What percentage of your SDRs’ time is actually spent speaking with prospects? For most sales organization, this number isn’t as high as it should be.

Rather than communicating with prospects, SDRs often spend the majority of their day hunting down contact information, looking for new leads, and preparing for and scheduling meetings.

Although all of these tasks are critical to the sales process, they may not be the most efficient use of your sales team’s time.

Here are five tasks that can be outsourced to allow your team to spend less time collecting information, and more time talking with prospects.

1. Collecting prospect contact information

Finding contact information for leads doesn’t need to consume a large percentage of your team’s time. If you already know what individuals or companies you want to reach out to, have your virtual sales team or assistant track down the contact information.

Have your virtual team use tools like PersistIQ’s Chrome Extension to find prospect email addresses on social networks and add them directly to your database.

2. Scheduling appointments

Particularly if the decision makers that you need to reach are executives, finding a time to meet can be complicated and time consuming.

Rather than having your SDRs constantly running into gatekeepers, use a virtual sales team to reach out and schedule these appoints. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that they are professional and educated – but they don’t need to be your higher-paid SDRs.

3. Doing pre-meeting research

In the book Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi mentions the value of compiling a one-page information sheet on the interests and experiences of an individual before meeting with them. By doing detailed research on an individual, it becomes easier to connect around shared interests and experiences.

Having a virtual assistant quickly develop an information sheet using LinkedIn, Facebook, and a quick Google search, you may discover a new way to connect with the individual – whether that’s through their alma mater, mutual friends, or child looking for an internship.

4. Taking and recording meeting minutes

Keeping track of the key takeaways from a meeting is important – but trying to take notes while leading the conversation can be difficult. Meanwhile, recording a conversation to go back and listen to later doubles the time investment required.

A virtual assistant can take notes throughout the meeting – making it easy to remember who is responsible for what and any other key points discussed during the conversation.

5. Sending out holiday and thank-you cards

Maintaining contact with current and potential customers is crucial for any business. While there are many ways to do this, making it efficient, yet personal, can be challenging.

A virtual assistant can help with everything from crafting messages, to finding and purchasing gifts, to sending thank-you cards. By taking the time to send a physical piece of mail, you help keep your business at the forefront of your prospect’s mind.

Closing thoughts…

Many effective salespeople are high-energy and results driven. Requiring them to spend time on monotonous tasks can be both mentally draining and a waste of their talents. By finding ways to outsource the right tasks through individual freelancers or structured teams like SupportNinja, you can increase the moral and productivity of your SDRs, while improving your bottom line.