What is Sales Outsourcing? Top 20 Sales Outsourcing Companies in 2024

Published by Salespanel on September 25, 2024

Sponsored

Updated on 25th September, 2024.

Your in-house salespeople are the best; they know your product better than anybody else. We get it! However, as your business grows, scaling your team proportionally can be a challenge, especially for startups whose founders and initial employees handle sales. If your sales team can’t keep up with your growth, you may experience a bottleneck situation. That’s where sales outsourcing can help.

While sales outsourcing was once frowned upon due to concerns about accountability and oversight, an increasing number of businesses now struggle to balance their desire for growth with the lack of bandwidth to handle the volume of new leads. These businesses are not yet ready to build a full-scale, in-house sales team. As a result, certain sales tasks are frequently outsourced to other companies.

Recent data shows that 59% of companies now use outsourcing to cut costs, while 57% do so to focus on their core business functions. Today’s outsourcing options offer more than cold calling—they provide services from lead generation to customer relationship management. With the global outsourcing market set to hit $405.6 billion by 2027, it’s clear this approach is gaining traction.

In this article, we cover:

• What is sales outsourcing
• When should you consider sales outsourcing
• Pros and cons of outsourcing sales
• Sales outsourcing software and agencies to consider

What is Sales Outsourcing?

Sales outsourcing is the process of delegating a part of your sales process to a third party or agency.

Outsourcing sales could include market research, lead generation or even routine sales tasks like outbound calling or handling inbound calls. You can also outsource most of the sales process to an external agency.

There are three main components at the heart of B2B sales outsourcing:

Strategic Partnerships: Companies that provide B2B sales outsourcing services act as strategic partners for their clients, having a thorough awareness of their target markets, industries, and value offerings. Equipped with this understanding, they use tried-and-true sales methods to increase revenue and improve sales efficiency. These kinds of alliances allow companies to delegate the work of selling and focus on their core competencies, which promotes productivity and expansion.

Comprehensive Services: Comprehensive Services: Leading B2B outsourcing companies typically provide a wide range of services customized to meet particular corporate goals of their clients. This could include services like lead generation, appointment scheduling, data-driven marketing, AI-powered sales intelligence, and more. With a wealth of cutting-edge tools and methodologies, these companies ensure that businesses can effectively engage and address potential clients, increasing their chances for profitability.

Cost Effectiveness: Lastly, businesses outsource their sales operations because of how much money it saves. Companies can avoid the expenses of hiring, training, and managing an internal sales staff by outsourcing their sales processes to qualified outside vendors. This can further help them scale more effectively and use resources more wisely to support growth—all while saving a significant sum financially that can be redirected to other business developmental activities.

How Does Sales Outsourcing Work For B2B Companies?

Sales outsourcing for B2B companies involves hiring external teams or agencies to handle parts of the sales process. This can include:

1. Lead generation: Finding potential customers for your business.
2. Appointment setting: Scheduling meetings with interested prospects.
3. Cold calling: Reaching out to new potential clients.
4. Sales presentations: Showcasing your products or services.
5. Follow-ups: Keepibecauseng in touch with leads and nurturing relationships.

When a B2B company outsources sales, they work with specialists who focus solely on sales tasks. These experts often have access to tools, data, and strategies that can help grow your business faster.

Who Needs Sales Outsourcing? 5 Reasons For You To Consider

Sales outsourcing can be a good option for B2B companies in various situations:

1. Limited internal resources:

• You have a small sales team that can’t handle all incoming leads
• Your team lacks expertise in certain sales functions
• Your sales staff is busy with admin tasks, leaving little time for selling

2. Growth and expansion:

• Your business is growing quickly and needs to scale sales efforts
• You’re entering new markets or regions and need local expertise
• You want to test new sales strategies without long-term commitments

3. Budget considerations:

You can’t afford to hire top sales talent full-time
You need to control costs while still growing your sales

4. Flexibility needs:

• Your sales needs change throughout the year (seasonal business)
• You want to adjust your sales capacity up or down quickly

5. Focus on core business:

• You want your in-house team to concentrate on closing deals and building relationships.
• You need to free up resources for other parts of your business

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Sales

Pros:

1. Access to Expertise: You can access the knowledge of specialists in sales by outsourcing your sales. This is especially helpful if your sales process is not well defined yet. Sales outsourcing organizations frequently employ sales teams with extensive expertise and a solid understanding of sales techniques, plans, and customer behaviors. They are versed in various sales tactics and may modify their strategy to fit the needs of your particular target market and sector.

