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If you’re viewing this guide, then you might be at a crossroads. You’ve heard horror stories of the wasted money, time, and effort businesses have gone through outsourcing their SDR work. But, you’ve also heard success stories. Is hiring more sales reps and ramping up your current team the right choice? Or is outsourcing that work the path to choose?

We’re breaking down the considerations in cost, training, culture and data, plus what crucial things you need in place if you’re going to outsource.

4 Things To Know Before You Outsource SDR Work

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The comprehensive guide to evaluating outsourced SDR services.

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1. Performance based pricing

Many outsourcers provide a guarantee in terms of number of meetings. It’s critical to align your definition of a “meeting” with your vendor’s definition. Often the contract language will not define any qualification criteria and you may find that what they are delivering on their guarantee is not what you were hoping for or expecting. Look out for details like whether a meeting counts if you reject it due to lacking qualifications.

Another issue with performance pricing is whether you qualify for it. Many teams will not allow for this pricing model when you are not 100% confident in your Ideal Client Profile. If you have yet to nail this detail, you may discover a much higher, unguaranteed price.

2. Meetings vs conversations

Ultimately the goal of most outsourced SDR work is to generate qualified sales meetings. One thing that often goes overlooked, however, is the value of all the other conversations in between earning that meeting. Does the vendor provide recordings, reports, and feedback from the conversations to generate additional insight on your market or offering? Is there a strong strategy around building a follow up list for future engagement, or are they merely burning through leads to find the low hanging fruit?

3. Outsourced outsourcing

When it comes to outsourced pricing, you’ll see prices as low as $2,500/month. Sounds too good to be true, right? It is. When weighing the costs, be sure you know whether the team is onshore, offshore, or nearshore, and if they use third party operations or have built the entire team in-house. Each of these factors plays an important part in your ability to positively impact your results.

Cost

One of the biggest turn offs when evaluating outsourced teams is cost.

You most likely want to pay based on performance, but this is not how most operate.

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“Training” probably isn’t something you’d want to consider when outsourcing.

“I’m outsourcing my SDR work so I don’t have to train anyone!”

While that is true, you will have to educate your outsourced team to some degree. These are the top things you should ensure they have the capability to provide in order to be as successful as possible:

Can they speak your language?Do they specialize in certain industries? A good outsourced SDR firm will be able to adapt to your market’s language, but look for customer examples that highlight their past successes in your industry or adaptability to specific niches.

How does their reporting work?It is vital that you ensure the reporting you receive will be what you expect. You deserve complete transparency to listen to call recordings, view emails, and even speak with SDRs on your “team” when you want more qualitative feedback. Are SDRs free to call and/or email you to give direct updates or receive any special instructions, urgent changes, or hot leads? Our clients find this direct communication is an added layer beyond the account manager, which creates greater opportunities for success.

How are the reps trained?Are they simply handed a script or do they go through more in depth client training to understand your business and offerings? It is even beneficial to learn how they are compensated so you know if they’re just trying to get through their numbers fast enough, or if their compensation is based on quality.

Training

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Data

Consider these aspects when discovering how an outsourced team handles their data:

Where do they source it?If they are getting it from the same source you are, and you’ve been calling on a list, how will they reach any additional prospects than your team. The exception to this is when your team has limited capacity or you provide your own data to the outsourced team.

What is their process for cleaning the data?For example, we validate each email, social profile, and phone number on our lists to ensure real-time accuracy. It is checked through automated and human-validated processes in order to maximize every attempt for our SDRs. If a list is simply bought and worked, there is a large measure of waste (and if you’re paying for a set number of activities vs results, you’re effectively throwing money away with wasted activities).

Are they only focused on your ideal client profile?If you leave the sourcing of your list up to your vendor, you may find a lot of extraneous people or companies not fitting your ICP. Ask how many contacts per account they work simultaneously to give you a sense of how focused they are on talking to exactly the right person.

We obsess over the fundamental formula for sales (TARGET + MESSAGE + CHANNEL + TIMING). Target is the most important part, far outweighing the value of the rest combined. The type of data an outsourced firm sources/buys will determine in large measure the success of your campaign. If the source for an outsourced vendor’s data is poor, how will they reach prospects, let alone reach the right ones within your swimlane?

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Why should you care about the culture of another company? All you need is results. However, culture impacts the longevity of sales talent and the motivation of the entire team working with you. It is smart to check into the following:

Job PostingsLook up job postings to see what they look for in their sales development representatives to help determine the quality of reps they have.

RatingsCheck company rating websites to see what employees say about the company. This can inform your conversation with the sales team as you consider engaging. Look for obvious complainers but try to identify common threads.

Career PathsIt’s acceptable to inquire about career paths within the company. By asking questions you can determine how well they treat their team and what turnover might look like for team members working your account (which will impact your results).

Culture

What you’ll want to have before you hire an outsourced company:The criteria above is to evaluate outsourced firms. But before you decide you need an outsourced sales development team (or at least before you sign the contract), here are three things you should have in place.

1. Ideal Client Profile - If your goal is to generate qualified sales meetings, you must know this inside and out before you hire a team. If you don’t know who you’re targeting, how would a third party be able to determine that on your behalf?

2. Effective Messaging - Many outsourced sales development teams do not provide messaging for you. If you’re running a campaign yourself and struggling to convert conversations to meetings, then handing off that same message to another team won’t help. (If you don’t know what is most effective, consider the impact of that on your ability to generate qualified meetings - you may need to start with a campaign that helps you learn the most effective messaging first.)

3. Realistic Expectations - Sales development and pipeline creation takes a consistent commitment to the process, typically 3-12 months before seeing the results you want. That’s not to say you won’t get meetings, more registrants/attendees/etc., but make sure your entire team’s expectations line up with your vendor. Will you get introductory meetings, will they be qualified opportunities, or will you find product/market fit through feedback rather than meetings?

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Vendor Notes Cost Guarantees Teams Industry Reporting Training Culture Data SCORE

Vendor A

Won’t do performance

based pricing, but does extensive SDR training.

1 5 8 8 4 10 1 10 47

Vendor B

Vendor C

Vendor D

Vendor E

Vendor F

Use this score card to determine how each vendor you’re evaluating handles each category. First cross out or ignore any categories that aren’t important to you (e.g. You don’t have a preference on their industry experience). Then rank each with a score of 1-10 and take the average of however many categories you scored them on. Typically you’re looking for an 8 or higher.

Use this free template to evaulate your vendors.

Outsourcing sales development can be an effective strategy for many companies, but there are quite a few potholes on the road to success that we hope you can now avoid. Choosing the right outsource partner can give you more bandwidth, more opportunities, and more sales!

If you’re interested in learning how we train SDRs, source our data, or run our campaigns on behalf of our clients, contact us here.

Evaluation Scorecard

Total:

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