The complete guide to B2B sales outsourcing in the Baltics and Nordics
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Reading time: 9 minutes
If you’re a foreign company looking to grow in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland or Sweden — this guide is for you.
We’ll cover what B2B sales outsourcing actually means in this region, why it works, what the process looks like, and how companies like Metroprint have used it to go from zero contacts to active deals in a matter of weeks.
What Is B2B Sales Outsourcing — and Why Do Companies Use It?
B2B sales outsourcing means handing your outbound sales process — prospecting, cold calling, lead qualification and appointment setting — to a specialist agency that operates in your target market.
Instead of hiring a local sales team, renting an office and spending months building market knowledge from scratch, you plug into a partner who already has the data, the language skills and the relationships.
Companies choose to outsource B2B sales for a few consistent reasons:
Speed. Building an in-house sales team in a new country takes 6–12 months. An outsourced team can start calling qualified prospects within weeks.
Cost. A full-time senior sales rep in Sweden or Finland costs €60,000–€90,000 per year before benefits and management overhead. Outsourced sales delivers faster results at a fraction of that.
Local knowledge. Every market in the Baltics and Nordics has its own buyer culture, decision-making structure and language. What works in Germany does not automatically work in Finland.
Focus. Your core team stays focused on delivering for customers. The outsourced agency handles the pipeline-building work.
Why the Baltics and Nordics Are Different from Other European Markets
The Baltic and Nordic region — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Norway — is one of the most attractive expansion targets for European B2B companies. But it has distinct characteristics that trip up companies who enter without local knowledge.
Decision-makers are direct and time-efficient
Nordic and Baltic buyers don’t appreciate long sales pitches or excessive formality. They want to understand the value proposition quickly, ask sharp questions and move fast if there’s a fit. Cold calls that get to the point in 30 seconds outperform carefully crafted email sequences by a wide margin.
Phone outreach still works
In many Western European markets, cold calling is increasingly difficult. In the Baltics and Nordics, direct phone outreach to the right decision-maker — especially when done in the local language — remains one of the highest-converting B2B channels available.
Language is a real barrier
Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries all have strong preferences for communication in their native languages — especially at the first-contact stage. A Swedish-speaking caller will always outperform an English-only approach when breaking into the Swedish market cold.
The databases are incomplete
High-quality, up-to-date B2B contact data for the Baltic and Nordic markets is genuinely hard to find. Many international data providers have poor coverage here. Without accurate decision-maker contacts — names, direct numbers, job titles — even the best sales script will underperform.
How B2B Sales Outsourcing Works in Practice
At Fontakt, our process follows a clear structure that has been refined across more than 20 years and over 1,000 client projects in the region.
Step 1: Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Before a single call is made, we map your target market. This means identifying which companies, industries, revenue bands and decision-maker roles are the best fit for your offering — and filtering out everyone else.
This step is more important than most companies realise. A well-defined ICP means your sales team talks only to prospects who actually have a reason to buy. A vague ICP means wasted calls and weak conversion rates.
Step 2: Build a targeted contact database
We compile a clean, verified list of decision-makers at the companies that match your ICP. For Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Fontakt maintains its own proprietary database of over 668,000 companies with direct contacts. For Finland and Sweden, we combine our own data with local market research.
This step alone separates professional B2B sales outsourcing from generic lead generation. Volume without accuracy is just noise.
Step 3: Outreach — calls, qualification and follow-up
Our sales agents make direct outbound calls to your target list. Every call has a clear goal: identify interest, qualify the prospect against your criteria and move them toward a concrete next step — whether that’s a meeting, a sample request or a quote.
Prospects are categorised clearly:
- Hot — strong interest, active discussion, ready for a sales conversation
- Neutral — potential fit but timing is off; kept warm for follow-up
- Cold — no interest or not relevant
We don’t just hand over a list of hot leads and disappear. Fontakt stays involved through the follow-up stage, helping move the best conversations forward until they reach your sales team as genuinely qualified opportunities.
Step 4: Handover and continued support
Once a prospect is qualified and ready, we hand over to your team with full context — what was discussed, what their needs are, what objections came up. If needed, we join the first meeting to support local communication and cultural navigation.
Case Study: How Metroprint Entered the Swedish Market
One of the clearest examples of what B2B sales outsourcing can deliver in practice is Metroprint’s expansion into Sweden.
The company: Metroprint Systems is an Estonian large-format digital printing company founded in 2000. They produce banners, flags, posters, signs, roll-ups and promotional items, exporting around 60% of their output — primarily to Finland. In 2025, they decided to actively enter Sweden.
The challenge: Metroprint faced four real problems when they tried to enter Sweden independently:
- No reliable database of Swedish decision-makers in their target segments
- Limited Swedish language capability in their sales team
- Low response rates from their initial email-based outreach to 70–80 companies
- A competitive market where product quality alone wasn’t a differentiator — Swedish competitors offered comparable quality
What Fontakt did:
We started by analysing the Swedish market and mapping a target group of 1,728 companies across five key segments: printing and production companies, trade fair and event organisers, advertising and marketing agencies, packaging companies and brand design studios.
