What to Ask an Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company

What to Ask an Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company

Asking an outsourced sales and marketing company the right questions could benefit YOU

As a startup company or small business ready to grow, you have spent a year or more developing a product or solution to solve a problem for buyers. After estimating how much time it would take for you to recruit, hire, train, and manage a small sales team, you’ve decided to use an outsourced sales and marketing company, which means you are looking to work with an organization that will help you both strategically and tactically.

Initially you’d like to work with a company like this to determine what specific target markets you should go after, and help you tell a compelling sales story.  Here are some questions we recommend that you ask when you are working with an outsourced sales and marketing company to decide if they are the right fit to take your product into the market for you:

Gather general background on the company

You should ask how long has your company been operating and you should also find out how long they have been providing sales outsourcing services and outsourced marketing services.

If the company is offering cold calling reps and buyer development reps you should ask where they are located. Are they making sales calls from the company headquarters? Are they working remote or is the outsourcing company company partnering with another company for these services?

Ask for case studies

Most sales and marketing outsourcing companies will have references that you can speak with deeper into your sales process. But when you first engage in conversations with a particular company, you should ask to see certain companies that are selling similar solutions at a similar stage and to similar markets.

You should understand who will be responsible for building target lists.

If you are working with an outsourced sales and marketing company, it’s important to understand who will be responsible for building target lists.

If you will be cold calling, you should find out what databases they have access to. If they will be running email campaigns, you should make sure they have access to rented opt in lists so you do not run up against CAN-Spam compliance issues.

If the company will be using marketing tools you should understand what kind of access you get to those tools

Most outsourced sales and marketing companies will need to have a social media management tool, a CRM, and a marketing automation platform to execute email campaigns. You should understand if you will have access to these tools or if the company will simply be providing your reports.

 

Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting & outsource sales and marketing services to companies to help them build modern sales and marketing operation that reputably produce results. To learn a little more about our approach and how we can help you build a sales and marketing revenue engine from start to finish, please visit our outsourced sales and marketing services page.

Improve Small Business Sales Outsourcing Sales and Marketing

Companies of any size can benefit from outsourcing sales. Outsourcing sales for small businesses can often have the most significant impact because these companies often need it the most – especially if success requires modern sales and marketing operations. Below are just a handful of ways a small business can benefit from outsourcing sales.

Immediate sales and marketing infrastructure

Many small businesses don’t have the most critical infrastructure for modern sales and marketing operations in place. In today’s market success, especially if you are competing against larger companies, they require multiple pieces of infrastructure and technology to compete against larger competitors including:

  • Access to databases
  • Marketing automation platforms
  • A CRM solutio

An outsourcing sales company will have both the tools and the expertise in place to give you access to these tools immediately.

 

Professional sales recruiting and management

Most small businesses don’t typically have professional sales recruiting and management in house or a process to recruit sales talent. This may lead to hiring the “wrong” sales personnel. Even if a business does hire the “right” sales person, without effective and daily sales management, that individual has a higher propensity to fail.

Using a partner for outsourcing sales will allow you to access sales recruiting, management and culture/environment that most of your larger competitors have. .

Quickly focus on specific gaps to accelerate your sales funnel

Most small business owners are wearing multiple hats, and in many cases the owners are also qualifying leads, creating the marketing material, and closing business. They are doing this on top of delivering the solutions and running day to day business operations. They have the knowledge and skill to run sales and marketing but they simply lack the bandwidth.  An outsourcing sales and marketing solution can help the small business owner cover specific gaps at specific stages of the sales process. This includes:

Lead Generation – An outsourcing sales and marketing company can quickly turn on a multiple tactics for lead generation including:

  • Email marketing
  • Outbound calls
  • SEO and SEM
  • Social Media Marketing

Lead Development – An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to implement a content marketing strategy and marketing automation platform to help you develop leads in your funnel digitally.

Lead Qualification – An outsourcing sales organization will be able to staff an outsourcing sales rep or outsourcing sales team to help you qualify and educate early stage buyers and set appointments for your senior team.

Depending on your sales cycle, an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help improve small business sales in as little as 90 to 180 days.  A small business can retain an outsourcing sales company and get access to a pool of talent and tools with less risk and more certainty.

To learn more about the problems we help small businesses solve with sales outsourcing and marketing services and how we approach building modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to visit our Resources page.

Outsourcing Sales to Improve Small Business Sales

Companies of any size can benefit from outsourcing sales. Outsourcing sales for small businesses can often have the most significant impact because these companies often need it the most, especially if success requires modern sales and marketing operations.  Below are just a handful of the ways a small business can benefit from outsourcing sales.

Immediate sales and marketing infrastructure

Many small businesses don’t have the most critical infrastructure for modern sales and marketing operations in place. In today’s market success, especially if you are competing against larger companies, they require multiple pieces of infrastructure and technology to compete against larger competitors including:

  • Access to databases
  • Marketing automation platforms
  • A CRM solution

An outsourcing sales company will have both the tools and the expertise in place to give you access to these tools immediately.

