Enough with the Outsourcing Hype

Enough with the Outsourcing Hype

To deny our own excitement about online outsourcing would be plain weird. But even excitement deserves a little respect. A lot of excitement about outsourcing’s capabilities is unfortunately surrounded by outright hype, which in some situations, could be interpreted as simple lies. And you know what they say about lies.

Repeat lies often enough — people start to believe them!

We don’t want that to happen with outsourcing. So that’s why we’re making a clear distinction between outsourcing hype and reality. We’re making that distinction, in fact, with the typical ‘sales spew’ you might find scattered throughout the web:

Outsourcing Hype #1

Sales Spew: “Outsourcing Can Be As Simple As A Few Easy Steps”

Outsourcing was never designed to be simple. It was designed, instead, to simplify involvement in a business process by passing that involvement on to a 3rd party. And while involvement is simplified in outsourcing, claiming it can be reduced to a few easy steps is really stretching things.

There are many steps involved in outsourcing in fact, including preparation, vetting, analyzing, monitoring, evaluating, and more which increase in with a project’s complexity.

Outsourcing Hype #2

Sales Spew: “There’s a super-simple litmus test you can use that’ll weed out bad workers SUPER fast.”

This litmus test is a strategy outsourcers use to see if bidders paid any attention to their job requests, and it’s somewhat similar to the CAPTCHA strategy used in online form submissions. You’ve seen these. You’re asked to solve a simple math question or repeat a part of a sentence.

The problem with this spew is that it does nothing more than test whether a bidder can solve 1st grade math or parrot what’s on a computer screen. It does nothing to discern bad C programmers, for example, from a pool of hundreds or even thousands of horrible C++ programmers or Visual C++ programmers.

Outsourcing Hype #3

Sales Spew: “You can be stone cold positive — before you ever hire someone — that they’ll do a GREAT job for you.”

There are certain steps outsourcers take to reduce hiring risks during the vetting process because there’s absolutely nothing that will guarantee instant hiring success. This is what makes vetting so important (and not as simple as implied above). Again, depending on a project’s complexity, it could take days or even weeks to identify quality candidates based on a wide number of factors.

Outsourcing Hype #4

Sales Spew” “Make Nearly $2,000,000 Outsourcing Your Internet Business”

Outsourcing can and will save money when implemented carefully and responsibly. Implemented strategically, it can and will generate sales. But it’s a mistake to believe you can rake in millions of dollars by simply outsourcing.

Like walking is but one approach to getting somewhere, outsourcing is but one approach to generating sales — best served in conjunction with additional, complementary tasks. 

Outsourcing Hype #5

Sales Spew: “Have your virtual assistants complete tasks with 100% accuracy on their first try.”

If you haven’t already, register a username for yourself so you can discuss this topic in our Outsourcing Forum.

As stated in our book, service providers are people – not machines, angels, or superheroes from outer space. They are Earth-bound humans prone to produce Earth-bound errors. Expecting anything else is expecting the impossible.

So let’s give this outsourcing hype thing a rest. It’s great to enthusiastically discuss online outsourcing, but it’s flat out unethical to turn it into a miracle machine. Do yourself and your audience a favor by discussing outsourcing truthfully so we all can benefit from what outsourcing has to offer.