Outsourcing in Presales: Can It Work Without Losing the Essence?

Outsourcing in Presales: Can It Work Without Losing the Essence?

Presales carries a large part of the modern sales process. From discovery to demonstrations and proofs of concept (PoC (opens in a new tab)), presales professionals connect customer needs with your business's solutions. Presales teams also juggle complex customer interactions and time-consuming repetitive tasks, like RFX (opens in a new tab) responses or PoC preparation. That makes outsourcing tempting.

Does outsourcing in presales make sense? What tasks, if any, can be outsourced without compromising the deep knowledge and customer-centricity that define effective presales?

What Does Outsourcing in Presales Look Like?

When outsourcing presales, tasks are typically segmented into two categories:

1. Customer-Facing Activities: Discovery calls, tailored demonstrations, and strategic consulting.
2. Supportive and Repetitive Tasks: RFX responses, PoC preparation, and technical validations.

For example, partnering with an external provider like Accenture could involve outsourcing specific functions like:

• Preparing RFX templates and responses using pre-existing knowledge repositories.
• Developing generic PoCs or demos based on a standardised framework.
• Conducting initial technical validations to confirm feasibility.

These tasks are foundational. They also take a lot of resources, and you can separate them from the personal, high-touch side of presales.

The Pros of Outsourcing Presales

1. Scalability: Outsourcing allows teams to scale resources quickly during peak demand (e.g., for RFP season or large enterprise deals).
2. Cost Efficiency: Reducing reliance on full-time hires for repetitive tasks can lower overheads.
3. Specialised Expertise: External providers with niche skills (e.g., in emerging technologies) can augment your team's technical capabilities.
4. Focus on Strategy: Internal teams can focus on high-value activities like customer discovery, storytelling, and strategic consultation.

The Cons of Outsourcing Presales

1. Loss of Context: Customer-facing presales functions require deep product knowledge and a nuanced understanding of customer pain points, something external teams may lack.
2. Cultural Disconnect: Outsourced teams might not fully align with your organisation's values or approach to customer interactions.
3. Inconsistent Quality: Standardised outputs from external teams may lack the tailored approach needed to differentiate your solution.
4. Customer Perception: Customers value trust and continuity in interactions, which might be disrupted if an external team is involved.

Can Critical Presales Functions Be Outsourced?

• Discovery: Discovery is the core of presales. It demands deep listening, customer understanding and the ability to match solutions to pain points. Outsourcing this is risky and could harm customer relationships.
  • Verdict: Best kept in-house.
• Demonstrations: While the creation of generic demos can be outsourced, tailoring them to specific customers requires internal expertise.
  • Verdict: Outsource standard demo development but keep customer-specific delivery in-house.
• RFX Responses: These repetitive and structured tasks are ideal for outsourcing, provided internal teams oversee final alignment with customer needs.
  • Verdict: Outsource groundwork but involve internal teams for refinement.
• PoC Development: Standard PoCs can be outsourced, but complex and tailored versions should remain in-house to ensure alignment with customer-specific requirements.
  • Verdict: Outsource standard PoCs; keep complex cases in-house.

What About Relocating Supporting Tasks?

For organisations hesitant to fully outsource presales functions, relocating supporting tasks to low-cost regions offers a viable middle ground. This approach balances cost efficiency with quality control.

RFX Teams in Low-Cost Locations

Rather than outsourcing the entire RFX process, businesses can establish specialised RFX teams in low-cost countries to handle the initial drafts.

• How It Works: These teams focus on standard templates and pre-defined answers, reducing the workload for presales experts who then refine the final submission.
• Benefits: This model cuts costs while maintaining the high standards required for successful RFX responses.

Technical Demo Preparation Teams

Maintaining and updating demo environments can be labour-intensive. Relocating these tasks to technical teams in cost-effective regions ensures demos are always up-to-date.

• How It Works: Support teams manage backend preparation, update use cases, and test workflows, enabling presales professionals to focus on tailoring and delivering demos.
• Benefits: This approach allows presales experts to dedicate more time to customer-facing activities without compromising demo quality.

How Relocating Differs from Outsourcing

Relocating supporting tasks differs from outsourcing in key ways:

1. Control: Internal teams remain part of the organisation, ensuring alignment with goals and culture.
2. Knowledge Retention: By training and managing relocated teams, institutional knowledge is preserved.
3. Cost Efficiency: Salaries in low-cost regions provide significant savings without sacrificing quality.

Conclusion: Structuring PreSales for Maximum Impact

Outsourcing and reallocating tasks in PreSales is about optimising efficiency, not replacing expertise. I believe the best way to organise a PreSales team is simple. Let professionals focus on high-value, customer-centric activities: Discovery, Solutioning, Demos, and Managing the Client Relationship. These are the core areas where PreSales professionals make the biggest impact and should not be diluted by operational tasks.

To gain efficiency, you can introduce a structured support system:

• Dedicated teams for demo environments and system performance: Maintaining, updating, and ensuring the reliability of demo environments can be resource-intensive. A specialised team can handle this without taking time away from customer-facing PreSales experts. (Can be low-cost country setup)
• RFX and Questionnaire teams: Responding to RFPs and security questionnaires matters, but it is repetitive. A specialised team drafts the initial responses, and PreSales refines and customises them. That saves time and keeps the quality. (Can combine elements of cost-effective country arrangements with new PreSales Starters)
• Additional specialised teams for Proof of Value (PoV) and Proof of Concepts (PoC): A dedicated team can manage and execute PoVs and PoCs. In complex multi-solution sales cycles, that simplifies the process and keeps it closer to customer expectations. These engagements take a lot of time. They may need senior experts with a dedicated focus to keep quality and client satisfaction high.

For those wondering about how to handle compensation structures in such a model, team goals and team commissions could be the answer. When incentives reward collective success over individual contributions, collaboration stays strong. The incentives still drive the right behaviours.

Segment responsibilities in this way and businesses can scale PreSales. They keep depth, engagement, and the personal touch that makes it so valuable in the sales process. The key is balance, keeping customer trust and strategic influence intact while offloading time-consuming, operational-heavy tasks to specialised teams.

If you want to learn more about PreSales, please visit www.presales-handbook.com (opens in a new tab), buy the PreSales Handbook (opens in a new tab), or take the PreSales Mastery Course (opens in a new tab).