Professional sales recruiting and management

Most small businesses don’t typically have professional sales recruiting and management in house or a process to recruit sales talent. This may lead to hiring the “wrong” sales personnel. Even if a business does hire the “right” sales person, without effective and daily sales management, that individual has a higher propensity to fail.

Using a partner for outsourcing sales will allow you to access sales recruiting, management and culture/environment that most of your larger competitors have. .

Quickly focus on specific gaps to accelerate your sales funnel

Most small business owners are wearing multiple hats, and in many cases the owners are also qualifying leads, creating the marketing material, and closing business. They are doing this on top of delivering the solutions and running day to day business operations.  They have the knowledge and skill to run sales and marketing but they simply lack the bandwidth.  An outsourcing sales and marketing solution can help the small business owner cover specific gaps at specific stages of the sales process. This includes:

Lead Generation – An outsourcing sales and marketing company can quickly turn on a multiple tactics for lead generation including:

  • Email marketing
  • Outbound calls
  • SEO and SEM
  • Social Media Marketing

Lead Development – An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to implement a content marketing strategy and marketing automation platform to help you develop leads in your funnel digitally.

Lead Qualification – An outsourcing sales organization will be able to staff an outsourcing sales rep or outsourcing sales team to help you qualify and educate early stage buyers and set appointments for your senior team.

Depending on your sales cycle, an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help a small business accelerate sales in as little as 90 to 180 days.  A small business can retain an outsourcing sales company and get access to a pool of talent and tools with less risk and more certainty.

To learn more about the problems we help small businesses solve with sales outsourcing and marketing services and how we approach building modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to visit our About Us page.

How to Outsource Sales to help with Lead Generation

How to Outsource Sales to help with Lead Generation

Time is money-the time to outsource sales is now!

Lead generation is the critical first step in sales. A great sales person highly skilled at closing business may not have the time, and in some cases the skills to generate leads. In most cases it is not worth their time or effort to focus on many of the daily tasks required to generate leads. That is especially true in this day and age when the majority of buyers prefer to learn about new products and services with a quick call and a follow up email that explains the problems your company helps the buyer to solve. Hiring a company proficient in outsource sales could prove extremely beneficial.

Below are the four ways you can outsource marketing and sales to help you generate more leads in 2017.

One – Craft a comprehensive approach

Far too many small businesses do not have a systematic approach for producing new leads. Most small businesses sporadically send out emails and have their sales reps make phone calls when they have the time. The result generally gives credence to the old adage – Fail to plan and plan to fail. Success now requires a systematic and comprehensive strategy for generating leads.

An outsource sales and marketing company will be able to help you craft a repeatable and systematic process that will help build a consistent flow of leads into your closers sales funnel. At Gabriel Sales, our  lead generation solution typically entails a combination of email marketing, cold calling, follow up call, google campaigns and social media out reach.

The most effective lead generation approaches allow you to reach the buyer multiple times. This requires multiple tactics, and you need to build a plan and then stick to the plan.

Two – Lead generation require content

According to multiple studies, the majority of buyers that are not immediately looking for a solution now prefer to learn about a new product or solution through a quick phone call followed up by an email that shares educational content. You now need content for effective lead generation.  This content doesn’t need to overproduced, but it should be professionally done and it should be educational. Early stage lead generation should not sell. It should educate. Then, you need to support the development of the lead with additional content.  Here is a link to a blog post that explains the type of content you will need and how it should be used. This explains the graphic below in a little more detail. You can start a successful lead generation program with as little as two or three simple, well done and educational pieces of content like checklists, webcasts, blog posts and explainer videos. An outsource sales and marketing company can help you to quickly product them.

Three – Use multiple tactics

As we touched on the topic above, you need to use multiple tactics. The days of throwing bodies at the telephone to just smile and dial are over. You can no longer depend on just one tactic to generate leads.

Once you have your content created there are multiple ways to reach out and share that content. We recommend that you keep it simple, but that you also use multiple approaches simultaneously. The goal is to get that educational content in front of as many buyers as possible multiple ways. An outsource sales company will be able to help you do this with emails, phone calls, mailed packages, Google retargeting campaigns and social platforms. We typically recommend using 3 to 5 approaches. When you use multiple approaches, you will triple your chances of getting your message to buyers.

We also recommend that you use a marketing automation platform to score buyer engagement. You can learn more about how and sales and marketing outsourcing company can help you do that that in this quick blog post .

Four – Set realistic goals and stick to your plan

Unrealistic goals can quickly destroy your momentum. When you work with an outsource sales and marketing company they will be able to help you benchmark what you can expect. Then, you need to set a 90 degree strategy and stick to it. Lead generation is a grind, but it is worth it. It is also a discipline that is like training for a sport; you need to do the same things daily and weekly to produce results. An outsource sales and marketing company will ensure that these daily and weekly blocking and tackling takes place and they will measure and report on results with regularity

Gabriel Sales specializes in help SMBs and Start Ups launch modern sales and marketing operations and to build successful and custom best practice strategies for lead generation. To learn more about our outsourced sales and marketing services we invite you to visit our outsource sales and marketing services page.