by gabriel_sales | Jun 25, 2014
This is the second half of a blog series on questions to ask when considering a B2B marketing automation platform. You can find part one here.
4. Do you need to be able to do social media?
While social media will probably always be a more effective marketing tactic for B2C than B2B, it doesn’t mean that B2B companies shouldn’t try to play the social media game. A marketing automation platform can be a great way to boost a B2B company’s social media effectiveness by offering analytical data and allowing for scheduled/automated posts.
However, it is important to know that not all marketing automation platforms are equal when it comes to social media. For example, Act-On, HubSpot and Marketo offer social media profiling, but Oracle Eloqua does not.
5. What are your payment needs/requirements?
Obviously, price is going to be a factor in any companies’ marketing automation selection process. In addition to looking at the overall cost for the value provided, B2B companies should also consider what payment plans are available and what is going to work best from a business perspective.
When it comes to selecting the right tool, there are about as many different pricing structures as there are marketing automation platforms. Some platforms have tiers based on database size; others have different prices for the amount of features or services used. Additionally, some platforms allow you to pay on a month-to-month basis while others require an annual agreement upfront. It’s all about what solution is best for your specific situation and goals.
6. Do you have the internal skills/expertise to gain ROI quickly?
Having a marketing automation platform is one thing, learning how to use it effectively for both sales and marketing is another. A report from earlier this year found that it took 64% of users at least six months to see results from their platform. The users listed lack of expertise to use the data and intelligence offered by the software (55%) and complexity of marketing automation software (34%) as two of their top obstacles.
This data shows that when it comes to marketing automation implementation, there is generally a long learning curve. If you do not have marketing automation expertise internally, you can end up having to devote a ton of resources to get everything up and running smoothly. We obviously have some bias here, but this is one place where hiring marketing automation consultants or an outsourced sales and marketing team can be greatly beneficial. By leveraging external resources, you can streamline your implementation process and quickly get up to speed on best practices as well as what to avoid.
If you’re curious to learn more about B2B marketing automation, you can read 3 Tips for Success from an Outsourced Marketing Automation Provider. Feel free to contact us with any questions or visit our services page to learn more about the marketing automation consulting we offer.
by gabriel_sales | Sep 26, 2013
In Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers, he makes the claim that for anyone to become an expert at something, it takes 10,000 hours of practice.
From Outliers:
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin.” — p. 40
Since the book was published, there has been a lot of criticism of Gladwell’s book from people citing professional athletes or Olympians who reached a high level of accomplishment in their field without the prerequisite 10,000 hours of practice. Last month, however, Gladwell responded to critics in a New Yorker editorial and claimed the rule still applies to activities involving a high degree of cognitive complexity:
“The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him no.
It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large, round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly. What Simon and Chase wrote forty years ago remains true today. In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals.”
At Gabriel Sales, we wholeheartedly agree with Gladwell and believe this concept can be applied to the world of B2B sales and marketing.
As a sales and marketing outsourcing company with over 13 years of experience specializing in B2B, we were an early adopter of marketing automation. After implementing a marketing automation platform for ourselves and seeing the dramatic results it brings, we have done over a dozen more implementations for our clients.
Our status as an early adopter means that by the end of 2012, we reached the prerequisite 10,000 hours of experience needed to be classified as world-class marketing automation experts.
Current Challenges with Marketing Automation Implementation
In a July 2013 report from BtoB, companies were asked to name their top challenges to adopting marketing automation. One of the top five responses included the complexity of marketing automation software itself (23%).
After more than a dozen implementations, we understand the software and know the best practices as well as what to avoid. Over the years, we have learned new ways to optimize the software and retired old tactics that were not producing results. As a sales outsourcing organization, we also understand how to integrate your sales process with your marketing automation platform to track buyer lifecycles, nurture leads, identify buyer personas and more.
We have seen that companies that try to do this on their own can take up to three years to see any results. By bringing on Gabriel Sales to help with your marketing automation implementation, you can start to see results within a year—saving yourself countless hours that would be better spent generating new revenue and serving your customers.
