What even is a BPO?

Well‘ let's find out.

Grow faster

A better way to sell

Business Process Outsourcing or BPO is a term used to describe businesses whose main function is to serve as an extension of the clients who hire them. Say a company needs more individuals to help with IT support‘ that company can find an IT support BPO and start outsourcing IT support to them. The BPO saves the company time they might have spent hiring more staff and also helps mitigate the risk of a potential bad hire. The BPO's job is to be an expert in a certain area and to hire and train individuals to run processes for other companies within that area (other areas being: customer support‘ finance‘ HR‘ IT‘ etc.). The type of BPO we are focusing on is a sales BPO. Sales BPOs mainly help clients with lead generation (finding qualified leads and booking meetings with them).

“The conversations you have with your customers will not only define the direction you take your product, but the direction you take your business as a whole. Never stop talking to your customer.”

Matthew Terry
@Matt_V_Terry

Sales BPOs can take a Go-To-Market Strategy and run the actual “plays” that drive qualified leads into your calendar. If your business has a defined target customer and a relevant value proposition, you are in a perfect position to start outsourcing sales! In a start-up, there are 3 main areas a Sales BPO can be of assistance:

  • Data Entry. Sales BPOs can find, scrape, and deliver data about your target customer persona. These BPOs use tools that can find customers' emails, businesses, mobile phone numbers, and even addresses! After all the data is collected they package it up in a nice Excel file or CSV and deliver it to you or directly to your CRM.
  • Lead Generation. Cold outreach, or outbound sales, is still one of the most effective ways to get in contact with your target customers. Sales BPOs can take this off your shoulders and use software to automate email and LinkedIn outreach as well as personalize cold calls on your behalf. When doing outreach they'll have two goals. Number one: Excite the prospect (potential client) about your product or service. Number two: set up a meeting between yourself and the prospect.
  • Customer Message Iteration. In a startup, you are constantly refining how you talk to your customers. There is a systematic way for you to AB test messaging with your sales outreach strategy and using a BPO is a perfect way for you to start doing so. Give one sales rep one script and another sales rep a second script and see how customers react!

Well? What are you waiting for?

The benefits of BPOs go beyond the ones above. Without a BPO you’d have to learn the art and science behind sales (specifically cold outreach) yourself. This art takes time and failure, or time and a lot of money on professional training, to hone in. Without a BPO you'd have to learn all the tools and tricks to get systems in place to automate outreach and lead gen, all by yourself. Why waste time doing something that is easily outsourceable by seasoned experts? Are you worried about the cost?

How much does outsourcing cost?