Is Fractional, Outsourced Sales Management Right For Your Small Business?

As a small or growing business owner, you know how important it is to effectively balance your time and your money. You Outsource your Accounting. You Outsource your Legal. You outsource your HR. Have you considered Outsourcing your Sales operations, in particular your sales management?

 If you’re curious about the benefits of outsourcing sales operations and how Outsourced Sales Management works, we’ll lay out the basics below. You might discover sales outsourcing can take your business to new levels of success.

Internally Managing Sales Operations

 Businesses and the business climate they operate in are always changing. When this happens and revenue falls short – for whatever reason – it’s easy to attribute the downturn to external factors and maintain your course – for a little while.

  But when falling short of your sales performance expectations becomes the norm rather than the exception, it’s time to examine your overall sales strategy, your sales process, and your ability to fix what’s broken – or to even know where to look or how to fit the issues.

  Many times, when a downward sales trend is identified, many business small business owners try to “right the ship” themselves. Unfortunately, by taking on sales management responsibility, they neglect other critical business areas. Coupled with the fact that they might not be skilled or experienced in sales leadership, this can drag the ship down even faster.

 Hiring a highly-qualified VP of Sales or experienced Sales Manager – or worse, promoting your top salesperson who has no sales management experience - might not be the answer either, because current revenue can’t sustain the expense – at least not until sales and revenue improve, or a the promoted inexperienced sales manager will rely on the owner at every step, which sometimes in sales (depending on the owners understanding of sales process) can be the blind leading the blind – and take even more time away from the owner focusing on the top priority - running the business.

 And even if you have the resources to tackle nagging sales problems internally, it can be difficult for insiders to truly see and address problems when bogged down in the day-to-day details of running your business.

 For these reasons and more, a growing number of small to mid-sized businesses are turning to outsourced sales management.

Benefits of Outsourcing Sales Management

  The challenges of internally managing sales operations can be unique from industry to industry and company to company. From start-ups to well-established businesses, every organization is different, every sales team is different, and every market is different.

 Still, for many small to mid-sized businesses, we often see similar benefits from outsourcing sales management, including:

Strategic Focus

  When you hire an Outsourced VP of Sales, strategic focus is a result. The VP can concentrate on fixing, leading, and managing sales operations while the owner or other company executives can focus on other key aspects of the business.

Increased Sales - and Margins

 It’s the role of the Outsourced VP of Sales is to identify sales performance problem areas and deliver solutions that increase sales, revenue, and profits. With this singular focus, perspective and accountability, results often exceed expectations.

Lower Cost

 By bringing in a sales management consultant, such as a fractional Outsourced VP of Sales, costs are typically lower than for a full-time VP of Sales or even a dedicated Sales Manager. This becomes especially clear when you factor in a full-time sales leader’s salary and benefits. Because an VP is contracted for fewer hours each week and for a limited time overall, costs are contained while solutions are developed.

Sustainable Operations

 Sales is a science, and Sales Management is a learned skill. With deep executive-level sales management experience, an Outsourced VP of Sales has the unique perspective to build sales strategies, plans, processes, and teams.

 By quickly putting these key components in place and refining as necessary, predictable sales performance and success make it possible for the short-term engagement of the VP to lead to hiring a full-time sales manager or executive.

How Outsourced Sales Management Works

 Ashton James Marketing’s client engagement typically includes several critical components, such as:

- Begin by doing an Audit of current Sales Operations

- Developing a Proven and Repeatable Sales Process

- Build a Lead Generation system

- Leverage technology (are processes automated? Is the website the best “salesperson?”

- Coaching sales team members

- Accountability to following the new process and systems

- Recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and training your sales force

- Building sales compensation plans that deliver results

- Holding the sales team accountable via weekly coaching meetings and corrective-action plans

- Selecting, customizing, and fully leveraging a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system

Developing best practices for sales

 At the conclusion of the engagement, the Outsourced VP of Sales will have delivered both a team and the processes to drive significant revenue growth.

 For many small to mid-sized businesses and start-ups, outsourced sales management has benefits that lead to sustainable sales success and revenue growth.

At Ashton James Marketing & Web Development, our sales management consultants typically engage as Outsourced VPs of Sales.

  They learn about your unique needs, develop a custom plan that puts a structure and system in place – And Tailored To Meet Your Budget - and then manage it until you can hire a sales leader. Based on your needs, the amount of involvement and cost varies, but engagements typically last about a year. 

  Ready to finally solve your sales headaches? 

  Call Ashton James Marketing & Web Development at 309-271-2991