2. Scalability and Flexibility: Outsourcing sales offers a lot of flexibility and scalability. An outsourced sales crew can quickly adjust to the changing needs as your company expands or encounters swings in sales demand. They can scale up or down depending on your needs, without the difficulties and delays involved in recruiting and training new employees from within.

3. Cost Savings: Significant investments, including pay, benefits, training, and overhead, go into creating and maintaining an inside sales staff. However, outsourcing sales may be more economical because you just pay for the services the outsourced team renders. . This can save a lot of money, especially for startups or companies that want to grow without having to incur huge fixed costs.

Cons:

1. Communication Challenges: Your internal staff and the outsourced sales team must communicate clearly. Unclear communication routes, slow response times, and misunderstandings might hamper the success of your sales process. Working with an outside partner can make it harder to coordinate tasks and keep the information flowing smoothly.

2. Loss of Control: Outsourcing sales transfers a sizable element of your sales process to a third party. As a result, the presentation of your goods or services, engagement of potential clients, and management of sales interactions may all suffer. It could be difficult to maintain consistent branding and message, and there’s a chance that the outsourced team might not accurately grasp or represent the culture and values of your business.

3. Difficulties in Brand Alignment: It can be difficult to ensure that the outsourced sales force aligns with your company’s objectives, principles, and client expectations. If the caliber of contacts with potential consumers falls short of your criteria, client satisfaction can be a problem. Misaligned strategies could damage your brand’s reputation and long-term connections with customers.

Sales Outsourcing: Automation as an Ally

On a day-to-day basis, your sales team focuses on repetitive tasks and documentation which gives them fewer work hours to focus on core sales activities. Sales automation makes sales teams more productive by automating grunt work like scheduling meetings, updating lead databases, and setting reminders. Sales automation software also helps salespeople make sense of data and get intelligent suggestions about leads that can help save time and close deals faster.

5 Tips to Keep in Mind Before You Outsource Sales

Before you set out to outsource a big chunk of your sales process, evaluate your requirements.

1. Identify business reason: Can this be done in-house, automated, or outsourced?
2. Define the objective and metrics: What do you aim to achieve by outsourcing or automating this function – Is it to grow your user base, enter a new market, or improve the lifetime value of customers?
3. List your scope: List the markets you want to cover, what you need to outsource exactly and how an outsourcing agency or tool comes into play.
4. Inform all teams: Ensure there is internal alignment between your sales and marketing teams before you proceed with selecting a sales outsourcing agency or software – decide KPIs, roles, and responsibilities of your existing sales and marketing teams, and make sure everyone is working towards a common goal
5. Choose between automated or manual sales outsourcing: Once you have identified the scope of your sales outsourcing program, decide if you want to outsource sales to a manual agency or deploy a sales outsourcing software in your company that automates crucial sales functions, and helps generate leads.

Top 20 Sales Outsourcing Software and Companies

We’ve done the legwork and sifted through countless options to bring you 20 standout choices. Take a look and see which sales outsourcing software or company might be the perfect fit for your business:

1. Belkins

Category: Agency

Belkins is a sales outsourcing company that specializes in lead generation. The agency works closely with clients to generate high-quality customers, using data, technology, and skilled professionals to drive revenue. The company’s primary solution is its Appointment Setting service, which schedules appointments between clients and prospects who match their target customer profile. Additionally, for businesses focused on inbound marketing, Belkins provides solutions to convert inbound leads into sales. Belkins has over 790 customers worldwide and has built a reputation for delivering high-quality results for businesses of all sizes.

