But I was not a salesman. I had always dreaded having to think of ways to advertise and increase our sales. I like dealing with customers, and I really shined while we were discussing the customer’s vision for their property. When I saw that there were sales outsourcing companies available, I jumped at the opportunity. I hired them to drum up some more local business for my company.

I was impressed by the sales outsourcing company right away. They comprised a professional book of my most elaborate projects and sent it off to a printing company. They sent these books out to anyone in the area that recently purchased a home that cost more than half a million dollars. Then they made up pamphlets showcasing some of the smaller jobs that I did around the neighborhood and they sent them out to any new home buyer advertising that there was no landscaping job that was too big or too small for my company.

Before the first sign of spring I had several large scale jobs lined up along with a dozen or so smaller ones. I had to hire some more help to keep up with all of the landscaping projects that we had agreed to. The sales outsourcing team had acquired many new customers for my landscaping company. On the north side of the city we were to install a gorgeous kidney-shaped in ground pool and a rose garden complete with trellises and a fountain in the center. This job would take a couple of weeks to complete, especially since we had to schedule the concrete pourers to come out.

On the south side of the city we had several new construction homes that were recently built that needed sod installed and some other landscaping. We spent a month working in the same neighborhood performing a number of different landscaping jobs. I was thrilled with the results of the sales outsourcing company. They provided me with more sales leads than I could have ever come up with on my own.

Sales are the bloodstream of the organization, feeding the company with the profit it needs to continue doing business. Of all aspects of doing business, sales is the one thing that shouldn’t fall by the wayside or be left up to chance. A company that chooses to outsource sales puts that job in the hands of another qualified company, making sure that the job not only gets done, but succeeds at its maximum potential.

Sales outsourcing allows your company to focus on its core competencies. Once a company continues to grow beyond its original scope, it faces some serious decisions. Do you continue to grow, maintain the status quo, or allow the business to recede? If you choose to expand the business to enjoy an even greater success rate, how do you concentrate on the needed product development and improved designs while handling the increasing sales responsibilities that result? Bringing in another company for its sales division allows a growing company more energy to focus on its own growth and success.

Outsourcing your sales responsibilities brings in greater returns and perpetuates growth. Not only does it make it easier to achieve growth, it speeds up and optimizes the process. Leave your key executives to focus on your core competencies by letting a qualified sales company handle the sales. They specialize in just that. It’s easy to test whether they’ve been successful at their own business. Who have they done work for, and what results have they accomplished? What resources can they offer your company? Do they rely on contingency, only earning the majority of their fees after they’ve proven their success to you?

It’s an exceedingly complicated world, but that doesn’t mean you can’t simplify the process of how you do business. Freeing up your sales department allows you to concentrate on the reasons you got into this business in the first place. Hiring an outside sales team makes sure that the sales division of your company is successful, enabling you the opportunity to realize the potential of your own growth. It just makes sense.

Forward-thinking companies can take advantage of a jittery market, which give them a leg up on the competition when the recession recedes.

Focus on Your Core Competencies: A recession is a great time to assess the infrastructure of your business. If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to toss it and try something new.

For example, if sales are not your firm’s strong suit, don’t try to make it so. Hire professionals who know what they’re doing. You’ll increase your bottom line and decrease your headaches, leaving you to laser-focus on what you do best.

Beef Up Customer Service: Many company executives tout how important customer service is, but only pay lip service to it. There’s nothing like a recession to show you how loyal your customers are. This is an ideal time to hire an outsource sales and marketing company to, for example:

Take customer service calls: If your company doesn’t have a dedicated customer service center, an outsource sales and marketing company can be an affordable, efficient way to offer this service to clients.

Do a Survey: Want to know what your customers are thinking and feeling? Thinking about tweaking a product or service? Before you invest in it, let you customers give their input. An outsource sales and marketing company can easily gather this data for you, quickly and affordable.

Stay Visible: Many companies kind of disappear during a recession. You can take advantage of this to be visible and gain market share. An outsource sales and marketing company can implement a lead generating program, or a cold-calling campaign for you, for example.