To learn more about marketing automation implementation, you can download our Marketing Automation Implementation Checklist. To learn more about the consulting we provide as marketing automation experts, you can visit our services page or contact us.
by gabriel_sales | Sep 9, 2013
How B2b marketing leads to more profitable outcomes
As a sales and marketing outsourcing company with over 13 years of experience, we have executed countless email marketing campaigns for both ourselves and our clients. During those years, we have learned what works and what doesn’t in terms of B2B lead generation and conversion.
Here are 3 tips to improve your email lead generation:
- Offer value and make it highly visible.
The key to using email to turn prospects into leads is offering value. For B2B products and services, the value offered is usually some form of content. This is known as email content marketing. The content you send can vary greatly, but should generally be educational in tone. You can send short blog articles, important industry news, webinar invitations, video links, industry reports, white papers, etc. By sending your prospects content that has some type of value for them, they start to think of you as an expert in your field and will eventually turn to you when they are ready to make a purchase.
When offering value in your B2B marketing emails, make sure it is the focal point of the entire message. People love getting gifts, and that is essentially what you are doing by offering your content. Make this obvious, and your prospects will thank you in the form of conversion.
2. Think about how emails are viewed.
Think about your own inbox. It is likely that when you open many of your emails, a notice appears telling you the certain images have been blocked. Most email applications (including Outlook) now have the default setting to not display images, so you need to think about this when crafting your marketing emails. Make sure any information that is critical does not appear exclusively in an image.
It is also helpful to think about the display window you view your emails in. For most of us, we view our emails in a preview window, and therefore only see a small portion of the message at a time. Many people only scan the first line of an email before deciding whether or not to delete it, and if your prospect does not see anything of value immediately, you might end up in the trash. Make sure that the value you are offering in your email (whether it is an announcement about a sale, an educational webcast, a new blog post, etc.) is immediately obvious and is visible within the small preview frame of most email applications.
3. Analyze and refine constantly.
Once you have created your email for lead generation, make sure it stands out. Open it up and compare it side by side with your competitors’ emails that have similar goals or calls to action. Are your graphics sharp enough or do they look dated in comparison? Is your overall messaging aligned with theirs? Is your differentiator clear and immediately obvious? What is it about your email that makes it better than all of the others? If you don’t know, it is time to back to the drawing board.
If you would like more information on email lead generation or using email for B2B marketing, click here. If you would like to know more about content marketing in relation to the new rules of buying and selling in the digital era, you can download our white paper here.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
by gabriel_sales | May 2, 2013
In our work as a B2B outsourced marketing and sales company, we have found that many people have a misunderstanding of what sales and marketing outsourcing companies do. This blog explains these misconceptions and details how an outsourcing company uses their services to solve business problems and drive sales growth for their clients.
At Gabriel Sales, we understand that many businesses are just now beginning to look into the possibility of outsourcing marketing and sales. Most B2B businesses have no prior experience working with an outsourcing company, they therefore may be confused or apprehensive about hiring one.
To help clear up some of this confusion, here are the five myths or misconceptions about sales and marketing outsourcing that we see the most:
1. “If I outsource, I will lose control of my sales process.”
While it may feel as though you are handing the keys to your Corvette convertible over to a complete stranger, this does not mean you have to lose control over your sales process. It is no doubt unnerving to hand the reigns over to someone else, but we have found that open communication between both partners can alleviate this tension. At Gabriel Sales, we keep our clients informed of all of our activities and progress at all times and during all situations.
2. “Hiring a full-time sales rep will not do anything for me.”
We understand many businesses do not want to staff a sales rep full-time, but our experience shows us this seldom works in the long-term. Usually, a company will start with a part-time rep, but soon needs to scale to full-time. A sales and marketing outsourcing company can help you to determine what the most effective balance is for you in this regard and help you to implement it. Gabriel Sales offers temporary, part-time, and full-time options for lead generation and inside sales.
3. “I don’t need outsourcing because I already have a sales team.”
Just because you have a sales team in place already does not mean you cannot benefit from sales outsourcing. Many of our clients already have internal sales teams of their own. It is our job as an outsourcing company to improve on what you have. We can act as an extension of your current sales team, and if we do employ a sales rep, it is usually exclusively for setting sales appointments, sales qualifying or B2B lead generation. We have also been taken on primarily to aid in the launch of a new product. There are a variety sales services an outsourcing sales company can provide to an existing sales team; to see more of them, check out our services page.
