Some Reasons Why Companies Consider Sales and Marketing Outsourcing

by | Sep 19, 2012

A recent Deloitte survey on outsourcing pointed to a projected increase over the next several years.   What is driving this across the board is a desire for companies to focus on their core competencies.  What was interesting to us as an sales and marketing outsourcing company is the expected anticipated growth of sales and marketing outsourcing specifically of 22%.  Why are so many diverse companies, both big and small, turning to outsourcing? Organizations chose to outsource for many reasons, and when asked which objectives were the most important to their outsourcing initiative 87% said reducing operating costs, 73% said improving customer service, and 49% said gaining a competitive advantage.

As an outsourced sales and marketing company we find that the largest area we are able to reduce operating costs for our clients immediately is in our ability to take over your sales recruiting,  sales management and marketing management overhead which can run into six figures plus annually (not including staffing the reps).  With this headache off your plate you can focus on your core competencies.

The report goes further and talks about some of the areas that are critical to a successful outsourcing engagement that we believe also applies specifically to sales and marketing outsourcing.  They are:

  • A spirit of partnership between the vendor and the company.  This is especially critical when the goal of sales and marketing outsourcing is closed deals.
  • Clear service levels
  • Strong and joint management of the relationship.   This is especially critical in sales and marketing outsourcing which may require pivots, as feedback from the market drives modifications in how the market should be approached.
  • Detailed contract terms
  • Strong vendor account management team.  When outsourcing sales and marketing this should include both a marketer and a sales manager.
  • A strong company management team.  We strongly recommend that you do not just plan on turning sales and marketing outsourcing on and walking away.  Staying engaged on a monthly or weekly basis can help the relationship flourish and generate more leads and closed business for your company.  Sales and marketing outsourcing companies are experts in selling but they cannot immediately replace your thought leadership in your product and market.

To discover if an outsourced sales and marketing company outsourcing is right for you please contact us for a quick review to see if our strategies can help.

10 Ways Marketing Automation Outsourcing Helps Sales

by | Sep 17, 2012

As a sales outsourcing company we are now quickly becoming sales marketing automation outsourcing specialists as well.  As an outsourced sales company we have a unique perspective how marketing automation helps sales because we specialize in leveraging content marketing to engage prospects as much as we use marketing automation to generate and nurture leads.  And by engage we mean helping to convince your buyer to buy from your company. Isn’t more sales what sales and marketing automation outsourcing be about.   This blog addresses the top 10 advantages of putting sales and marketing automation tools in your sales reps hands (if you have never seen an Marketing Automation Software here is a quick link to 5 minute demo so the points below make a ton more sense).

How Does Marketing Automation Outsourcing Help Increase Sales Reps Production?

 

Lead scoring: For companies that are lucky enough to have a steady stream of leads marketing automation prioritizes where your sales reps should invest their time. Marketing automation tools uses realtime scoring to see who is most engaged.  With this point system, you are no longer need to guess “where to start”.

 

Your buyer tells your rep what they are interested in:  Marketing automation identifies what content your buyer is most interested in.   Essentially giving your rep night vision goggles into your buyers interests and concerns.

 

Help your sales champion to champion.  A sales rep can be sold by their prospect.  You, as the rep have a hot one on the line and feels it is going great, then utilizing a Marketing Automation tool, you can see if you prospect is actually opening your emails, clicking on the content you are sending and going to your site.  If the content is not engaging or not being shared, you can raise that as an issue and ask “how can we improve our performance to make it easier for you to sell”. We find that the prospects that transact, typically engage with at least 12 pieces of content.  If a prospect is not engaging, chances are they are not serious about buying.

 

Saves time and provides feedback to your reps: email templates programmed in the Marketing Automation Tool can be measured in their effectiveness (essentially you can now do in the micro what you do with your bulk email blasts)  if emails are not working you know.   Streamlining great emails that work keep follows up simple and keeps your rep on the phone.

 

Save more time by automating follow up emails:  Using drip campaigns set up by marketing “from” the rep allows the reps to stay engaged with non- active prospects.  No more worrying about wasting time and precious phone time on cool prospects.  We never know when a cool lead will now be ready to buy and drips ensure prospects will think of you when that time arrives and they are ready to engage.

 

Quick access to all past communications:   with the streamlined integration between a marketing automation software (we use Pardot) and your CRM, all the rep needs to do is use their Outlook Pardot connector and all their email history will automatically be entered into Pardot and Salesforce.  This keeps updating the CRM simple.

