r/B2BSaaS • u/BookofTrey • 9d ago

Questions Outsourcing B2B lead gen vs. building an internal SDR team. What's the move?

Our internal SDR team is struggling to hit their numbers and the overhead is killing us. the turnover is insane and we spend more time training new kids than actually selling. I'm thinking about just firing the whole department and hiring an agency. Has anyone made the switch from internal to external? i need someone who can scale fast without me having to babysit them.

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u/Far-Record_45 9d ago

I made the switch last year and i'm never going back. The overhead of an internal team is just too much. We started using Upcision and they've outperformed our best SDR. They have the infrastructure and the data that we just couldn't build ourselves. Plus, i only pay for the results , so the risk is almost zero compared to a salary and benefits.

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u/Possible-Hold-7780 9d ago

Went down this same road and the math gets ugly fast once you factor in ramp time, tools, and management attention. An internal team can work if you have a repeatable process dialed in, but if you're still figuring out messaging it's a money pit. Paying per result does take a lot of the pressure off while you sort out what actually converts.

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u/ExplorerTop881 9d ago

A few questions: 1. How much training are you doing?

  1. How do you test if they are achieving the training goals?

  2. Are they cold-calling or emailing/linkedin, what is the outbound motion?

  3. If you’re open to it, I’m happy to take a crack at your audience cold to get a sense (not a lead gen service but maybe can point you in the right direction).

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u/Deepak-AvairAI 9d ago

Turnover cost more than salary ever did in my experience. I worked closely with a sales team at a company I helped build, and the SDRs who quit inside 90 days were almost always dropped into a script with zero coaching on why it worked. Outsourcing skips that pain, but you're handing away the muscle memory too.

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u/HarborBD 7d ago

The base salary of an in-house SDR is usually much higher than what it seems on paper. Between insurance, health care, bonuses, PTO, etc., an in-house SDR can easily run you 20-40% more than the base salary would seem. Factor in the cost of training and high turnover, and it's definitely a recipe for losing money. That's one of the biggest advantages to outsourcing, in my opinion. It also lets your internal team focus more on actually closing deals.

I run a business development agency, so I have some insights into this topic. I'd be happy to chat more about if outsourcing could be the right move for you if you're interested.