4. “My recruiting process cannot be improved.”
If you are now considering outsourcing your sales and marketing, that is a good indication your current process needs improvement. An outsourced sales company can certainly help if you do not have years upon years of experience attaining salespeople who can execute at a high level. Hiring an outsourcing company allows you to take advantage of the vast sales expertise experienced sales personnel provide to them and therefore saves you the time and money usually put into the recruiting process.
5. “Hiring an outsourcing company builds the outsourcer’s brand, not mine.”
Once you have hired an outsourcing company, their job should always be to sell you and not themselves. At Gabriel Sales, we perpetually put the client first and train our sales reps to act as your employees during all business calls and interactions. We define our success in terms of your success.
We hope this blog helps to clear up any confusion you may have regarding sales and marketing outsourcing companies. If you have further questions or concerns, or would simply like to know more about B2B sales outsourcing, please feel free to contact us.
by gabriel_sales | Jan 16, 2013
Many B2B companies try so hard to generate more leads that they do not come up with a clear strategy for how to do so most efficiently and effectively. What these companies do not understand is that a successful campaign requires clearly defined goals and a well-articulated strategy.
This blog is meant to educate those with less experience in B2B sales and marketing about the fundamentals of lead generation. Specifically, we will address the difference between soft vs. hard lead generation for B2B sales and when each is most appropriate to use.
(If you would like information with a little more depth, please visit our knowledge center focused on B2B Demand Generation.)
The first step in creating a strategy for B2B lead generation is to formulate your overall goals. You should ask the following questions:
• Who are you trying to target?
• What is the number of leads you want to generate?
• What do you want to achieve in terms of sales?
• Are you willing to pay for a lead? How much?
• Where do you want your leads to be in the sales cycle?
The answers to these questions become essential in determining which lead generation technique will be most effective for your business. Depending on what your goals are, you will usually choose either a soft or a hard lead generation strategy. Hard techniques usually generate a higher quality lead, while soft strategies tend to produce large numbers.
The soft offer:
Using an incentive with an apparently low risk factor, soft strategies will give you huge numbers of leads. For example, if you offer free tickets to the World Series, you are likely to get a massive number of responses. The downside of the soft lead, however, is that most of these respondents are more excited about baseball than learning about your business. So, while the soft lead may give you the numbers you want, most leads generated in this way do not progress any further in the sales cycle.
However, in our experience as an outsourced sales and marketing company, we have found that offering an iPad or a gift card can be quite effective, especially in terms of generating a quick opt-in database. We have also seen that the soft lead generation strategy is most effective for businesses trying to target leads early in their sales cycle. This method will take much more time because of having to sift through large numbers and so should be used primarily when attempting to generate activity or jump-start your sales.
The hard offer:
In a hard lead generation strategy, you offer something that is relatively higher risk than free tickets or an iPad. When you make this type of offer, which may require some type of commitment from your prospect, the leads you generate are usually going to be much further along in their sales cycle. Some things you can use as hard offer incentives are free consultations, preliminary audits, invites to webinars, etc.
When engaging with these types of leads, you should be aware they have a much greater chance of becoming closed deals. We have found that a hard lead generation method is most effective for businesses that have little time to weed through huge numbers of leads and are therefore looking to talk to leads much closer to making a purchase.
If you are still having trouble deciding between soft vs. hard lead generation for B2B sales, a good place to start is deciding who you are trying to target. If your goal is to reach marketing teams, a soft offer may be the most appropriate. On the other hand, if you are looking to speak to buying executives, you may want to go with the hard offer. Once you decide the kind of lead you desire and determine what will be of value to them, you will be able to come up with a successful strategy for generating leads.
Gabriel Sales has over 12 years of experience as an outsourced B2B lead generation company. For more sales basics, please feel free to visit our Blogs on Sales and Content Basics.
This is the second half of a blog series on questions to ask when considering a B2B marketing automation platform. You can find part one here.
