When Sales Outsourcing Target an Ideal Customer Profile

When Sales Outsourcing Target an Ideal Customer Profile

by | Dec 19, 2016

As a sales outsourcing company understanding our clients Ideal Customer Profile is critical to:

  • Understanding what story your sales outsourcing and marketing team should be telling
  • Understanding how to tell this story
  • Understanding where your sales outsourcing and marketing team should focus their efforts

When you have a clear understanding of who you are targeting and why you are targeting them you sales outsourcing team will produce significantly better results on the back end.

What is an Ideal Customer Profile?

An Ideal Customer Profile is a process for you and your sales outsourcing partner to identify the buyers you should focus on for the best return from your outsourcing sales, marketing and lead generation investment.  As sales outsourcing company this is the first area focus on when we provide sales consulting during the launch of a client.  This area is critical because the leads you put into the funnel will have a downstream impact across the entire sales funnel.

Ultimately, an Ideal Customer Profile enables your sales outsourcing and marketing team to target your potential buyer based on hard criteria directly correlated to the type of company and specific buyer persona, such as:

  • Company revenue
  • Company employee count
  • Level where the decision will be made
  • Level where the decision will be influenced
  • Technology Adopted –  ERP, CRM, Social Media Platforms, Marketing Automation Platform, etc.

Your Ideal Customer profile should also include softer criteria:

  • Business Pain/Need
  • Psychographics – company culture, leadership style, corporate values
  • Education Level of Decision Makers – MBAs, MBAs from Ivy,  Under Graduate degrees

It is also important to know who you don’t want to sell to:

  • Are there decision makers or influencers who would feel threatened by the solution

The reason you want to start with this level of detail is so your company and your sales outsourcing partner will be fully aligned focused on:

  • Telling a powerful sales story to buyers that are most likely to transact
  • Creating the content and scripts necessary to tell this story
  • Focusing all your demand generation efforts on putting as many of these type of buyers into the sales pipeline in the most efficient and cost effective way possible.

We realize that this can all sound like a difficult task but as a sales outsourcing and marketing company we have the:

  • Frameworks to make this process frictionless
  • Access to the database subscriptions to make the market research and segmentation cost effective
  • And the experience building buyer persona’s to help stimulate insights from our clients they may not have had the time or bandwidth to uncover

To learn more about why we feel this approach to selling is the right solution for many businesses in this new buyer driven landscape we invite you to check out our sales outsourcing services page or our About Us section which details our sales outsourcing philosophy.

 

 

 

Ways Outsourcing Sales Team helps Start Ups with prospecting

by | Dec 16, 2016

Over the past several years, buyers have decreased the effectiveness of cold calling by as much as 50%. Because of this, buyers simply no longer pick up the phone as often and prefer to learn about new products and solutions through digital education first. So, success now requires a team that understands how to build awareness with buyers, engage those buyers and then convert those buyers which requires a combination of:

  • eMail Marketing Talent
  • Copywriting and Content Management Expertise
  • Content Distribution Capabilities
  • Lead Scoring Experts
  • Phone Talent

Here are 5 Reasons why Start Up Sales Executives consider an outsourcing sales team for prospecting:

Consistent Results – Achieving results with all these moving parts is high risk. If there is a breakdown or lack of consistency on a daily or weekly basis at one stage of the process it will impact the sales funnel downstream. Knowing that sales executives need to stay focused on closest to the dollar activities,  An outsourcing sales team  will provide you with the consistent daily activities required to keep a steady flow of sales qualified opportunities and well educated buyers entering your sales funnel.

Speed to Market

Building a team with expertise in outbound marketing and lead generation takes time, and getting that team to work together towards a common goal takes even more time. An outsourcing sales team with marketing support can be turned on and start producing results in a little as 30 days as opposed to months or quarters that may be required to build a team on your own. In addition, you will avoid the 80 to 160 plus hours of bandwidth required to recruit, hire, and train your own internal team.

Daily Management Bandwidth

There are only so many hours in week and it is often more effective to have sales reps focus on those opportunities already in the sales funnel and leave the front-end work to someone else.

An outsourcing sales team  is a fast and simple way to get a pipeline-building organization up-and-running to see results. After implementing this team, you can expect to eliminate the daily management requirements, employee headaches and conflicts, HR issues or employee churn.

Flexibility

Using an outsourcing sales team gives you more flexibility when it comes to staffing for specific campaigns. Most salespeople carrying quotas don’t have time to target and penetrate new markets. An outsource sales team makes it easy for you to staff for these campaigns while you focus on closing deals already in the pipeline.

When you are testing a new market you don’t always have the time to conduct market research, test a new message, or determine what customers are saying about your products or services so that you can uncover new opportunities. An outsourcing sales team can help you do all these things at a lower cost for a specific period of time.

