An outsourced sales development representative, or outsourced SDR, is a low-cost alternative for companies looking to staff a sales team but are unwilling to pay the high costs associated with hiring an in-house SDR.
An outsourced SDR is typically managed by a third-party company that hires and manages remote sales reps on behalf of their clients. These services can be obtained through any number of SDR as a service (SDRaaS) or SDR outsourcing companies. Some sales teams, particularly in the B2B SaaS and technology industries, will use an outsourced SDR to fill their pipeline during times of high growth while they hire and train up their own internal sales development team.
Most SDR outsourcing companies offer a dedicated SDR team (typically 1-3 reps) for a monthly fee. The monthly fee depends on the quality and type of SDR service needed. For instance, some services charge a premium for phone support or the ability to handle weekly reporting.
It ultimately depends on the needs of the company. Sometimes a company is only looking for one SDR to work full-time, other times they may need five SDRs to work part-time. Whatever their needs, an SDR outsourcing company can assist in finding the perfect fit.
An outsourced SDR is typically responsible for managing leads sent by the client and performing lead qualification based on the criteria provided by the client. Most outsourced SDRs, at minimum, do outbound prospecting and outreach to potential customers on behalf of the company. What that outbound prospecting and outreach depend on what the company needs the SDR for, whether it's running email sequences, making phone calls, or both. Sometimes, companies will hire an outsourced SDR to take meetings with the prospect or even demo them the product or service they are selling.
Outsourced SDRs also assist in making the prospecting and outreach process more efficient for the client by providing lead information to their team members so that they can save time prospecting at a later date.
This information is especially valuable to every department at the client company. Information on leads gathered by the outsourced SDR is, in effect,
market research for the company. Sales and marketing teams can adjust who they are targeting with this information, and product teams can adapt their products to the
newly learned insights of the market.
In addition to helping salespeople find new prospects, an outsourced SDR can also track results and give access to the client through weekly reports. By having this information, the client can easily track their progress and determine which parts of their campaigns are working best so that they can invest more time into them while scaling back on others.