In building sales teams, the assumption is that “more is better.” We spend a lot of energy, time, and resources hiring sales talent to our sales team. We do it for good reasons – we are focused on improving sales. We want more closed deals and better numbers. If we don’t do something, and our companies shut their doors, then it is our fault. We do not want it to be our fault.
Quality Over Quantity
I am about to say something that many might not accept. An increase in hiring sales talent to the sales team is not better and it does not increase profits. In fact, the opposite is true. Don’t believe me? As stated in this Salesforce blog, “Today’s sales professionals spend 34% of their time selling. Most sales teams struggle with data entry, quote generation, and other tasks that take them away from customers. Unsurprisingly, 57% expect to miss their quotas this year”. While the antithesis of what many believe, an increase in hiring sales talent to the sales team decreases returns. Instead, outsourcing sales teams aspects like a sales development representative can drastically increase small and medium-sized businesses’ bottom line.
In comparison to the actual output, the cost and expectations associated with hiring full-time sales professionals are staggering. A manager needs to hire three sales professionals to replicate the expected revenue when deciding to hire one. While large businesses might be able to absorb increased labor costs with lower efficiencies, this mindset cripples small and medium-sized businesses.
IMPROVING SALES TEAMS PERFORMANCE
The classic b2b sales strategy assumed one person could handle the entire sales process steps – the sales prospecting and lead generation process, making cold calls, appointment setting, building good relationships, closing deals, and account management. Yet, sales professionals struggled to do each of these well. Individuals focused their energy on one at the expense of the other components. With the advent of sales prospecting tools, today’s sales teams added another aspect. While this expanded sales professionals’ workloads and expectations stayed the same, this only provided another choice for sales teams to deter their precious and costly time on the most essential activity – revenue generation.
Rather than hiring more, managers need to support their current teams by hyper-focusing the energy of sales teams on the most important activities. This starts with delegating sales process steps that are the most time-consuming and costly for sales professionals to do – sales development representative (SDR) work. By building an outsourced sales team focused on SDR activities such as the lead generation process, sales prospecting emails, data input, and cold call outreach, managers simplify the process and maximize revenue. Moreover, this allows managers to hire sales professionals that concentrate on the most important sales aspect – building good relationships that lead to closed deals.