Image via Belkins

2. Salespanel

Category: Software

Salespanel is a lead generation and sales intelligence software that helps you identify, track and qualify your leads. You can outsource or automate sales tasks like:

• Tracking sales emails
• Automatically gathering sales intelligence and data from the marketing team
• Qualifying leads
• Knowing the purchase intent of leads in the pipeline

Salespanel offers an array of features that help your sales team become more productive, qualify more leads, and add close more deals. With Salespanel, you can perform different activities across different stages of the sales funnel:

• Lead generation: Generate new leads and fill the sales pipeline with fresh new leads. Set up real-time alerts and create a workflow to send qualified leads to your CRM.
• Lead tracking: Track your leads in real-time as they move through your funnel using behavioral data and marketing automation campaigns.
• Lead data: Collect lead data without effort as Salespanel automatically tracks publicly available lead information such as past work experience of the lead, lead’s Twitter account, and company details.
• Lead scoring: Most often, salespeople are not sure about which leads to focus their energy on. With Salespanel, you can score and prioritize your hottest leads and empower your sales team with prospects that are sales-ready.
• Sales lead injections: Save your salespeople the gruntwork. Salespanel automatically fills your sales pipeline with qualified leads and their data.

3. Zapier

Category: Software

Zapier is a workflow automation software that helps salespeople automate sales tasks. With Zapier, salespeople can:

• Build a Master Contact Database
• Cultivate leads with webinars and drip campaigns
• Send personalized emails
• Create forms and collect submission information
• Schedule meetings

4. Martal Group

Category: Agency

Martal Group is a B2B sales agency that helps companies grow their sales. They work with businesses of all sizes, from startups to large companies.

They take on sales functions such as:

• Lead generation
• Personalized outreach
• Account management
• Customer onboarding

5. Cloudtask

Category: Agency

CloudTask is a B2B Lead Generation company that focuses on SaaS companies. It focuses on driving revenue growth through its large team of sales development professionals. CloudTask’s model includes managing and recruiting their own skilled team to do the following sales outsourcing tasks for you:

• Engage with new prospects
• Re-engage with cold leads
• Help run upsell and renewal campaigns for existing customers

6. Cience

Category: Agency

Cience is an agency that specializes in outbound sales prospecting. Cience uses a combination of a skilled SDR team and proprietary software to increase sales efficiency for your business.

Areas where you can employ help from Cience include:

• Outbound sales prospecting
• Creating ideal customer profiles
• Campaign strategy
• Market research
• Advertising

7. SalesRoads

Category: Agency

SalesRoads, is a US-based agency that helps businesses find new customers. It has been in business for over 15 years and has worked with over 500 clients.

They offer:

• Setting up meetings with potential buyers
• Finding new leads
• Building lists of possible customers
• Providing data about who might want to buy
• Managing a sales team for you

8. Drift

Category: Software

Drift is the Revenue Acceleration platform that uses Conversational Marketing and Conversational Sales to help companies grow revenue and increase customer lifetime value.

Drift offers:

• Visitor intelligence
• Real-time personalization
• Target account engagement
• AI Chatbot
• Analytics

9. Zoominfo

Category: Software

Zoominfo is a B2B sales intelligence tool with a comprehensive contact database that can help your sales and business development teams work with better lead data.

Zoominfo provides lead intelligence such as:

• Direct dial phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Background information

10. Operatix

Category: Agency

Operatix is an agency founded in 2012 that specializes in accelerating growth and increasing revenue for B2B software companies across North America and Europe.

Operatix caters to the tech industry as well as a multitude of emerging software vendors and startups.

Some of the core B2B sales outsourcing tasks that Operatix handles includes:

• Outbound sales development
• Cold prospecting
• Account-based selling
• Lead qualification
• Deal management

11. Callbox

Category: Agency

Callbox is a B2B lead generation and sales support services agency. It provides sales opportunities to clients in the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore. It caters to industries like IT and Software, Manufacturing, Management Consulting, Healthcare, Finance, and Advertising.

Callbox helps find the best quality leads and sales appointments with the greatest chance of becoming profitable customers.

