If your business has aspirations of entering or expanding your operations in Europe, sales outsourcing is something you should consider. This model offers a huge range of benefits to help you drive sustainable revenue in new territories. What are these benefits? Let’s dig in.
Why Consider an Outsourced Sales Team for Europe?
So, why should you consider outsourced sales for your European operations? Why not just keep things in-house? Well, for a number of reasons. Let’s explore why outsourcing makes sense for so many growing organisations.
Scalability
When you make the decision to outsource your sales, you soon see that this gives you the ability to quickly scale up, or down, depending on your strategy and factors such as seasonal trends. You can enter new markets fast, getting your products or services out into the market very quickly.
Without outsourcing you can only scale up by hiring new people. Of course this means lengthy recruitment cycles and frustrating ramp-up time for new sales reps. And if you ever find that you’ve over-hired, you face the difficult prospect and expense of redundancies.
Speaking of money, outsourcing also enables you to test out new markets without having to commit to hiring new full-time staff. If an initial foray into a new region isn’t immediately successful you can deploy your outsourced sales support elsewhere.
Working with a single, global sales partner also enables you to run multiple campaigns simultaneously across various markets, whilst benefiting from a single point of contact. This gives you clear visibility over progress in individual territories, as well as globally.
Market Expertise
Expanding into new European territories can be daunting if you or your team have limited knowledge of local nuances such as preferred communication methods and compliance. An outsourced partner can be a wise option here as they can provide you with local in-market BDRs/SDRs to make sure your approach is relevant and perfectly pitched.
This gives you the power to navigate regional differences in language, culture and buyer behaviour, and to give you the peace of mind that you’re complying with local laws, GDPR and other regulations.
With in-market sales experts, your messaging won’t be lost in translation and you can come across authentically, without having to spend unprofitable time recruiting and training local reps.
Team & Technology
Experienced outsourced sales partners come with their own ready-built sales engine and considerable tech stack included. This typically includes things like CRM-integration, outreach and AI tools, data enrichment and multi-market analytics dashboards.
This ensures you benefit from established processes, proven sales playbooks, and best practices generally, as well as those tailored to the regions you’re targeting. You get to increase efficiency by using teams that are experienced in outbound and inbound B2B sales across Europe, and you can expect consistent reporting across markets and campaigns, as well as a real-time view of progress.
How to Build a High-Performing European Sales Team in 4 Steps
If you think outsourcing sales to a partner agency could help your organisation enter or expand in Europe, you’re certainly not alone. Countless businesses already benefit from this model, using outsourcing as a strategic growth lever for their expansion efforts. But of course there are several things to consider to make sure your partnership works, and that you find the right partner in the first place.
1. Choose the Right Outsourcing Partner for Your Business
There are a number of things to look for to find the right partner for your organisation. These include:
- Proven success in your field: Make sure your partner can demonstrate previous successes in your industry and your target markets in Europe. If you’re expanding into France or Germany for instance, do they have in-country reps to help you make the impact you want to make?
- Onboarding process: Find out how onboarding works and how quickly a partner will be able to get sales running in new territories. Of course some strategising will be necessary before campaigns begin, but saving time on in-market recruitment training is one of the real advantages of sales outsourcing, so make sure you understand probable timelines.
- Tech integrations: What kind of tech stack does the partner bring with them and how will their tech integrate with yours? It’s important to know that their systems will complement (and work with!) yours.
- Cultural fit: While a key benefit of an outsourcing partner is that you don’t have to commit to recruiting more in-house staff, you still need to make sure that your partner will be a great culture fit. Ask a potential partner questions about values, working styles and their organisational culture before agreeing to collaborate.
- Reporting & account management: It’s also wise to get an idea of what to expect from an account management point of view. How often will an agency communicate with you and report back on progress? How transparent will reporting be and can you retain a real-time view of things? When will they be available to you if you need to chat?
2. Agree Your Goals and Objectives
When beginning work with an outsourced sales agency, make sure you:
- Define clear outcomes: What is it exactly you want to achieve? Make sure this is clear from the beginning, whether it’s pipeline value, meetings booked, revenue or something else.
- Align KPIs: In pursuit of your goals and objectives it’s vital to agree on KPIs with internal stakeholders and the outsourced provider. This way, everyone is on the same page and working towards the same ends.
- Agree on strategy: Working with an outsourcing agency gives you access to their sales expertise, so make sure to use it to ensure your strategy matches your market positioning and product maturity.
3. Choose the Right Outsourcing Model
There are various outsourcing models, such as dedicated, shared resource, pay-per-success, and more. Make sure to choose the right one for your needs. In order to do that:
- Understand outsourcing opportunities: You may have outsourced sales before but if you’re new to this approach, it’s important to understand exactly what’s on offer. This includes understanding the differences between SDR as a service, fractional CROs, lead generation outsourcing and other options. If you’re not clear on this, we’d be happy to talk you through it.
- Select a model that suits you: The needs of different businesses vary hugely, so an outsourcing model that works for another business may be all wrong for you. You need to choose the right model for your growth phase and budget. Again, this is something you should discuss with a prospective sales partner.
4. Adapt to Market Nuances
The final step in building your high-performing European sales team is to tailor your approach to local market nuances. A partner agency with in-market BDRs can certainly come in useful here:
- Localised messaging and outreach: With the right partner you will be able to adapt your messaging and outreach by country or region, ensuring you get the best possible engagement.
- Factor in local holidays, working hours, and purchasing cycles: Again, in-market experts will make sure you don’t overlook anything that could compromise your conversion rate.
- Understand how decision-making hierarchies differ across countries: Nordic people may not buy in the same way as Germans, and again this is where local sales experts show their real value. They can illuminate how people make decisions in different markets, helping you to convert as many customers as possible.
Measure Success and Drive Revenue
Now you have a solid European sales team, it’s time to measure their success.
Track Your KPIs
- Track key metrics: These may include activity, engagement, warm leads, and SQLs generated, as well as conversion rates.
- Use region-specific benchmarking: This is key to setting realistic expectations in new markets.
- Build a feedback loop between sales and marketing: This will help refine targeting and optimise sales campaigns.
Learn and Optimise
- Use A/B testing: It’s wise to A/B test outreach methods, value propositions, and channels.
- Refine ICPs and messaging: You can do this based on data gained from different European regions.
- Adapt & optimise: A major benefit of outsourcing is flexibility and adaptability, so keep an eye on your results and optimise campaigns when needed. A partner agency should be able to support here, adding valuable insight.
Ready for Sales Success in Europe?
If you’re targeting new countries or regions in Europe and you want fast, scalable campaign execution with centralised control, outsourcing sales might be the right thing to do.
It gives you consistency, clear reporting, strategic insights across all your markets, as well as cost-efficiency and tech-enabled lead generation. In short, it’s a way to build a performance-driven, data-led sales machine.
If you’d like to know more about sales outsourcing and how it could help your organisation expand and enter new markets, get in touch today.