With the help of the right outsource sales team, when the economy turns around, you’ll be readily positioned to rule your niche.

Expanding the Local Business Model

The true genius of a “sales outsource” business model is that it has expanded the local business model into a global one. The telephone brought long-distance inter connectivity to the business world, as well as our professional lives.

Television was a medium that expanded on this phenomenon even more. And, then came perhaps the greatest invention of the 20th century — the internet. It change the way we do business in so many ways that the full impact won’t possibly be know for years to come.

A “sales outsource” business model has capitalized on what the internet has ushered in – true connectivity. An company in California can outsource a job to India and have it back when the wake up in the morning. How’s that for expanding the local business model.

Erasing Geographic Boundaries

All of a sudden, it doesn’t matter where your business is located now. You can have a thriving technology company in Seattle, Washington, which has a sales force staffed by a firm in Chicago.

Where you’re located doesn’t matter in this, the new “sales outsource” business model. If you need sales help, you can get it.

Growing Smaller Companies Big

Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of a “sales outsource” business model is that it allows small companies to compete with larger ones.

Want to rush a new product to market before the competition? Hire an outside sales firm to beef up your sales force and gain market share before rivals have a chance to capitalize.

This is the superiority of a company that uses the “outsource” business model.

B2B sales outsourcing, especially as it relates to cold calling, just makes sense for many companies because they specialize in this form of marketing. Many salespeople abhor cold calling, even experienced ones.

Because it’s not a favorite activity, many sales professionals either don’t do it at all, or do it marginally.  If you’re considering an outside firm for any of your B2B sales outsourcing, following are four reasons to make cold calling one of the top priorities.

B2B Sales Outsourcing: 3 Reasons to Outsource Cold Calling

Frees Your Sales Force to Concentrate on Existing Customers: Successful salespeople know that selling is not a one-time act. It’s an ongoing process, which is built on cultivating a relationship with clients. This is why so many of them “do lunch.”

By using a firm to take over this B2B sales outsourcing function, you free your in-house sales force to concentrate on your most valuable asset, current customers. Let an outside service bring new customers into the fold.

Makes Your Sales Force Less Stressed: Every executive knows that a stressed worker is an unproductive worker. When you remove a major duty like cold calling from in-house sales team to an outside source, you remove a burden from their shoulders.

They can concentrate on pulling more revenue out of their existing customers, without the pressure of having to bring in new businesses.

Provide Warm Leads: One of the advantages of B2B sales outsourcing is to generate leads. By outsourcing your cold calling, you generate warm leads for your in-house team. Successful salesmen realize that warm leads practically mean money in their pocket, so they are eager to follow up on these.

B2B sales outsourcing is an ideal option for making cold calling a beneficial part of your marketing efforts.

Unless you can multitask like this, sales outsourcing is without a doubt one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to increase your company’s bottom line. Following are several reasons why.

Why Sales Outsourcing Makes You Money

Reduced Training Cost: Training, for any company, is usually a huge overhead cost. It is an investment in an employee that can walk out the door at any time. With sales outsourcing, you transfer this cost to the outsource firm.

If an employee walks, the cost is on them, not you. They worry about employee training, turnover and continuing education. This leaves you free to concentrate on other core competencies of your business, not continually train a new sales force.

Penetrate Markets Quicker: If you want to bring a new product or service to marketing, sales outsourcing can do it faster, and for less money, than you could on your own. They can do this because they put a dedicated team on your account whose sole job is to market your product/service.

This means you can focus on other objectives, eg, branding, producing complementary products, obtaining PR, etc.

Get More Leads: If you had one objective to focus on all day, every day, how successful do you think you would be at it? Most probably, you’d be very successful.

This is what sales outsourcing is. They have one objective, to market your product or service. This means more leads in the pipeline for you because their goal is singular – your business.

More Customer Attention: Selling is not about making a one-time sale, but building a relationship to make sales over and over again. Is your current sales force leaving money on the table because they don’t have the time or training to build relationships.

Because sales outsourcing allows you the luxury of putting a dedicated team to work for your customers, you get repeat sales.These are but a few of the ways sales outsourcing can benefit your organization.