Prospecting is one of the most outsourced services simply because some companies don’t have sufficient time to invest in prospecting, some don’t know how to do it and some just don’t want to be bothered with it (i.e. they have money).

And in order to grow your sales – you definitely need prospecting. The only question is – how will you collect those prospects?

Like every business owner knows – there are positive and negative sides to any business decision. Same goes for outsourcing.

You have no idea how the outsourcing company manages their employees, if they will deliver the expected results and what the quality will be.

So, for all of the business owners out there, hoping that you aren’t considering cheap web scraped lists, we’ll give you pros and cons of outsourced prospecting.

PROS OF OUTSOURCED PROSPECTING

Saving Time To Focus On Sales

We already mentioned this in our blogs before, but prospecting takes a lot of time.

Market Republic, as a specialized B2B prospect list building agency, for example, has a team of full-time employees that only collect prospects.

Sure, you can take some time of your work day to generate contacts or have your SDR or salesperson do it, but every hour you spend takes away from your core business.

However, those hours do not necessarily mean that you will find any more than 2 or 5 prospects.

You may think that is enough, but only 7% of all collected B2B prospects actually convert.

By outsourcing prospect list building you are giving your sales teams an opportunity to focus on what they do best – selling, not data entry.

Source: Smart Insights

No Money Spent On New Hires or Overhead

Hiring new people in your sales or marketing team or even establishing your own prospecting team costs a lot of money.

Aside from paychecks, you have to pay taxes and everything else that comes with employment, including searching for a bigger office to fit your new expanded company.

Unfortunately, sales is one of the most fluent departments in any company meaning people change jobs every 6 to 12 months. This inevitably means more money and time for you to spend on training new employees that will probably leave in a few months.

And there is no guarantee that your own employees will actually deliver. They will have their own goals, problems, sick days, limitations, etc.

Once you outsource your prospecting you are only paying for the service delivered.

And what happens during periods of time when you don’t need prospects?

You still have to pay your employees if they stay or go through the exhausting firing and hiring process over and over again.

Paying For The Result Only

Different prospecting companies operate on a different level.

Some will charge you per number or bundle of prospects, some will charge you per hour. It’s up to you to decide which model suits you best and pays off.

You are not paying for anything else unless you specifically ask.

For example, in Market Republic, we offer services like writing your email threads, organizing and executing your email campaigns, and even replying to your potential customers. But those are all additional services, that you may or may not need.

CONS OF OUTSOURCED PROSPECTING

Establishing an In-House Prospecting Team

Prospecting is something that you will always need, so having a team of experts or just an expert will always come in handy.

Your own prospecting team will have all the necessary information, know exactly who to target and how to sell product/service of the company they work for.

They will be well informed once the company decides to introduce new products, offers and services and easily catch up with all the changes in the approach to the customer.

In addition, prospect list building is a great starting point for an SDR that you want to develop into a full-fledged sales person.

No Control Over the Process

Having your in-house team collect prospects, you can always have control over the process.

In time you will know how many prospects they can gather in an hour or a day, which prospects from which industry are harder to find, and who the best researchers are.

This is something you cannot know when you’re outsourcing, simply because it’s someone else’s company.

Could you be getting more prospects? Are there enough researchers included? Did they hire only the most skilled researchers? How much time does it take to find 100 prospects for a digital marketing agency?

That’s why you should hire an agency with a proven track record and lots of satisfied customers.

So, Should You Outsource Prospecting?

As an expert prospecting agency, we would say – yes!

You will save an enormous amount of time and get fill your plate with highly targeted prospects that are most likely to convert. Sorted out and handpicked like cherry tomatoes in the finest Italian restaurant.

You can buy your prospects for a single project, product or service.

You can gather prospects from any location in the world.

You can hire an agency for a month or an entire year.

You can collect all the prospects you need now and outsource again in a year or two when you make a new product or a service.

There are no commitments (unlike when hiring new sales employees).

In case you decide to outsource – contact us.