Sales Outsourcing

In today's highly competitive environment, many firms make the decision to outsource a business process on the well-established idea that it is better to contract for services that are not within the scope of a company's core set of competencies. While outsourcing was once limited to peripheral firm activities such as advertising, firms are expanding the types of functions they outsource. For instance, many firms have begun to outsource their sales force, or at a minimum, have begun to consider ‘renting’ a sales force rather than ‘owning’ their own sales force.

As the globalization of both customers and competitors has increased, many businesses face a stark reality. They must anticipate, respond, and react to the demands of the marketplace while reducing overall cost structures, or perish. In the fiercely competitive environment of the 21st century, business strategy not only determines success, it governs business survival.

Companies stand to benefit considerably by outsourcing functions, such as Sales and customer analysis, to qualified suppliers if those skills are lacking internally. It stands to argue that expertise in these and other marketing areas may lie outside of the firm and can be more effectively achieved by a third party. Interestingly, another method of outsourcing has increasingly gained popularity — that of firms using a contract sales force to handle the selling function of their products or services