Even for larger companies with dedicated sales teams this is a valid question: should you use your own telesales representatives or turn to a specialist outbound telesales agency?

For many companies, there are three compelling reasons to outsource your telesales:

1) Focus
2) Capabilities
3) Cost

This article examines these three reasons and suggests why, in many cases, it makes more sense to use the services of an external telesales agency for business-to-business telesales campaigns.

1) Focus

Firstly, a strong reason for using an external telesales company is that they will focus on the task of generating leads for your business. Many companies, when using an internal resource, will hand this over to either an admin person or expect telesales to be done as an extension of their role.

But, let's be honest about what really happens in most businesses: they find something else to do.

Unlike an external company, which employs people to make outbound telesales calls day-in, day-out, your employees have other duties to perform. And, believe me, they will find anything else to do rather than telesales. The same goes for if you choose to hire your own people "just to cold call". After a few months, I guarantee, they will be doing something (anything) else rather than telesales.

Using a telesales agency means that you have a resource focused on telesales for your business and you ensure a continual effort to generate leads, not the reluctant, ad-hoc approach you will get form your own people.

2) Capabilities

Hand-in-hand with the issue of focus is that of capabilities. By outsourcing telesales you will access people who are far better at telesales that your own people. Even if you have dedicated sales people they often won't match a seasoned telesales representative when it comes to making outbound calls.

External telesales agencies also bring capabilities around data acquisition, segmentation, key message and "pitch" development which your own people will lack.

Think about it; a good telesales representative will pitch around 100 prospects in a week. Given that the best telesales representatives have been in the game for at least 10 years, that's over 50,000 pitches. That's a level of telesales experience you will never get it from an in-house employee.

3) Cost

Finally, another reason for many companies to consider using a telesales agency is cost.

When comparing using your people, or even yourself as the owner of a small business, against the cost of a telesales company, the costs are pretty compelling.

Telesales agencies charge, on average around £250 per day for a telesales representative. That's attractive even when you compare it against the cost of your sales people. But when you consider the cost of them not being in front of prospects and actually closing, the cost justification stacks up in favor of outsourcing.

When comparing an external telesales company against an admin person making "a few cold calls" the costs need a little more study but they still make sense. Usually, the best approach is to consider two factors: a) the cost per lead and b) the opportunity cost.

When looking at the former, external telesales agencies, which are always more efficient, typically wins. In addition, when you think about the opportunity cost of not getting new leads into your pipeline and the resulting lost new business growth, it's usually obvious that using a telesales company is the best investment.

So, in summary, when thinking about whether to use your own people or external telesales representatives, consider the total picture of how much focused your own people will be, how good they will be, and what is the real return on their costs.

We believe that, taking all these elements into account, an outbound telesales agency is the most attractive route for many businesses.

Source: David Regler link