Sales outsourcing

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Sales Outsourcing is the practice of having an external company become a virtual sales force for you. It is differentiated from value added resale in the usage of a "shared risk" model -- that financing model requires both the client and the sales entity to invest in the actual sales program. This is differentiated from telemarketing in that it requires direct recruitment of sales personnel with specific backgrounds for each sales campaign, as opposed to the generalist sales rep (where the sales rep may represent many companies) popularized in telemarketing.

Sales outsourcing firms provide accountability regarding all sales results and activities while representing the brand of the client. For the end-customer, it usually appears as if the client sold the product themselves rather than the sales outsourcing firm. The outsourcing firm is, in essence, an extension of the client but is responsible for all operations associated with direct sales activities (often receiving sales engineering support from the client.)

The key reasons may companies look to outsource sales are:

  1. Speed to market;
  2. Improved ROI as opposed to building or extending an internal force;
  3. Ability to access markets unavailable to client;
  4. Improved systems and process to better capture a marketplace;
  5. Providing a litmus test to compare internal sales resources

(of course, many other reasons exist, these are some of the more common.)

The marketplace was established in the early 1990's and published industry reports the industry growing to more than $14B in revenue by the end of 2006 with potential market revenue growth estimtaed at more than $50B by the end of 2010.

Resources available for sales outsourcing can be found throughout the web. Several directories exist of the most prominent firms.

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