 

Reduced headcount –  With marketing automation, reps can now “work”  more prospects, requiring less reps and more time for reps to work on closing deals, not nurturing non-ready to buy leads.

 

Prevents lead and deal leakage:  Typically sales reps will abandon leads if not ready to buy within a given time period (depends on the sales cycle- could be a month, a quarter).  Reps need to work closest to the dollar.  To close those deals on the horizon requires nurturing,  most reps do not have the time to do this even with the best of intentions.  They  are incentivized to close this quarter.   Marketing automation lets them close this quarter and continue to build a healthy pipe for next quarter. Marketing Automation cures that sickness.

 

Model the top performers:   Automation and CRM tools allow a view into top performers secrets of success  What leads do they pursue? What scoring attributes commonly lead to a sale? How do they engage prospects? When do they engage prospects? Periodic and systematic analysis of rep performance relative to the attributes and activities that are captured by demand generation tools and CRM can provide invaluable insights for struggling reps.

 

Call at the right time:  A lead deck  is a live feed that is part of the tool that notifies your rep the minute your prospects are active on your site.  When your prospects have your company top of mind, and your buyer is sitting at their desk (or on their PDA checking you out)  your rep has it’s a great time to pick up the phone or hit them with an email.

 

To see a quick demo of a Marketing Automation Outsourcing Tool Click Here.  To see if we can accelerate your B2B demand generation with better and faster technology integration  and getting your sales team up to speed please feel free to reach out for a quick conversation and we will let you know if we can help.   We guarantee what we are sharing here is simply the tip of the iceberg.

 

Can a Sales Outsourcing Company Accelerate Your Sales?

by | Sep 14, 2012

sales outsourcingContent Marketing is now required as ground cover for your sales team.   If you haven’t started you need to start now.  As a sales outsourcing company working to successfully launch sales content marketing efforts for multiple clients we often hear that “it take to much time, or I am not ready to commit.”  Our position:

  1. Content marketing does not need to be complicated for B2B marketers to meet the needs of sales. As a thought leader you have tons of little snippets of value to share on a regular basis.
  2. You don’t have a choice if you want your sales reps to successfully compete and win.

As a sales outsourcing company we understand that, especially for company’s new to content marketing,  it may seem daunting.  But it’s easier than you think.  We are experts and thought leaders in sales and marketing tactics and strategies.  You are experts and thought leaders in your product and solution area.  One of the values we bring as a sales and marketing outsourcing company is that we have a methodical system to quickly turn your thought leadership into tools that will empower your sales and marketing efforts.

Below is our framework for content marketing that will help empower your sales team with the tools they need to be successful.

Using our framework we help our clients to quickly determine what specific content is required at specific stages of the sales cycle.  We implement Digital Demand Center™ our proprietary Content Management System to accelerate this process.  As the survey below indicates the majority of the content required can be initially distributed with blogs.   When combined with our expertise in sales storytelling, educational webcasting and sales video content production we can get your sales team (or our sales outsourcing and marketing effort on your behalf) to market with a winning sales content marketing strategy in a fraction of the time you may be able to achieve on your own.

Can Sales Outsourcing Help Your Company?

To check out what your peers are already doing check out this previous blog post.   To discover how we can help accelerate your sales integrating multiple tactics and strategies please feel free to reach out for an initial conversation.

 

Marketing Automation Outsourcing and Sales Team Collateral Priorities

by | Sep 13, 2012

Marketing Automation Outsourcing Can Be Accelerated with Content that Helps both Your Sales Team and Your Lead Generation Efforts

As an outsourced sales and marketing company we now require quality sales content to successfully do our job.   To accelerate our demand generation engine we execute specific campaigns to put new leads in the pipe to accelerate the Marketing Automation Outsourcing services we provide. Below is a recent survey of what your peers and mature competitors are doing to win in the market place.  And below that in this blog we prioritize what we provide as an outsourced sales and marketing company on the content front to support your successful sales efforts as we build demand generation engines.

 

 

Combining Sales Collateral with a Marketing Automation Outsourcing Solution

Here is a quick list of the content we need  and prioritize to help support your sales and to accelerate your marketing automation outsourcing solution simultaneously.  Typically when we engage with a new client we either help to implement a marketing automation outsourcing solution or execute a campaign specifically to implement some of our marketing automation outsourcing best practices.

Blogs –  We generally find that we get the biggest bang for the effort and the buck especially when launching new sales efforts.   The majority of what we need to get a sales effort underway can be done with your thought leadership through quick blog posts.  Especially in the early stages of engaging a prospect.

