Sales outsourcing covers finding customers and making calls, having external salespeople handle deals, or managing your own team day to day. The choice depends on where the sale stops: there is no one to contact the buyer, no one to take an agreement through to payment, or no one to organise the work of the salespeople you have already hired. Paying for more calls does not, by itself, free the owner from managing the department.
If you are considering a provider because you are tired of dealing with salespeople, first look at the questions that reach you. Who will take the enquiry? Why did the salesperson refuse to take it? What was the buyer promised before the handover? When a business is starting out, it is convenient to deal with all this yourself. But when an external team joins, a dispute between them and your employees is added to the existing questions.
This is where the choice lies. Handing over the work means handing over a particular part of the sale. Handing over management means appointing someone who is responsible for keeping the work going, including when the people involved disagree with each other. In a proposal, these tasks can easily fall under one heading. During the working day, they require different people and authority.
An outsourced sales team: where its work ends
An outsourced sales team is an external team entrusted with an agreed part of sales, from first contact to taking a deal through to payment. Define the scope of work before choosing a provider: organising calls, using external salespeople and managing your department serve different purposes.
| What you hand over | What the provider does | What is needed inside the company |
|---|---|---|
| Finding customers and initial conversations | Contacts suitable buyers, establishes what they need, agrees how to continue | A salesperson takes the enquiry and handles further negotiations; the head of sales is responsible for ensuring enquiries are accepted |
| Sales handled by an external team | Salespeople handle the agreed part: the proposal, negotiations, following up on payment | A person in charge agrees non-standard terms and connects sales with order fulfilment |
| Day-to-day management of the existing department | The head of sales assigns work to your salespeople, looks into why work has stopped and ensures it gets done | The head of sales is given access and authority; the owner sets commercial limits |
In the first model, the provider is not obliged to manage your salespeople. If they passed on a suitable enquiry and the salesperson did not contact the buyer, replacing the person making the calls will not get the sale moving again. A head of sales is needed on the receiving side. But if the first conversation already included a promise of something the company does not sell, it is the provider’s work that needs correcting.
An external team handling the entire deal also needs a connection with the company. A salesperson needs to confirm availability, agree a quote and obtain a completion date. When the answer to every such question exists only in the owner’s head, handing over negotiations leaves the owner constantly supporting those negotiations.
If there is no department yet, decide separately who will sell and who will manage them after launch. Hiring people, preparing a proposal and running the department afterwards produce different results. The phrase “we’ll build a sales operation”, without specifying who will stay to handle customers once it is set up, does not answer the question of day-to-day work.
Why do outsourced calls not free the owner from managing sales?
Outsourced calls add contacts with buyers, but do not appoint a person to ensure the sale continues inside the company. If the owner settles every dispute over an enquiry that has been passed on, they remain the person actually managing the combined work.
There is an unpleasant detail here: both sides can meet the requirements set for them in good faith and still leave the buyer without an answer. The provider considers the job complete once they send the contact details. The salesperson only starts work after deciding that the contact is suitable. Between sending the details and agreeing to take on the customer, no one is obliged to deal with them. Two entries in different reports describe different events.
I am not prepared to call this handing over sales until someone is assigned to continue the conversation with the buyer whose enquiry is in dispute. Sorting things out with the provider and replying to the buyer must not wait for each other. The head of sales first ensures the promised contact takes place, then establishes where the handover condition was broken.
Pay particular attention to a rejection marked “not a suitable customer” if it comes after a long pause. A buyer who needed a proposal on the day of the first call has already chosen someone else several days later. Their lack of interest now does not describe the quality of the original enquiry. To make a decision, you need the time of the handover, the promised response deadline and the time of actual contact. However, a mismatch in region or product that was known from the start does reflect the quality of customer selection.
The owner can see the gap in a single summary prepared by the person responsible for sales. Take the enquiries handed over during a chosen period and divide them into those accepted, those rejected with a reason, and those still awaiting a decision. For example, of 40 enquiries, 24 were accepted, eight had a specific reason given for not meeting the requirements, and another eight are awaiting a decision. This gives: 40 − 24 − 8 = 8 stalled handovers; 8 ÷ 40 × 100% = 20%.
These 20% show the share of enquiries without a decision, not the share of unsuitable customers, and they do not represent lost revenue. The share accepted is 24 ÷ 40 × 100% = 60%, but acceptance does not yet mean a purchase. This calculation already lets you decide what to do first: review the eight unsuitable contacts with the provider or resolve the delay with the eight enquiries still awaiting review. These tasks need different people.
Outsourced head of sales: who manages your salespeople
An outsourced head of sales is an external head of sales who organises your team’s work and is responsible for making sure it gets done every day. This role differs from making calls: salespeople stay in the company, while the head of sales takes over assigning customers, reviewing mistakes and making decisions on stalled deals.
At the point where an enquiry is handed over, this is clear without a complex assessment. The head of sales ensures the receiving salesperson responds, examines the reason for rejection and assigns another employee if necessary. If the reason recurs, they change the selection rule with the provider or the acceptance procedure inside the department. The next enquiry with the same problem should no longer go automatically to the owner.
There is another role: a specialist who reviews the situation in a meeting and recommends actions. This help is useful if someone in the company can carry out the recommendations and follow up on the result. But if you are the one assigning tasks again between meetings, day-to-day management has stayed with you. The number of calls does not change this.
