Benefits of an Outsource Sales Team for a Start Up Company

by | Dec 7, 2016

Once a Start Up has their initial product developed and their initial deals closed, scaling can be expensive and time consuming. You can simply hire sales reps and start pounding the market, you can hire rolodex reps (that may or may not produce) or you can consider hiring an outsource sales team with proven start up experience to help you build a repeatable and scalable process.

Once that process is built, there are multiple sales and marketing functions that can be outsourced to an outsource sales team and marketing company. Some companies may choose to have their entire sales pipeline generation and engagement process outsourced, while others may simply want to use an outsource sales team for lead generation.  Another organization my want to use an outsource sales team   for appointment setting and qualification, while keeping account management in-house.

Whatever course you consider, depending on your goals and success criteria, an outsource sales team and outsourced marketing company is an option worth consideration for most Start Ups. This is especially true if your outsource sales team has a track record with early stage companies because your outsource sales team will understand your mutual success is directly correlated to how well an outsourced sales team functions as an extension of your company. .  Your outsource sales team will understand that transparency, goals, and clear expectations are critical.

When you find an outsource sales team that understands what’s critical for a start ups overall success you will gain the following benefits:

An outsource sales team and outsourced marketing  will provide more bandwidth for the company’s leadership team

With a sales and marketing outsourcing company focusing on hiring, training, infrastructure management, technology systems, real sales opportunity development and results, your time and energy will become available to focus on closest to the dollar activities or other critical areas of your business. What critical areas of your business could you be focusing on if you were not solely focused sales and building your pipeline?

An outsource sales team will provide more visibility

An outsource sales team  will provide all the sales and automation technology you need to grow and manage sales quickly. As your sales outsourcing partner is filling the funnel and developing deals, these tools will also provide the data and metrics you need to make smarter business decisions. You will know why you win deals, why you lose deals, where you win deals, and where you lose deals so you can make smarter business decisions faster.

When you use an outsource sales team you get instant access to sales and marketing experts

Outsourced sales and marketing will immediately bring an increased knowledge and sales process expertise to your company. An outsource sales team with marketing outsourcing   stays current with all the latest trends and approaches to sales and marketing.An outsource sales team will  take these best practices and cross pollinate them in unique ways to ensure you are taking advantage of the latest trends to maximize your results.

An outsource sales team can reduce risk and financial burden

Leveraging an outsource sales team and marketing company will lower the overhead you would normally encounter, by avoiding the expenses around recruiting, employee churn, training, an infrastructure costs.

We invite you to learn more about Gabriel Sales approach and services to help you build an outsource sales team  to see discover for yourself  if an our outsource sales team  is the right fit for your Start Up business.

Outsource Sales and Marketing for Effective Marketing Automation

Outsource Sales and Marketing for Effective Marketing Automation

by | Dec 5, 2016

When you outsource sales and marketing to help transform and modernize and scale your sales and marketing operations, one of the greatest benefits you will realize in the short term will be the outsourcing of your marketing automation systems.

First let’s look at the benefits of hiring an agency to implement your marketing automation platform vs. hiring a full time employee (FTE). Hiring an FTE to implement and manage a marketing automation platform used to mean that you had a person sitting in your office available right next door. However in today’s business environment odds are that one or both of you are working remotely, so that’s no longer the upside it used to be. Also, hiring a single FTE would mean they would have one or two key strengths and skill sets – it could be systems integration, copy writing, content management, content production or sales messaging. Successful sales automation requires all of these skills sets to have the greatest impact. When you outsource sales and marketing, you will have access to a blended and dedicated team experts in automation with both depth and breadth in marketing automation, content marketing, databases management, CRM and sales. So you will be accessing a wealth of insight, strategy and skill.

So your next concern would be that this blended team will be more expensive than an FTE. That’s not the case because the costs of hiring that one employee with the limited skill set can go as high as $120,000.

Let’s start with simply finding that person. Marketing automation as a discipline is in high demand so you will need to start by advertising, hiring a recruiter, and interviewing. Your employee hasn’t even started yet and you’ve already spent weeks or months on the search and $1000s of dollars.

Next they join the team. You’ll have the regular salary, and benefits package that will be between 25% to 40% of their income including typical benefits like insurance, dental plans, paid vacation etc.

Once established in the office, you’ve got to allow time for ramp up; which takes an estimated 20 weeks for professionals and 26 for executives. One survey of CEOs in Harvard Business School estimated that the average mid-level managers require 6.2 months just to offer break-even value.

