"I have a real problem with sales people who won't pick up a phone and prospect."

I'm paraphrasing one of my ex-bosses. The statement was prompted by my desire to outsource some of my sales team's prospecting activity to a third party firm. The firm's agent, a senior guy who could have sold for most enterprise sales organizations, had the skills to get sales reps in front of key contacts that had heretofore been virtually unreachable. I had used the service in the past and had a great deal of confidence in the outcome.

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 "Five Ways to Justify Outsourced Teleprospecting"

The idea of outsourcing a sales activity that has been historically handled internally was causing consternation among the executive staff who perceived this as a sign the sales team couldn't sell well enough to get these appointments themselves. I could have rolled out reams of data in support of the program, but I quickly realized the debate wasn't about cost savings or cost-effectiveness. My bosses were grappling with the PSYCHOLOGY of outsourced teleprospecting.

First a little history. My name is Brian Berlin, and my business is helping enterprise B2B companies execute their sales plans. Specifically we provide outsourced execution services such as teleprospecting and partner recruitment that free up our clients' organizations to focus on revenue creation.

The principles behind our services are the same ones I developed while working as a VP of Sales. Following the dot-com bust, I quickly realized that sales was the new marketing. In other words, if my sales reps were going to find deals, they were going to have to do it themselves. 

Yet despite our efforts, we couldn't maintain a consistent pipeline of quality prospects we could move through the cycle. As the quarter close rolled around, my reps naturally turned to closing. Prospecting started back up at the beginning of the new quarter. Sometimes.

About this time I was browsing the Wall Street Journal and ran across a business-card sized ad for telemarketing. I responded to the ad, spoke to the telemarketer and within days had hired him to make cold calls and book meetings for my reps.

Amazingly, our new telemarketer was an absolute whiz at getting appointments with high level contacts. Within days my reps were sitting across the table from real prospects, engaged in productive selling conversations. Working closely with my team and the caller we fine-tuned the logistics, establishing benchmarks and best practices I still employ today.

Building the Pyschological Business Case

Back to my original story. Ultimately the program prevailed when everyone realized we couldn't rely exclusively on our sales reps to run a cold-calling campaign and drive deals consistently, quarter-to-quarter. Because I was accountable for the numbers, I prevailed in my argument.

To make the case, I demonstrated how we could improve several facets of our sales process, not just getting those critical first meetings to start the cycle. Our executive team had not considered the ancillary benefits, such as better product launch traction, shorter on-boarding times and better data.

The cost comparison came out about the same as hiring an inside sales representative. So the decision to move forward was really based on speed and flexibility. We would have needed to create additional headcount, then recruit, provision and train a new rep--just to make cold calls. Outsourcing this activity also significantly reduced our risk.

Today my business brings me into regular contact with sales leaders and sometimes I still get pushback on outsourced teleprospecting. There's still some old-school thinking around outsourcing, but little by little minds are changing. There's just too much pressure and too little time to get results these days. At the same time, there are limited resources and shrinking marketing budgets with which to contend.

Eventually company leaders come around to the same conclusion I did many years ago. But why wait for the right attitudes to develop? If you're a sales leader and you need to urgently create more selling opportunities, let me help you build the internal business case.

I've taken the lessons and knowledge I gained from this experience and developed the "Five Ways to Justify Outsourced Teleprospecting". I'll send you this free whitepaper when you register below.

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 "Five Ways to Justify Outsourced Teleprospecting"

Thanks for listening!