Two B2B media veterans discuss merits of outsourced ad sales

The following article was written by Ronn Levine and published as a Software & Information Industry Association Media Alert.

Jim Elliott, president of James G. Elliott Company, Inc., and John French, CEO of French LLC and a senior advisor to SIIA, address why traditional sales force construction has become an increasingly high-risk investment.

Running an in-house sales department has many risks that companies using outside sales don’t face. And that's a big reason why other industries have stayed away from the in-house approach.

This was the theme of a session delivered at the February 2026 Business of Information Media summit by Jim Elliott and John French, titled Reimagining Revenue Strategies, and doubled down on by the pair in an interview this week with SIIA Media Alert.

 French said that “the tradition in B2B is you have your own salespeople. But in some cases, that could be a trap because you don't give it any thought. You might think it was working, but when you start adding up the costs involved, it may not be. If someone could just take that whole function and improve it and get it off your plate, would you do it? The answer has got to be yes.”

 Elliott said that a CEO looking at his or her margins might think sales is costing a lot less than it really is.

“What about the time spent on sales by HR and IT, and all the tech stacks, which are really brought in for ad sales, that are needed today?” Elliott asked. “If you start adding these up, what is your real cost of sales? Is it 20% or is it 40% or 45%? These are things you have to think about.”

Besides costs, the efficiency of in-house sales was also questioned. “Most people who are sales managers in this industry would only rehire about a third of their existing sales staff, if given the opportunity,” French said, citing a past survey. “Because, number one, the other two-thirds are not as good as they think they should be, but it's also the old, ‘I don't know if I can find replacements so maybe it's cut from my budget.’

James G. Elliott Company Founder and CEO Jim Elliott says that an in-house ad sales staff carries overhead and support costs that are often not properly accounted for when measuring ROI on media initiatives.

“You get all these excuses, as opposed to, ‘Do you have the best salespeople you could possibly have with your brand in the field and performing?’” French continued. “If the answer is yes, why do you care whether they're direct employees or not? It's just not as important. You have to think about your core missions, quality content, and growing engaged audiences.”

Why then do most B2B media companies continue using in-house sales? French said that it’s the threat of losing control.

Elliott concurred, adding that it’s also an incorrect assumption. “You actually have a lot more control of an independent rep, contractually, than you do of a direct salesperson. You just have to lay out the rules and have agreements, and you do that via a contract. That’s vs. an employment agreement which can be really messy. Plus an independent rep will have more credibility, and that's always been true, particularly in other industries.”

French praised industries that “have put the most important part of their lifeline, revenue,” in outside hands. “That's just hard for people to do,” he said. “An independent sales organization, all it does is sales. They will be the best trained and educated. And it’s something you could never build internally because you're probably only going to take one shot and leave it alone for another year.”

A final point the pair made is that with private equity so prevalent today, seeing a huge in-house headcount—and their big salaries—can scare potential suitors away. Using an outside firm gives much more flexibility, not to mention reducing many of the costs and management time, Elliott said. It also can help you avoid possible personnel issues.

“The business has changed, but it's still a business of content and getting people to look at what you're producing,” Elliott concluded. “There’s no system in the tech stack that's going to provide the magic dust for you. Why do all these big companies in the financial markets use independents? It's mostly the B2B industry that blinks about it.”