12. Smith.ai

Category: Agency

Smith.ai helps your sales team capture and screen callers, book appointments, and log details instantly in your CRM and on your calendar. Smith.ai uses a combination of AI and a sales team for handling activities like:

• 24/7 Phone Answering
• Free Spam Blocking
• Outbound Call-Backs
• Sales Development
• 24/7 website chat

13. SalesAR

Category: Agency

SalesAR is a lead generation agency based in Ukraine, with team members in Germany, the UK, and the USA. SalesAR offers monthly contracts, which makes it easier for smaller businesses to try their services.

They help businesses by:

• Finding potential customers that match your ideal buyer
• Running campaigns to reach these potential customers
• Booking appointments with interested leads

14. Cleverly

Category: Agency

Cleverly focuses on finding leads through LinkedIn and also helps with other online marketing. It works with big companies like Paypal, Uber, Amazon, and Google. They’re a good choice if your customers use LinkedIn a lot.

Their services include:

• Sending personalized messages on LinkedIn
• Running Google ads
• Creating content for marketing
• Building a list of potential customers on LinkedIn
• Reaching out to these potential customers

15. MarketStar

Category: Agency

MarketStar is a large sales agency that works with medium and large businesses worldwide. It’s best for larger businesses that want to grow their sales in new areas.

They’ve been in business for over 35 years and offer:

• Inside sales (selling over the phone or Internet)
• Channel sales (selling through partners)
• Digital ad sales
• Customer care

16. SalesNash

Category: Agency

SalesNash is a B2B lead generation agency that started in the software industry. They now work with many types of businesses.

SalesNash offers:

• Finding potential customers
• Setting up meetings
• Developing sales strategies
• Inbound marketing
• Virtual assistant services

17. Leadium

Category: Agency

Leadium is a B2B lead generation and appointment-setting agency. It aims to help businesses spend less on finding new customers and make their sales growth easier.

They focus on:

• Booking meetings with potential customers
• Researching leads
• Creating sales strategies for different channels
• Providing advice on early-stage sales

18. Addlium

Category: Agency

Addlium specializes in social selling for B2B companies, mainly using LinkedIn. By delegating lead generation and brand packaging on LinkedIn to its experienced team of social selling experts, you can increase your sales and improve brand awareness.

Their services include:

• Finding new leads on LinkedIn
• Creating content for marketing
• Improving LinkedIn profiles for people and businesses
• Identifying the right audience for your business

19. SalesHive

Category: Agency

SalesHive is a B2B sales agency that provides remote sales development representatives (SDRs). It offers free onboarding and monthly contracts, which makes it easy for companies to try its services.

They help businesses by:

• Building lists of potential customers
• Making cold calls
• Sending marketing emails
• Reaching out on LinkedIn
• Sending direct mail

20. JumpCrew

Category: Agency

JumpCrew is a marketing and sales outsourcing company for B2B businesses. JumpCrew aims to help businesses increase their sales quickly and provides detailed reports on their work.

They offer:

• Hiring and training dedicated salespeople for your business
• Setting up a sales process quickly (in 30 days or less)
• Finding potential customers
• Setting up meetings
• Qualifying leads and closing deals
• Managing client relationships

Final Take: To Outsource or Not To Outsource, That is the Question

There could be many reasons for you to pass over the baton to a sales outsourcing agency or sales software to take on parts of your sales functions.

It definitely comes with certain benefits over traditional in-house sales models:

• Time-saving processes
• Repeatable success in the sales functions they offer
• Advanced reporting and analysis
• Better ROI

So, consider all these factors before deciding to outsource sales. Tools are always something that you will need but you need to spend more time before going with an agency.

Agencies like Belkins and Cience, help find new customers and set up meetings. Salespanel, on the other hand, offers software to make sales tasks easier and faster. It helps you track leads, gather sales data, and score leads automatically. This means your sales team can focus on the best opportunities.

Before you choose any option, it’s good to do some research. Talk to a few companies on our list and ask for case studies. For software like Salespanel, try it out for free to see if it fits your workflow. Salespanel gives you 14 days to try all its features at no cost. This lets you see how it can help your sales before you buy.