I often come across sales managers and business owners who are nervous about building or expanding their own sales team.
When it comes to internal sales teams, there are costs involved, turnovers to worry about, and other elements to consider which can make growing a sales team cumbersome.
So, many of these business owners instead decide to hire an external sales team, believing they’re gaining all of the benefits of a sales team without taking on all of the risk and the work involved with developing their own internal one.
However, after they bring on an external sales team, they discover that too comes with an array of challenges.
Not the least of which is being unable to effectively sell the company’s product or service.
Here’s the thing, when it comes to internal vs. external sales teams, there are pros and cons to each approach.
But, if I can make one recommendation, it is to NOT hire an external sales team without first having a proven track record of internal sales success.
To best your chances of success, create a proof of concept first internally, even if it’s just a small sales team to begin with.
After you’ve achieved internal success, then look at bringing on an external sales team. At that point, you’ll have a proven process that you can relay to the external sales team.
The truth is, you can’t expect an external sales team to sell something successfully that your company has no history of selling with success.
External sales team can be a great asset to your business, but set them up for success by first creating some internally.
