The experience your company provides its leads during the sales process can have a huge impact on its conversion rate. But providing a first-class experience isn’t always easy – especially when you have factors like cost and time allocation to consider. That’s why outsourced sales development representatives can be so helpful. They help companies generate more effective leads and provide better sales and onboarding processes to enhance customer experience.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at why customer experience is so important during the sales process, the factors that influence it, and how an outsourced sales development team can help you optimize your processes to boost conversion rates. So let’s get into it.
Why Customer Experience Matters
Let’s first quickly review why customer experience matters in the sales process. There are several reasons, but the main one is that if a potential customer enjoys going through the sales process with your team, they’re much likelier to view your company favorably and, ultimately, convert.
That means developing a sales process that customers like should be a priority. When done right, it could have nearly as big of an impact on your conversion rates as your company’s products or services.
Factors Influencing Customer Experience Outcomes
Before we review how outsourced sales development representatives can improve customer experience during the sales process, it’s worth considering the broader factors that influence customer experience.
When you understand these, you can take targeted action to improve each of them to make more significant progress toward your broader sales experience goals. Here are four key factors to keep in mind as you go through this process.
Product-consumer fit
The foundation of a strong sales experience is alignment between the products you sell and the leads you try to sell them to. If there’s a mismatch here, your conversion rate just isn’t going to get where you want it to – regardless of how customer-friendly the rest of your sales strategies are.
Part of this is matching pricing to your target audience as well. It’s not enough to just sell the products or services they want. You also need to offer them at a price point that fits into their budget if you want the best results.
Communication
Communication effectiveness is another massive factor impacting customer experience outcomes. Your leads should be able to engage with your company in whatever ways they prefer – from phone conversations to chats on your LinkedIn profile. If you’re missing a critical communication avenue, you risk losing potential customers to competitors that aren’t.
Personalization
Personalization is another major factor to keep in mind while optimizing your sales experience. Even though your target audience shares similar characteristics, they are all still individuals or companies with unique needs and goals.
If your sales process doesn’t reflect this, you’re missing a valuable opportunity to make your products stand out in a sea of similar options. Your conversion rate can often come down to how effectively your salespeople are able to position your company’s products as the natural solution for the consumer’s goals.
Brand reputation
Finally, the overall reputation of your brand can also have an impact on the sales experience you provide to leads. When your brand is viewed favorably by the broader market, it’s easy to get potential customers into your sales funnel at the highest level. And once you do that, you’ve already completed one of the most difficult steps in acquiring new business.
How Outsourced Sales Development Representatives Impact Customer Experience Outcomes
So – now that we know the main factors that impact customer experience outcomes, we can start looking at how outsourced sales development representatives can help your company make optimizations in each area.
If you’re not familiar, an outsourced sales representative is someone who works outside of your company to help you develop and pursue leads. Companies typically hire them through outsourcing firms, which can allocate as many or as few outsourced SDRs as a business needs.
And with that out of the way, let’s look at some of the benefits hiring a team of outsourced sales development representatives can offer your company.
More effective lead generation
The first benefit outsourced SDRs offer is more effective lead generation. They help companies identify not just more leads but leads that are a better fit for the company’s unique value proposition.
Having a team of outsourced SDRs at your disposal, generating leads for your business is like having an army of sales experts scouring every possible channel to find more of your ideal customers. That alone can bring massive value to your company, as the more leads you get into your sales funnel, the fewer you need to convert in order to reach your overall sales goals.
Expert help with managing the customer experience
Outsourced sales development teams are experts at the process of generating and communicating with leads. They can provide valuable insights into areas where your company may be lacking in its sales experience so you can make optimizations wherever they’re necessary.
Your outsourced SDRs can help you evaluate new opportunities, let you know how leads are communicating about your brand on the ground level, and provide a variety of additional sales-related insights that you can use to take your sales experience and processes to the next level.
More funds for other customer experience investments
Another major benefit of working with outsourced sales development representatives is the money you can save by doing so. If your company wants sales development reps working for it, it can either hire those workers in-house or partner with an outsourcing firm.
In-house hiring is vastly more expensive and less flexible to fluctuating demand. It involves a lengthy hiring and onboarding process, plus an ongoing financial commitment to a whole team of sales development professionals.
Outsourcing makes more financial sense because it both enables you to pay less for labor and save on hiring, training, and equipment. The net result is that your company will have more money in its budget to allocate to other things that can impact customer experience outcomes and bring more revenue into the business.
Greater company-wide agility
Another major advantage of using an outsourced team of SDRs over an in-house one is flexibility. Your needs for lead generation may not always be what they are now. If you ever want more or fewer SDRs working on your business’s behalf, you can just let your outsourced team manager know and they’ll adjust your worker count accordingly in a matter of days.
This is a level of agility that companies just can’t match with in-house workers. When you have this type of flexibility, it becomes easier to adapt to changing circumstances in the economics of your business on an as-needed basis. That can help you cultivate a healthier, more profitable company that’s primed for growth.
Broader customer support availability
Finally, hiring an outsourced team can also help with customer support in the sales process. Your outsourced SDRs will often be located in another country with a different time zone. This makes it possible to offer more hours of customer support across more channels. That way, your business can connect with leads through personalized conversations no matter what time of day one begins communicating with your brand.
This brings more personalization to your business’s sales process, which, as we covered above, is one of the main factors that impact customer satisfaction. It’s another reason why hiring a team of outsourced SDRs could be just what your company needs to grow.
The Cattalyst Can Help
The bottom line is that working with outsourced sales specialists can help your business generate more leads and deliver a more personalized, effective customer experience to prospects. If you’re interested in taking advantage of that, the next step is choosing the right outsourcing partner for your specific business type.
The Cattalyst is just the partner you need to do that. We have decades of outsourcing experience and relationships with top firms across every region and industry. Whether you’re a software company looking to expand into a new country or you’re a manufacturer looking to attract more high-value clients in the United States, we can help you find the outsourcing partner you need to make it happen.
So why wait? Take the first step with a free consultation today. We’ll walk you through your options and leverage our experience to help you make the right choice for your goals. Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help.