What Type of Leads Can You Generate Outsourcing Sales?

by Glen Springer | Mar 15, 2017

When companies need to get a quick burst of new leads to accelerate their sales funnel and increase the productivity of their internal sales reps they often turn to outsourcing sales and marketing as a viable solution.  And that outsourcing sales company will use:

• Lead Gen Reps
• Email Marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Lead Scoring
• Content Marketing

These integrated campaigns give you the ability to generate leads using a combination of outsourced sales reps and modern sales and marketing technologies.  And with the advent of these integrated campaigns a lead may be ready for your closers without having spoken with your  outsourced sales rep.   This is done with marketing automation systems that score leads.  You can download our leadscoring whitepaper here.

Below is quick summary of how we recommend you classify leads at different stages.  It is also representative of the different type of leads you can expect from an outsourcing sales partner using modern technologies.

Lead Gen and Early Stage Leads –  These are the earliest stage leads.  They are typically leads that are the right type of decision maker in the right vertical.   They can be cold lists or leads that have opened one email in an email campaign.   They are not cold leads but they have not demonstrated any interest in your solution. All other leads are transitioned during a weekly meeting.

Marketing Qualified Leads –  These are leads that have started  to engage with your company.  They may be opening emails consistently and looking at your early stage educational content.    They are demonstrating early stage interest either by accepting additional information from a buyer development rep, or by reading blog articles.

Tele Sales Accepted Lead –   If they are engaging with buyer developments reps and are agreeing to follow up calls (but not formal appointments).   They are not volunteering what there pains or problems are yet.

Sales Accepted Leads –  These buyers are starting to engage with your content in meaningful way.  If you are scoring them in your marketing automation system that are watching demo videos or looking at your solutions page or even looking at pricing.  If they are engaging with buyer development reps they are answering probing questions and discussing their existing solution or their problems.

Sales Qualified Leads –  These buyers understand the problems your business solves and the problems you can help them solve.  They have expressed a need, and agree to an appointment with your senior sales reps.   Finally in many cases they have acknowledged that they have a budget, a path to budget of a timeline for making a decision.

Finally when should I take a lead over from my outsourcing sales team?

An outsourcing sales campaign will generate multiple types and stages of sales leads so there is no right time to take a lead over.  When to take a lead over is your decision and depends on how much time your senior reps have on their hands.  Over time, most leads will be either Sales Accepted or Sales Qualified but early in the campaign you can take  leads sooner rather than  later.

Long term we find that the best leads have both a high lead score in the marketing automation platform and are agreeing to next steps or appointments with your buyer development rep after being probed for need and other qualification criteria. In short, they are moving through a process.  So by outsourcing sales you can take leads over at any time especially if your closers are cold calling because leads at any stage that are engaging will be more productive than a cold lead.  A client will sometimes cherry pick the pipe early in the sales process if closers have extra time to develop leads or there is a great deal of pressure for early revenue.  But over time you can expect your outsourcing sales rep to take them through sales ready to appointment setting.

To learn more about our new approach to outsourcing sales and how we can help you build sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our approach to outsourced sales and marketing.

Finding Sales and Marketing Talent Fast by Outsourcing Sales

by Glen Springer | Mar 10, 2017

If you have been in business for more than 3 years it should now be abundantly clear that we all are experiencing a dramatic shift in sales and marketing where outsourcing sales can help you quickly address these issues:

• Buyers are now in control of the sales process and solutions are first “bought”— with digital content that proves you understand your buyers’ needs and pains—then “sold” by closers, once buyers feel educated enough to engage in deeper discussions.
• Buyers want to understand how you solve their problem, and then want to understand your product features. So your reps need content and tools to tell that story.
• You can no longer just throw callers at lead generation to solve your early stage funnel issues because buyers simply don’t pick up the phone as often as they used to.

Success now requires a team of sales and marketing professionals running integrated campaigns and technology to successfully sell to the new digitally driven buyer.

And once a business owner reaches this conclusion they will often decide to consider outsourcing sales.  They will consider outsourcing sales  as a solution to help them cover some of the talent and expertise gaps they have in their existing organization because they don’t have the time or the expertise to recruit, hire and train a team with the experts required to sell to the new digital buyer.

Below is a quick list of the sales and marketing talent an outsourcing sales company can bring to the table in less than 30 days.

