

Risks B2B companies should avoid with in-house sales prospecting - prayag
http://blog.mobileworks.com/7-risks-b2b-companies-should-avoid-with-in-house-sales-prospecting

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notahacker
There are some worthwhile points in there - hiring too many people too early
is always a risk and underprepared telesales people can harm your brand - but
also quite a few suspiciously specific figures and claims (I particularly like
the "more than _34%_ of the leads you purchase may be unusable" claim, but the
assumption the enterprise salesperson isn't doing anything useful to generate
business over the "6-18 months to ramp up" is probably the most dubious one).

The validity of most of the claims very much depends on the product, value
proposition and industry: there are an awful lot of industries where finding
apparently suitable contacts is the easy part, plenty of salespeople whose
_strength_ is the network and knowledge that allows them to identify the right
prospects at the right time - whether they spend more than 20% of their time
doing that or not - and plenty of startups where _knowing who your potential
customers are_ is the very last function that should be outsourced.

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neals
If you're not a native English speaker, like myself, knowing that "SDR" means
"Sales Development Representative" actually turns this into quite the
interesting read.

