SDR Outsourcing: A Powerful Way to Scale Lead Gen
Outsourcing SDRs tackles recruitment woes, offers expertise, quick scaling, and cuts costs. Discover how they yield more leads.
What do SDR Outsourcing Companies do?
SDR outsourcing companies manage all or part of your sales development and lead generation processes. Rather than hiring, training, and managing SDRs in-house, you can leverage an outsourcing partner to handle cold calling, lead qualification, prospecting, and appointment setting on your behalf.
Outsourced SDR teams act as an extension of your sales and marketing departments. They work closely with your internal teams to execute personalized campaigns aligned with your business goals. The outsourcing partner provides the structure, expertise, dedicated agents to scale your lead-generation efforts.
Typical services offered by SDR outsourcing partners include:
- Cold calling and outbound lead generation
- Inbound call handling and lead qualification
- Email outreach and social selling
- Appointment setting and calendar booking
- Sales enablement services
- Customized sales scripts and collateral
- Concierge event booking
By leveraging an external partner, you gain the flexibility to scale as demand fluctuates. The outsourced SDR team seamlessly augments your in-house sales and marketing capacity.
Cost Savings from SDR Outsourcing
Outsourcing SDRs enables companies to significantly reduce costs compared to hiring and managing an in-house team. According to Full Funnel, the average cost per SDR hire in 2021 ranged from $6,000-$10,000 when factoring in recruiting, onboarding, training, payroll, and other HR expenses.
The main cost savings areas from SDR outsourcing include:
- Reduced recruitment and HR costs since the outsourcing partner handles hiring and management
- No need to train in-house as the outsourced SDRs come trained and ready
- Pay only for the capacity needed each month rather than carrying high fixed labor costs
- Benefit from economies of scale and specialized SDR expertise from the outsourcing provider
Faster Scaling with an SDR Partner
Outsourced SDR companies help scale outbound prospecting and lead generation campaigns rapidly, without the typical lag that comes with building an in-house team. Rather than spending months recruiting, hiring, training, and ramping up new SDRs, you can access a fully trained and managed team almost instantly.
With a qualified SDR partner, you gain instant access to agents with skills in your industry, technologies, and ideal customer profiles. You also gain the flexibility to scale quickly based on your evolving demand. With an in-house team, it’s difficult to adjust headcount with sudden changes in the business. SDR outsourcing provides variable capacity to account for spikes or lulls in your sales cycles.
Outsourced SDRs enable you to enter new markets and verticals faster as well. SDR teams can test and iterate on new campaigns rapidly, adapting their approach based on which tactics are most impactful for your new market.
In summary, SDR outsourcing accelerates speed to revenue by giving you instant access to an on-demand, scalable sales development machine purpose-built for your unique business needs.
Increased Efficiency
One of the most significant advantages of partnering with SDR outsourcing companies is the potential for dramatically increased efficiency and productivity. By leveraging an established SDR partner’s specialized expertise, your sales team can operate much more efficiently.
Outsourced SDR partners employ proven sales best practices honed from experience working with diverse clients and industries. Their teams are extensively trained in the latest sales methodologies to maximize prospect engagement. Partnering with an SDR provider gives you immediate access to these refined processes without having to build that expertise in-house.
Because sales is their sole focus, SDR partners can achieve much higher levels of specialization and productivity. Their teams are 100% dedicated to lead generation activities while your sales reps can concentrate entirely on creating opportunities for your team to close deals. This division of labor creates significant efficiency gains for your revenue engine.
By removing administrative tasks from your sales team’s plates, an SDR partner liberates your reps’ time to focus on high-value selling activities. The hours saved each week quickly compound to create substantial productivity improvements. The efficiency gains from SDR outsourcing deliver a competitive advantage for your sales efforts.
How to Find the Best SDR Outsourcing Companies
Choosing the right outsourcing partner is crucial for realizing the full benefits of SDR outsourcing. Here are some key factors to look for when evaluating potential partners:
Industry Experience
Look for providers with extensive experience in your specific industry vertical. They will understand your unique buyer journeys, pain points, and value propositions. Experienced partners can get up to speed faster and require less training.
Customized Strategies
Avoid partners taking a one-size-fits-all approach. The best firms will tailor strategies and messaging specific to your ideal customer profile. They should demonstrate thought leadership in your vertical.
Tech Stack Integration
Make sure the partner can seamlessly integrate with your existing sales and marketing technology stack. This enables smooth sharing of data and insights between platforms.
Flexible Engagement Models
Look for scalable and flexible engagement models like pay-per-lead. This gives you more agility to expand or optimize the partnership as your needs evolve.
Benchmarks and Proven Results
Review benchmarks for key SDR metrics including calls, conversations, opportunities, and deals passed. Examine proven success in increasing pipeline and revenue for clients in your industry.
What to Look for in an SDR Provider
When evaluating potential SDR outsourcing partners, there are a few key factors to look for to ensure you choose the right provider:
Deep Sales Methodology Expertise
The SDR provider should have expertise across various sales methodologies, including inbound, outbound, account-based, and customer-centric approaches. They should demonstrate how they customize sales development strategies based on your unique business goals, target personas, and products/services.
Customized Training Programs
Your SDR partner should provide extensive onboarding and ongoing sales training to align their agents with your specific offerings, messaging, processes, and tools. Look for customized curriculums tailored to your needs rather than a one-size-fits-all training program.
Ongoing Optimization
An experienced SDR provider will continuously analyze data and optimize processes to improve results. They should demonstrate how they iterate on outreach campaigns and fine-tune approaches to increase qualified leads.
Transparent Reporting
Choose a provider that offers transparent and user-friendly reporting through a CRM or SDR platform. You should have access to real-time dashboards and metrics to see campaign progress and agent performance.
Expected Results from SDR Outsourcing
Outsourcing your SDR function can have a significant, positive impact on your sales pipeline and bottom line. Companies that partner with an experienced SDR provider typically see impressive improvements across key performance indicators.
Some of the main results you can expect from outsourced SDR include:
- Increased Number of Qualified Leads – An outsourced SDR team focuses solely on outbound prospecting, freeing up your sales reps to focus on closing. This specialization results in more qualified conversations and appointments booked.
- Higher Lead Conversion Rates – Because they follow proven prospecting methodologies, outsourced SDRs are skilled at qualifying prospects. They pass warmer, sales-ready leads to your closing team.
- Expanded Reach Into New Markets – An outsourced SDR provider can help you efficiently scale into new segments and territories. Their market expertise and global infrastructure enables faster geographic expansion.
- Improved Sales Productivity – With outsourced SDRs doing the heavy lifting of lead generation, your sales team can focus on having sales conversations rather than dialing for dollars. This increased efficiency typically results in more closed deals.
- Faster Time to Revenue – Because outsourced SDRs hit the ground running, they generate pipeline and accelerate revenue much faster than trying to hire and ramp an in-house team.
- Enhanced Sales and Marketing Alignment – Your outsourced SDR partner aligns with marketing qualified leads and campaigns. Tighter alignment between sales prospecting and marketing increases conversion rates.
The right outsourced SDR provider will demonstrate a proven track record of helping clients achieve these types of results. Want to hear about ours? Contact us today.