Gabriel Sales helps companies transform their sales and marketing programs to generate more leads in this new buyer driven landscape. To learn more about our philosophy and approach to supplying an outsourcing sales team we invite you to read more about us here.

When Sales Outsourcing Target an Ideal Customer Profile

When to Outsource Sales if You Are a Small Business

by | Dec 14, 2016

The Right Time to Outsource Sales

When you outsource sales and marketing this strategy can be a significant competitive advantage if the timing is right and your business is prepared for it. However the decision to outsource is not always the right option for every business. Below, we outline several items and issues that should be considered.

In general, the time to outsource sales makes sense when:

Speed to Market is Important – For startups, new businesses or established businesses that are changing their business model or going through new product launches, an sales outsourcing team provides a very quick path to both a fully trained and managed outsource sales team, and an experienced marketing team for one cohesive sales and marketing team that can provide turnkey support across the entire lead generation and buying cycle.

Your Executives Have Grown the Company and Bandwidth is Tapped – Many small businesses generate their first 500K to 2 million in sales on the backs of one or more of their owners or a single rock star senior sale executive. Companies at this stage typically need these resources to continue to focus on closing so the early stage sales funnel starts to suffer. You can start to outsource sales by leveraging an outsourced sales partner to fill your closers sales funnel with increased real sales opportunities. As your outsourced sales team learns more about your business the can continue to take deals deeper into the funnel.

You Are Ready to Implement a Repeatable Process – If you outsource sales, you will get the best production if you can sell your solution through the same staged process in a repeatable way. If you are confident that you are successful selling your solution in a similar way the majority of your time you can then expect your allow your sales outsourcing partner to document and script the process for methodical results.

Lack of Time or Resources to Build a Team– Many small business do not have a full time recruiter or HR professional on staff. A sales outsourcing company will have both the existing talent in place on the sales and marketing side. In many cases you will get access to a blended team of sales, marketing and executive talent for the price of one to two individuals.

You Need a Part Time Experienced Sales Executive – Many small businesses are started by founders with natural sales skills and closing abilities. But these same founders have also never built, managed and led a sale and marketing team. If you outsource sales executive to manage your account is typically part of the package. This will remove the need for founders developing the skills set and learning the systems required to manage a sales team.

You Have Not Invested in Technology or Infrastructure – Early stage lead generation and development now requires a suite of tools to score leads (marketing automation), and manage leads (CRM). If you have not invested in and implemented these tools, a sales outsourcing team will be able to provide these tools and leverage best practices to implement them at a fraction of the cost of launching them on their own.

Gabriel Sales is a full service marketing company that is adept in sales outsourcing. To learn more about our philosophy and approach, we invite you to visit our Outsource Sales Page Services and About us Page.

Outsourced Sales Strategies To Increase Sales for 2017

Outsourced Sales Strategies To Increase Sales for 2017

by | Dec 11, 2016

Outsourced Sales Strategies and Marketing Tips for Small Businesses 2017

2017 is fast approaching. Here are several quick ways Small Businesses can kick off 2017 to build a sustained and productive sales and revenue engine.

Build an Ideal Customer profile. Analyze the demographics of your current group of customers. Use this information to determine what companies give you the biggest profit, are the least demanding, and quickest to scale. Target more of these buyers for the top of your sales funnel.

Run a Campaign to put a Fresh Set of Leads into Your Sales Funnel. The start of the calendar year is not just a new beginning for your sales and marketing team. It’s also a new start for your buyers. January is a great time to build awareness to a large a group of decision makers and influencers, so as new initiatives are launched they are aware of you your solutions can help them achieve their goals and solve their pains.

Consider a Marketing Automation Platform – Marketing automation is becoming a requirement for successful B2B sales and marketing. In our experience as an outsourced sales marketing company, the insights and efficiency gains are critical for us to compete in the new new buyer driven economy. Marketing automation platforms allow you to stay top of mind with buyers that are not ready to buy with more cost effective email marketing. These platforms also allow your sales reps to measure a buyers digital engagement so you understand what a buyer is most interested in prior to them becoming a sales ready lead.

If You Are Using a Marketing Automation Platform Commit to More Content Marketing to Nurture your Sales Pipe. 60% of companies have now committed to using content for top of funnel lead generation and are 72% are planning on increasing this budget using content marketing. But 80% of companies that are using marketing automation platforms are not even experimenting with lead nurturing and lead scoring and even fewer are actually leveraging these platforms for any sort of personalization. By understanding outsourced sales strategies, your company may be able to gains a competitive advantage with a basic lead scoring and nurturing program in 2017.