Give the outsourced head of sales the authority to assign enquiries and require a response at the same time as you hand over the work. Otherwise, a salesperson will be able to bypass their decision through the owner. At the same time, prices, the budget, product choices and acceptable deal terms remain the owner’s decisions. The head of sales works within agreed limits and brings anything outside them to the owner, explaining the reason and consequences.
If you are unsure whether there is enough ongoing work for a dedicated head of sales, a calculation of the workload of a head of sales will help. You do not have to buy management services just to deal with a single backlog: first separate a one-off effort to clear the backlog from what recurs every day.
How do you hand sales over to a provider without losing current deals?
Start with a limited part of the process where the buyers, promises and receiving head of sales are known. Expand the handover once enquiries move through this part without you assigning them manually or disputes about who should continue the conversation.
Before launch: preserve commitments to buyers
The person responsible for the handover lists active deals together with the next promises to fulfil: send a quote, confirm availability, get in touch on the agreed day. The owner needs a final list with people assigned to carry out the work. There is no need to reconstruct the department’s correspondence yourself.
Then choose a starting part of the process: a specific source of enquiries, a group of buyers or a product. Negotiations already under way keep the same person in charge until there is an explicit handover to someone else. If your own and external salespeople are calling the same buyer at the same time, the boundaries of the work have not yet been agreed.
Information about conversations must be accessible to the company: what was offered, what was promised, who needs a reply and when. The terms for accessing and retaining this information are set before calls begin. A provider’s report showing the number of contacts does not replace the history of a deal that your employee will continue tomorrow.
In the first part of the process: link sending with acceptance
Below are the parts of a working agreement on handing over enquiries. It is filled in with the details of the specific process; the table is there to help the two teams work together, not just to report to the owner.
| What to agree | What must be recorded |
|---|---|
| Who we accept | Product, area, the buyer’s need and essential conditions without which a sale is impossible |
| What we pass on | Contact details, the content of the conversation, the promised next step and the deadline for replying to the buyer |
| When the handover is complete | The receiving employee has confirmed they will handle it and has been assigned a task with a deadline; sending the contact details alone does not complete the handover |
| How we reject an enquiry | The specific mismatch and evidence from the enquiry; labelling it a “bad lead” is not enough |
| Who handles a disputed enquiry | An employee assigned by the head of sales continues contact while both sides investigate the reason for the dispute |
The deadline for accepting an enquiry is tied to the promise made to the buyer. If the agreed reply is due today, reviewing the handover at the weekly meeting is already too late. The head of sales must spot that the enquiry has not been accepted before the reply is due and assign someone to handle it. You need to set aside time for precisely this work in their day when discussing the provider’s availability.
After launch: make sure a recurring action changes
The first useful check takes place after the agreed deadline for accepting the first batch of enquiries. It shows all the outcomes from the calculation above, the reasons for rejections and the customers still waiting for an answer. While the owner still has to assign these enquiries, increasing the volume multiplies their work.
Next, there needs to be evidence of a correction. If salespeople rejected customers because information about their needs was missing, the head of sales agrees that it will be collected before handover. The next enquiries show whether the information is now provided and whether salespeople have stopped returning contacts for this reason. If the information is there but the rejections continue, the previous explanation no longer works: the head of sales examines the actual reason.
Payments are assessed in light of how long your deals take. Quick acceptance of enquiries lets you continue the trial, but is not yet grounds for declaring that the provider has paid for itself. How to connect the department’s actions with commercial results is covered in the article “Sales management: goals, functions and process”.
How do you compare providers’ proposals?
Compare proposals covering the same part of the sale and with the same list of work left to your team. A calling service that ends at the handover of a contact cannot be assessed as a replacement for a department that prepares proposals, negotiates and follows up on payment.
Include the provider’s fee, communication costs and services, preparing people for the work, and extra work by your own employees in the cost calculation. Specify separately who accepts enquiries and looks into exceptions every day. If no one has accounted for this work, it will still arise: it will simply fall to whoever first notices that things have stopped.
Payment per meeting or per contact handed over sets a specific result that you pay for. It does not turn the provider into your head of sales. Before starting, you need precise criteria for this result and a procedure for reviewing disputed cases. You cannot change the requirements for a suitable customer retrospectively after an unsuccessful sale: otherwise, both teams will start defending their reports instead of improving the work.
Another condition for comparison is how work continues when the person doing it changes. Who will get the open deals, where will the promises and decisions be kept, and who will reply to the buyer during the handover? Replacing someone quickly is of little help if the new employee has to ask the owner all over again what was agreed with each customer.
Who should handle the work between reports
If the owner deals with recurring gaps between a call and the continuation of a deal, they need someone to handle day-to-day management. This work can stay with the existing head of sales, provided they have enough authority, or be handed to a new in-house head of sales or an external management team. Increasing the volume of calls makes sense once there is someone to accept the results.
At RENTROP, turnkey sales management is for an owner who wants to hand over the day-to-day management of their department and stop being its main head of sales. This means managing the existing salespeople; prices, the budget and strategic decisions stay with the owner.
The wish to have one provider for all sales is understandable. But the buyer does not know where the service you paid for ends: they expect the promised reply. As long as you have to find the person responsible after hearing “we’ve handed it over”, some of the work you wanted to free yourself from has not even been assigned yet.