Outsourcing Sales for Startups - Why?
LinkedIn can be a beautiful place at times. Other times, it can be an unmitigated disaster — but in many respects, I guess that’s the Law of Averages when you’ve got 750 million+ users; lots of really good eggs, but some bad ones too.
Scrolling, I came across a super interesting post with thoughtful comments from a recognizable name in the SaaS Sales Leadership world. The post was centered around the notion that marketing and sales are becoming evermore intertwined, and that smart folks in the job market need to recognize this. The comments covered both sides of the thought spectrum — some ardent in their belief that sales as we know it will remain separate, though related to marketing. Others stood firm in the stance that the bleeding of sales + marketing is already super prevalent, and that it would behoove a would-be sales hire not to be fully aware of how the organization, irrespective of its stage invests in marketing, and how that impacts the potential success in their role.
This topic in particular is one we’ll cover at a later date.
But it got us thinking… (always a dangerous proposition).
Why would a company outsource sales before hiring internally?
The outsourcing versus insourcing question is one that’s been around for a long time — and sales is certainly not the only department where this argument is raised. Not unlike other departments, however, the reasons to outsource can provide an inordinate amount of value back to the business by:
Reducing costs
Greater focus on core business
Solving capacity issues
Improving quality
Accessing a greater pool of talents or skills
…and many, many others
But sales is kind of a special beast in and of itself. In early stages of a startup, there are many reasons to consider outsourcing your sales function before defaulting to an in-house hire or team.
The better question: Why?
Let’s start here…
Turnover for sales leaders is at alarmingly high rates. Alarmingly high. Executive leaders will often say that they made a hiring mistake; that the person that they entrusted to steer the revenue ship just wasn’t the right person after all.
And sure — at times, this is correct.
The allure of titles, increased compensation, and the status associated with this leap is one that countless sales folks work towards. When the opportunity presents itself — no matter how good/bad the fit actually is — they jump at it.
But let’s be clear: painting the sales leader as incompetent for the role is, in most cases misplaced. Startups in particular are largely run by fantastically smart individuals. The fact that the person was a candidate in and of itself indicates that there’s something (if not a whole lot) to their pedigree, what they’ve accomplished, and more that would give good reason to believe that they can pull this off.
Time and again, it’s the same (tired) story: Months go by, expectations aren’t met, and the sales leader is thrust out of the door. See ya!
But fault aside, the fact that both founders and hires alike far too often find themselves quickly shifting from a tenor of sheer excitement (the “shiny new toy” mentality) to one of regret is a real problem. Sales leaders shouldn’t expect to be jumping ship every 9-18 months.
Houston, we’ve got a problem…
So how does outsourcing help?
Leaning on Shared Experience
Early and first sales hires flame out for a variety of reasons. But among the most frequent of those is that they just weren’t set up to succeed in the first place. KPIs were undefined, success benchmarks were unattainable, the process never existed, the ideal client profile was less-than-understood (to put it lightly), pricing + ability to execute were in their infancy, etc.
When you think about it, that makes a lot of sense. Building the ship for the first time is hard, y’all.
Successful execution can never be guaranteed, but founders, hear this:
If you work with a team that’s done precisely this before, you not only help your company execute more quickly, but you’re in a much better position to hand over a playbook for success that an internal hire or team can scale.
Outsourcing that first hire is really unique in this regard. If this is their specialty, you or your recruiting team will have a really hard time trying to find the quality candidate that can match what the outsourced firm exists to do.
You tap into a shared knowledge + experience base when leaning on a team versus a singular individual. Not only can they accomplish more, but they have the exponential benefit of having done exactly this, meaning they know a skeleton framework to start with which they’ll customize to your business. This fast tracks a lot of the pain + learnings that go along with going to market for the first time. The upside resides in the outsourced team’s professional ability in leveraging the processes that they’ve written, and executing in a repeatable way to acquire your first clients.
Your also not married to them. With the high frequency of first sales hires/leaders that are being shown the door early in their tenure, outsourcing not only presents itself as a more effective solution, but one that is more easily replaced. There are real costs and legal implications to letting a full-time hire go, and it’s not always as straight-forward as many think.
Moreover, it’s also (in many cases) more cost effective as well. Without the increased burden of benefits and pricing structures that allow to you pay for what you use/need, the unit economics can be especially advantageous.
This is what we do.
Give us a call or email hello@reditus.work for a free assessment. We’ll get to know you + your business, giving a first-pass diagnosis as to how we’d proceed and potentially help.
We’re standing by!