• A senior strategist – Your outsourced sales campaign will be guided by a strategist that understand how to tell a powerful sales story using digital marketing and sales reps.
• Content producer – An integrated campaign will require content production.  A sales outsourcing company will be able to supply a team of video producers, copy writers and graphic designers on a part time basis to support your efforts.
• Sales technology specialist – You will immediately gain access to a marketing automation and CRM specialist to make sure your systems are implemented with best practices to produce the results you need.
• Marketing manager – You will have a marketing manager to manage your inbound and outbound campaigns and reporting, and ensure your digital marketing and lead gen success.
• Database specialist – Managing an early stage pipeline requires clean and updated data.  You will have a specialist that understands how to build and manage a database of leads.
• Buyer development and inside sales reps – Even if you can drive all your leads with inbound marketing you will eventually need someone to qualify your leads or manage the close of the sale.  An outsourced sales company can provide and scale that team.

To learn more about Gabriel Sales ability to help you quickly build and staff a repeatable sales and marketing process please feel free to visit our outsourcing sales page.

5 Quick Outsourced Sales Projects to Accelerate Sales

by Glen Springer | Feb 26, 2017

Q1 should now be kicking into high gear and if you feel like you could use a little extra push to help put more sales qualified leads into your closers funnel, here are five quick projects an outsourced sales and marketing company could take on to quickly accelerate your sales funnel.

Make those extra calls

Most companies don’t wait to follow up on inbound leads because you want to call the best and most active prospects first – especially if you are in a highly competitive industry.  And getting there first improves your closing % by as much as a 100%.  As a result most inside sales teams will prioritize inbound leads as they come in and if your inbound volume is high enough your internal team will often give up on leads after 1 or 2 calls if they don’t connect.

If you have at least 400 dormant inbound leads most outsourced sales company can staff a rep to make those 3rd, 4th and sometimes 5th attempt to mine your previous investment.  Odds are if you were not able to connect quickly neither were your competitors and there are opportunities sitting in your dead lead file.

Run an educational eMail marketing campaign

As Q1 is moving into full gear most companies have started to set budgets and are starting to work on their business priorities for 2017.  Now is a perfect time for you to introduce your solution and build awareness for companies looking to prioritize your solution in 2017.  An outsourced sales and marketing company can help you quickly pull the trigger on an email marketing campaign using educational content you already have  to build awareness to a market of up to 75,000 new decision makers to generate as many as 5000 early stage leads for as little as $6000.

Automate your initial product demo or senior executives answering frequently asked questions  

Most senior buyers are interested in learning more about businesses solutions. But if it’s not one of their immediate priorities they may not want to invest the 30 plus minutes it takes to sit through a full product demo or to meet with one of your senior leaders.  An outsourced sales and marketing company can make it easier for your buyer by running a quick one day video production work shop.  You can leverage this type of workshop to:

• Create a series of short demo videos that allow buyers to get a quick taste of how your solution works and what problems it solves for them.
• Have your executives answer some of the most frequently asked and business critical questions on camera.

This content can be used by your internal sales team to make it easier for buyers that are on the fence get off the fence and generate that first critical sales call.

Gain a competitive advantage and finally pull the trigger on a marketing automation platform

Everyone knows that automation is the future.  In fact 85% of B2B technology companies and most retailers and CPG companies have already adopted marketing automation technologies into their mission critical sales technology.  But in some industries adoption is still well below 30%.   This gives your business the ability to gain a competitive advantage other businesses in your industry may not have, but most companies don’t pull the trigger because they don’t have the core expertise in house to do it effectively and/or they don’t have the internal capacity to do the heavy lifting to set these systems up.  An outsourced sales and marketing company can help with both in as little as 30 days.

About Gabriel Sales Outsourced Sales Solutions

We believe that calling efforts are still critical to sales success but that the new digital buyer now requires and integrated approach to sales and marketing.

Gabriel Sales works with start-up companies and small business trying to scale their sales and marketing efforts.  We specialize in helping build modern sales and marketing operations to build a sustained, repeatable and consistent flow in new sales opportunities.  We do this by helping companies implement integrated solutions or by simply and immediately plugging capacity gaps in our clients existing efforts.  This is not your father’s outsourced sales and marketing solution and we invite you to learn more about our new approach to outsourced sales to decide if we can help your business thrive in both the short and long term.