Let’s start this bluntly and say that, you probably have a social media profile. And, if you are on LinkedIn, you could probably read a post or two about the wrong ways of outsourcing. Outsourcing is the practice of delegating projects, tasks, and work to another company. Sometimes, people who buy the service are unaware and consider this to exploit those they hired.
But not all is that bad. At least it isn’t if you go with a professional outsourcing company or white label agency.
Why People Complain About Outsourcing
There’s a method of giving feedback called the hamburger method (sometimes they call it the sandwich method, though). Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that you get feedback after eating a hamburger, but you give input in layers.
First, you say something negative, then positive, and repeat the process. Yet, people are stuck on the negative aspects when it comes to outsourcing. They associate outsourcing with an affordable, low quality service.
Is that the actual image? Well, it partly is. The stereotype often is true. But does that mean that outsourcing never works? Of course not.
Like with anything else, you have to know how to pick the right team for the job.
Building the Case Up
If outsourcing is that bad, then you have to ask why:
- Around 54% of companies use third-party teams to work with customers
- Globally businesses spent $75 billion on outsourcing in the previous year
- Us has 58 million freelance workers
- About 78% of companies around the world are willing to outsource
- At least 300,000 jobs are outsourced from the US every year
Suppose you were to trust the stats. It kind of looks like people do outsource, and the question is – To whom do they outsource?
Delegation
If you were to trust the statistics, it’s evident that people are outsourcing. But not every outsourcing team is the same, and some get the work done, and those don’t.
The trick is to find those that get the work done. Of course, if your only parameter for quality is the low project price, you are bound to fail.
However, there are legitimate teams that work as contractors for other agencies. From their point of view, it’s a constant stream of work they can take and build a business around.
Also, they can partner up with marketing agencies and help them manage digital marketing by building custom websites. That allows them to take ongoing clients and have worked all the time without directly dealing with clients.
Deluminal works that way. However, before we did this, it took some convincing to let the agency and business owners partner up with us.
When to Use Outsourcing
Maybe you still need convincing or have a bad experience with outsourcing. If you are willing to try, you can work with us and see how we perform. If not, you can use the three following steps to measure and hire an outsourcing team.
Verifying the Team
Always verify the team before hiring anyone. To do that, check out:
- Their website
- Their professional profiles
- Their testimonials
- Their portfolio
A website is a good sign of the quality you can get from the outsourcing team. If they have a website with a bad design, move on.
Next, check their professional profiles. Your first stop is LinkedIn, so check their previous employment and activity, and that should help you estimate who is hiring and who you are looking to employ.
Finally, look at their portfolio and testimonials. Check out what they did previously and what their previous customers say about them. Then, you decide whether to hire them or not.
First Contact
If you decide to proceed with them, contact them in time. During the first contact, you want to find out about:
- Their rates
- Their turnover
- Their previous work
Learning about their rates and turnover is essential, but you should focus on their previous work. Examine what they try to pitch you as their best work. Then go again and examine that and see what they’ve done and how it all pans out.
Testing the Waters
If you decide to hire them, test the waters first. Please don’t go overboard and delegate to them a lot of work.
Start with smaller tasks first and see if they are up to the challenge. Now that you have the proof of work, delegate more, and that’s how you do outsourcing work for you.
At least, that’s how we start each relationship with new clients, and that’s the least you deserve if you want to buy our services.
Outsource
Outsourcing works, but it works only with the right people behind it. If you think about it, that’s how it is for most available services.
Always research and ask questions. That’s the only way to protect your business and get the most out of outsourcing services.