Simply stated you’re paying out long before you will start to see a return. Even more detrimental is that only 50% of hires pan out the first time, so you could be out twice that investment.

So now to the kicker when it comes to marketing automation and ROI. Marketing automation requires that you also invest in software. Marketing automation typically takes 3 to 6 months to start producing a more consistent set of leads. So while you are also waiting for your new FTE hire to:

  • Implement the system
  • Create the content use to fuel the system
  • Generate the leads to put into the system

You are burning through valuable resources and delaying the net return on your investment by not getting the tools and system as productive as quickly as possible. When you outsource sales and marketing along with marketing automation you will have sales ready leads before an FTE will even have your engine off the ground.

Bottom line, when you outsource sales and marketing in combination with outsourced marketing automation you will hit the ground running, with no training costs or ramp-up period required.

Having a blended teams collective experience, tactics, best practices and expertise at your disposal will give you access to a marketing automation and lead scoring brain-trust no single FTE can match. Especially when you consider that this blended team will have the collective experience of over 20, 30, or even 40 implementations under their belt to cross-pollinate best practices and set benchmarks from their past implementations.

So yes, when you outsource sales and marketing you will get all the benefits detailed above. But when it comes to building an automation system, the return will be even greater because ultimately all the investment will be returned even faster when your new and improved marketing automation program delivers a higher ROI faster because your blended team put the right skills behind the technology.

Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting & outsource sales and marketing automation services to companies committed to modernizing that sales and marketing operations. To learn more about our  outsource sales philosophy and how we can help you build a sales and marketing revenue engine from start to finish, please visit our outsource sales and marketing services page.

Outsourcing Sales and Marketing Automation Performance

Outsourcing Sales and Marketing Automation Performance

by | Dec 2, 2016

The combination of outsourcing sales and marketing automation is a key to success.

As a sales driven company, marketing automation software is one of the key technologies that we implement to help businesses modernize their sales and marketing operations.

As important as planning campaigns and the implementation of the software is to the success of your outsourcing sales and marketing automation lead generation success, it’s also important not to drop the ball after you get started. You cannot expect to simply turn the system on and have it drive itself.   Optimizing your system after it goes live is one of the key areas where an outsourcing sales company can really accelerate your transition to building modern sales and marketing operations.

Here are several ways an outsourcing sales and marketing automation company can help ensure your success after the initial 60 to 90 days of your first marketing automation campaign.

Expertise on when to transition leads to your outsourcing sales team

The results of lead scoring campaigns are ultimately realized when the sales ready leads get into the hands of your business development reps and sales qualifiers at the right time and as quickly as possible. Establishing reports and notifications to the right person at the right time will ensure that the leads are acted upon quickly before they go cold.  An outsourcing sales and marketing automation company will have the best practices to program the right workflow based on their depth and breadth of experience.

Analysis to help you decide what content to create next and how to refine lead scoring

After the initial 90 days you should have your first wave of Sales Ready Leads in the hands of your closers.  Depending on sales cycles you should have enough information to make informed decisions about what content needs to be added to you content calendar.  To do this your outsourcing sales and marketing partner can work with you to review the commonly consumed content by people who convert to buyers or are deeply engaged prospects.  You can then assign higher value scores in your system to prospects when that content is consumed.  You can then have your outsourcing sales and marketing automation partner create similar content to use in future campaigns.

Analysis of email campaign performance

Just like the content you need to analyze the drip campaign performance.  Look for high performance click through rates (CTR) and unsubscribe rates and adjust your campaigns accordingly.  If there is a piece of content that people commonly unsubscribe from, remove it from your campaign.  If there is an email that has a high CTR, optimize the respective landing page and consider using it as part of an inbound campaign.

Keep creating content intelligently

Among the biggest bottlenecks many marketers face is trying to source good content while keeping it updated, fresh, and relevant. With data from your automation campaign you can now start to leverage your sales outsourcing and marketing partner to plan ahead. And because an outsourcing sales and marketing automation partner will understand both the front end and the back end of your sales funnel they will be able to help you with both the strategy and the actual content production required to help you keep the right level of content flowing at the right level of investment.

Conclusion

Gabriel Sales provides outsourcing sales and marketing automation services for companies after we transform their sales and marketing operations to meet the needs of today’s digital buyer.  If you are new to lead scoring and marketing operations we invite you to check out our whitepaper “Drive More Sales Ready Leads in 60 Days”  How to build a sales system to consistently generate more sales ready leads at a lower cost.