cost of sales

Having your own sales team includes recruiting, onboarding, and training, which isn't very pocket-friendly. With an outsourced sales partner, you cut these costs and only pay an hourly fee.

For a field sales expert, you'll pay an hourly fee of $300 - $500, including company benefits and travel expenses. Imagine building and managing an entire sales team. On the other hand, for an outsourced sales expert, the hourly fee averages at $30 - $40. Hence, outsourcing sales enables the business to slash overhead costs and, at the same time, expand sales coverage.

Your outsource sales partner will help you determine the size of the sales time you need in order to increase profit and revenue, as well as meet any other goals. They'll also bear with anything related to recruiting and training. 

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At the end of the day, when starting to work with an outsourced sales team for your company, you need to make sure they're able to develop realistic strategies, practical processes, use the right tools, ensure the right execution, and work as an extension to your business.

At Agile, ask us how we can support you in acquiring an outsourced sales expert or a team. We frequently refer to vetted experts and consultants with manufacturing experience. These experts are able to discuss the best sales model for your size, geography and type of business. Call us to learn more.

Are you concerned about the COVID environment’s effect on your business and want to learn about the trends affecting the food and beverage industry in light of COVID. This insightful article from Shopify explains the trends in light of COVID and how you can respond. At Agile, we are helping food and beverage companies quickly respond with approaches and software that address the challenges and opportunities during this time. Learn more by subscribing to our newsletter.