Microsites –  Gabriel Sales deploys our proprietary Gabriel Sales Digital Sales Base Camp™ as part of every engagement.   This allows us to quickly re- contextualize your existing content for specific target markets.  As an outsourced sales and marketing company this helps all your marketing and sales content, both current and to be created, work harder and faster for you.

Case Studies –  These don’t need to be incredibly technical.  Keep your case studies business and solution focused.  They help your sales reps qualify if a potential buyer is a fit.

Webcasting –  We love webcasting as a tool and tactic.  They are the gift that keeps on giving and helps to reduce your COS% because we can introduce your thought leaders, sales engieneer and product specialist so they can sell one to many and we are engaging your buyers 1:1.

White Papers –  We love white papers but you need to be prepared to drive some serious value with them.  We help our clients design White Paper that can be re-leveraged for additional blog posts and integrated into a complimentary Webcasting Series.  Given a choice between webcasting and white papers we generally lead with Webcasting.  They are faster and typically more valuable in moving qualified deals deeper into the pipe.

E-Newsletter – Once you have the above bases covered these are easy to create.

Social Media –   We lean heavily on Linked In and for some technologies we sell we advocate Twitter.  From our perspective adding Facebook and a half dozen other channels simply need to be automated with RSS feed.

 

For a deeper dive how your company can align sales and marketing with smarter content marketing lease check out our knowledge center  How to Integrate Content Marketing.

To learn more about how we can help to prioritize your sales content marketing strategy to accelerate deal flow through your pipe line please feel free to reach out for a quick conversation.

Keep it Conversational – Best Practices for B2B E-Mail Marketing

Keep it Conversational – Best Practices for B2B E-Mail Marketing

by | Aug 21, 2012

The best approaches for digital b2b marketing

A great deal of the clients Gabriel Sales works with as an integrated outsourced sales and marketing company are smaller businesses without a highly recognizable brand.  However, when the brand is recognized in the market (at least for most of our clients), that brand is associated with quality, professionalism and, in most cases, a premium or mid premium service.    This blog talks about how Gabriel Sales uses email marketing to increase B2b lead volume (to maximize budget because cold calling while effective has gotten much more expensive check out Cold Calling is Not Dead but You Need To Be Smarter!)  while not disrupting the delicate dance between increased volume and brand reputation and positioning.

Here is a list of Best Practices for B2B E-Mail Marketing from Gabriel Sales:

Make Sure Your Email Offer has the Best Interest of Your Customer/Buyer in Mind

Provide some content that has some genuine educational value for your buyer.  We have the most success with content that can help the buyer do their job better whether they choose to work with you or not.  Your chief aim needs to be helping your customer define their problem.  The win for you is that at the same time you are simultaneously establishing your credentials as a thought leader to help them.

Make Sure Your Email Gives Your Customer Educational Value Quickly

Help the customer to quickly compare your solution to other solutions in the market. So they can quickly to evaluate their alternatives.

Make Sure Your Graphics (if you use them at all) are Relevant

Use your logo to support the brand.  Don’t use additional graphics unless they are totally specific to the offer and educational in nature.  So for example:

  • Video Screen shot that gives them a sense of the video.
  • Use recognizable logos like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn so they are clear on the platform you are suggestin
  • Photo of Presenter if its Webcast (Makes it Human)

Keep it Conversational

Don’t use sales language.   Don’t talk about ‘our’ company, ‘us’.  Talk about your customer’s needs.

Keep it Simple

Get to the point quickly and directly.

Keep it Uncluttered

A case can be made that it may make sense to give someone multiple offers in one email so if the first offer is not of interest there is a secondary offer or even a tertiary offer your recipient can click through.   We just don’t typically approach the market this way.   We come from the school of thought that one offer is typically enough:

  • Buyers are smart and can quickly evaluate if you can help them do their job more effectively with your specific area of thought leadership
  • If you lead with educational thought leadership it shows respect for their interests and needs
  • If you keep it short, simple and uncluttered it shows respect for their time
  • If you keep the tone of the message conversational even if this is not the right conversation, they will remain open to future conversations and not consider your message and foray into electronic conversation as invasive but helpful

For more Best Practices for B2B E-Mail Marketing, we invite you to check out our Blog Series on Integrating Sales and Sales Content Marketing

For some tactical examples of what our approach to email looks like in action feel free to check out some of our actual b2b email marketing templates.