Start Using Video to Help Buyers Understand How Your Solution Will Help Them Solve Their Problem – Once a buyer aware of your solution and the problems you can solve for them video is a great way to make it easier for the buyer to buy. If a software demonstration is critical to closing the sale, as an outsourced sales and marketing company we recommend that you create two to three short videos that demonstrate how your product solves a specific problem, and helps your potential client get a visual of how it works.

Revisit Your Overall Sales and Marketing with Outsourced Sales Strategies – In B2B sales and marketing, there are numerous strategies and tactics that have potential to drive sales growth, With the advent of new technologies, the adoption of new content marketing strategies, and the change of buyer behavior, now may be a great time to take advantage of the sales consulting services and outsourced sales and marketing company provides. An outsourced sales and marketing company stays on top of best practices, and a brief consulting engagement may provide the two or three nuggets you need to transform your sales and marketing in 2017.

Gabriel Sales helps companies transform their sales and marketing with:

  • Sales Consulting
  • Outsourced Sales and Marketing
  • And Sales Automation Systems Implementation

To learn more about outsourced sales strategies and how we may be able to help we invite you to visit our About Us page.  Or you can check out our outsourced sales and marketing services here.

When Sales Outsourcing Target an Ideal Customer Profile

What Do I Want From Sales Outsourcing

by | Dec 9, 2016

Sales Outsourcing and Marketing is unique when compared to other types of outsourcing. With the recent tools that are now at a  company’s disposal, successful lead generation and real opportunity development and sales success is now a blend of:

  • Content marketing
  • A buyer centric approach to calling
  • Both sales process and marketing process expertise
  • Systems implementation expertise
  • Best Practice experience

Even three years ago it was our position that successful business and marketing was in-line with Pareto’s principal that sales was 80% science and 20% the art of the close. We now believe that successful sales now requires 90% science and 10% closing skills and can be achieved with:

  • Strong thought leadership and authentic content marketing support
  • And the right lead scoring technology

That being stated, we typically start every engagement with a conversation centered on hard targets and strategic success criteria. Below are a handful of questions that you should expect a sales outsourcing company to be curious about during your initial dialogue.

What revenue results do I want to transform with sales outsourcing partner?

With the exception of startup companies, no one comes to an outsourcing partner because they are already thriving. If that were the case, you would be able to build a team at your own at a lower cost. More closed deals and more revenue are obviously the top goal and a requirement of any sales outsourcing relationship. But we also encourage buyers to share additional information. Do you need expertise taking a new product to market? Do you want better margins from customers that are a better fit? Do you want customers that can scale? Is this about pipe velocity – more deals faster, better, more profitable?

Are you looking for sales and marketing management experience?

Many SMBs are grown through the passion and grit of their founders. Then at some point there is a plateau because the rolodex runs dry or teams capacity is exhausted? At that point we find that many companies then hit a decision point:

  • Do I hire a sales rep and manage them myself and commit to becoming a sales manager?
  • Do I hire a sales executive to build an in house team?

Or does it make sense to delegate that management to a partner that is accountable for hitting targets with their team?

We find that many companies would love the control and stability of an in-house team, but need to short-term building and advantages of an executive.

One of the unique advantages of Gabriel Sales is that we can actually help a company accomplish any of these three goals. With the advent of marketing automation technologies, it is now possible to build a repeatable system that automates specific areas of your sales process, makes it easy for the buyer to buy digitally, and then scores their digital footprint. By its very nature this process is highly data driven and process oriented. Once built and in motion, it gives your company the flexibility to both fully outsource on transition some or parts of the engine in house for greater control and flexibility long term.

Are you outsourcing sales and marketing to manage risk?

Sales outsourcing organizations are bound contractually to targets, reporting requirements, and feedback requirements that you never get from employees. So these companies will have the tools required to do this. Building on the point above in the short term this type of outsourcing company will give you better metrics and a cleaner line of sight than you may experience building on your own. This will also get rid of fixed costs and move them to a variable expense on your P&Ls. It will also get rid of your need for hard infrastructure investments in technologies and marketing platforms. With sales outsourcing, you will get a sales engine ran by a blended team of marketing professionals often at the cost of one senior enterprise rep. So in the short term, you may lose a little of the comfort of onsite control, but with the right level of visibility and the other items mentioned above outsourcing can be a solid way to manage risk.

Gabriel Sales help you to transform sales and marketing with custom sales outsourcing and marketing solutions. One of the things that makes us unique is that we build repeatable sales systems and once they are producing revenue you have the option to bring all or parts of that engine in house. To learn more about our approach  we invite you to visit our pages or learn more about our philosophy and sales outsourcing philosophy and approach here.