From this, we identified 287 companies as qualified prospects — the right size, right industry, right buying behaviour. Our Swedish-speaking sales team then conducted direct phone outreach, focusing on quality conversations rather than call volume.
Every call followed a simple qualification framework: is there a real need, is there a real budget, is this the right person, and is the timing right? Leads were categorised as hot, neutral or cold, and the hot prospects were moved into active discussions with Metroprint’s team — with Fontakt joining meetings where local language support was needed.
The results:
- 287 companies qualified from a target group of 1,728
- 167 companies showed clear interest
- 27 offers, quotation requests and test job discussions generated
- First test orders placed and deliveries underway to Southern Sweden
- Multiple active prospects in ongoing pipeline discussions
This happened in a matter of months — not years. Metroprint now has a genuine foothold in Sweden with a clear path for growth, without having had to hire a local sales team or open a Swedish office.
Who Should Consider B2B Sales Outsourcing in the Baltics and Nordics?
This approach works best for companies that fit one of these profiles:
You’re entering a new market and need traction fast. If you want to validate demand, build a pipeline and get to your first customers in Sweden, Finland or the Baltics within 3–6 months, outsourced sales is the fastest route.
You have a strong product but no local network. Many excellent European companies struggle in the Baltics and Nordics simply because they don’t know who to call. We solve that problem directly.
Your in-house team doesn’t have local language skills. Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian are all challenging languages. Even strong English speakers in these markets respond better to local-language outreach at the cold stage.
You want to test the market before committing to a full local operation. Outsourced sales lets you generate real market intelligence — who’s buying, what objections come up, which segments respond fastest — before making long-term hiring or office decisions.
The Baltics vs the Nordics: Key Differences for B2B Sales
Both regions offer strong B2B opportunities, but they operate differently.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are fast-moving, digitally advanced markets with shorter sales cycles and relatively high openness to new suppliers. Decision-making tends to sit at the CEO or owner level in SMEs, which makes direct outreach highly efficient. These markets are also excellent entry points for companies looking to establish a Baltic base before scaling north.
Finland and Sweden are larger markets with stronger purchasing power but longer sales cycles and more complex procurement processes in enterprise accounts. First-contact in Swedish or Finnish matters more here. Building trust through consistent follow-up is important — decisions rarely happen after a single call.
For most companies, the smartest entry sequence is: Estonia first to validate messaging, then Latvia and Lithuania in parallel, then Finland and Sweden once the offer and positioning are proven.
What to Expect: Timelines and Results
Honest expectations matter. Here’s what a typical B2B sales outsourcing engagement looks like at Fontakt:
Weeks 1–2: Market mapping, ICP definition, database build, messaging alignment.
Weeks 3–6: Active outreach begins. First qualified leads identified. Initial market feedback starts coming in.
Months 2–3: Pipeline grows. Hot leads move into meetings and proposal discussions. Pattern recognition emerges — which segments respond best, what objections are most common.
Months 3–6: First deals close or are in late-stage discussion. Market intelligence is strong enough to make informed hiring and investment decisions.
Results vary by product, market and ICP quality. The Metroprint case — 167 interested companies and 27 active opportunities from a target group of 1,728 — is a strong but realistic benchmark for a well-defined B2B offer entering a new Nordic market.
5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a B2B Sales Outsourcing Agency
Not all agencies are equal. Before signing a contract, ask these:
1. Do you have your own database for this market, or do you rely on third-party data?
Third-party data in the Baltics and Nordics is often outdated. Agencies with proprietary, verified databases consistently outperform those buying generic lists.
2. Do your callers speak the local language natively?
This is non-negotiable for cold outreach in Sweden and Finland. Ask to hear a sample call if possible.
3. What does the lead handover process look like?
A hot lead with no context is barely better than a cold name. Ask how calls are documented and how handovers are structured.
4. Do you stay involved after the first call?
The best agencies — Fontakt included — stay in the process through qualification, follow-up and the first meeting. Agencies that disappear after delivering a list rarely produce real results.
5. Can you share references or case studies from this specific market?
Results in Poland tell you nothing about results in Finland. Ask for market-specific evidence.
Why Fontakt
Fontakt is the Baltics’ oldest B2B sales agency, with over 20 years of experience and more than 1,000 client projects across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden.
We operate across the full sales development cycle — from building your target database to making the calls, qualifying the leads, booking the meetings and supporting your team through the first client conversations.
Our proprietary database covers over 668,000 Estonian companies alone, with deep coverage across Latvia, Lithuania and the Nordics. Our agents are native or fluent speakers in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish and Swedish.
We work with technology companies, SaaS providers, manufacturers, service businesses and professional services firms looking to grow in the Baltic and Nordic region. Whether you need 20 qualified meetings per month or a full market entry programme, we build the process around your goals.
Ready to Start?
If you’re planning to expand into the Baltics or Nordics and want a conversation about what B2B sales outsourcing could look like for your company, we’d be happy to talk.
Contact us at [email protected] or fill in your details and we’ll call you — we’re good at it.
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