How I Outsourced My Non-Core Sales Tasks

As a small business owner and also the person who is responsible for the sales for my company, it is important that I focus on sales tasks that generate revenue.

One day, I stopped and looked at all the different sales tasks I was doing and realized that I was doing stuff that took away from generating revenue. In most cases, anything that is outside of meeting with clients and prospects that doesn’t build a relationship or uncover what a client needs is what I look at as non-core or non-revenue generating.

For example, in a typical day, I was spending about 50% to 60% of my time on sales tasks that didn’t generate revenue. Once I figured this out, I realized that I could be way more efficient and generate more sales.

Outsourcing Non-Core Sales Tasks

Below is a process that you can use to determine what sales tasks you should outsource:

Keep Track of What You Do During the Day

This is easy to do. You can typically look at what you do in any given day or you can keep a journal that lays this out for you.

Determine if it Helps You Generate Revenue or Not

You need to say to yourself, “If someone else did this, would it allow me to focus on those activities that will make me money?”

If you say yes, then you should outsource that task.

Map Out the Process

When you determine what tasks you want to outsource, make sure that you document the process so that it can be easily followed. The reason for this is critical. If the person doing the task can’t follow your process, they won’t be able to do it correctly.

To see if it is easy to do your documented task, let a friend see if they can do it. If your friend can follow your steps, then everything is good. If they can’t follow your steps, then ask for input and refine your outsourcing process.

Find Someone to Take on This Chore

This can be accomplished either at a local level or by offshoring the tasks. At a local level, you can put an ad up in a local classified service like Craigslist or ask around to see if someone can help you.

If you are looking to offshore your sales tasks, you can look to services like Elance orFiverr. In either case, you can have people do work for you on an hourly basis or on a quoted fixed price basis.

One thing that I did have to overcome was cultural differences and time zone differences. I have experimented with the different services listed above and one that I found that helped me out with the cultural and time zone issues was Teleworking Expats For Hire. They were able to source North Americans based in Mexico to help me out.

Make Sure That You Monitor the Work Being Done

You should always make sure that the work that is being done it up to your expectation. If it isn’t, then see if the contractor can fix it or else you will have to find another contractor to complete your sales tasks.

Outsourcing Example

Below are some examples of some sales tasks that I am currently outsourcing; emails, cold calling, list building, answering phone calls, monitored live chat on some of my websites and transcribing videos, among others.

As an example, I’ll look at cold calling. I have a process that I use that is very effective but it is very time consuming. I looked at how long it was taking me to call on new businesses each day and realized that if I could outsource this process, then I would be saving about 2 to 3 hours per day of time.

Not only did I gain back 2 to 3 hours of time, I also was able to increase the amount of sales calls that I could make and this in turn allowed me to increase the amount of sales I make.

I am kicking myself for not doing this earlier in my career. In fact, had I had the opportunity to outsource some of my tasks years ago, I am sure that I would be way further ahead today.

Here is my suggestion, if you work for yourself or for a company, take a look at what you can outsource so that you can focus on your core revenue generating sales tasks and then get someone to look after these tasks so that you can focus on the revenue generating tasks.

source - smallbiztrends