For this particular issue, possibly no real benefit. The problem we are having is that we can't see what you see which means all we can give you are shots in the dark. You have posted nothing that will help us tell you what may help you improve your process. There is no DDL for the table, any indexes on the table, foreign keys (both to and from the table).

Seeing the actual execution plan would also help, but by the time you had that the DELETE would be done as well, unless this is a recurring process that needs to be improved.