by Glen Springer | May 16, 2017
Staged Process to Get the Most from an Outsource Sales Outbound Campaign
One of the challenges facing most businesses trying to scale their sales and revenue is having too few leads in there automated nurturing campaigns. This is especially true for small businesses where cold calling and Google Adwords is extremely competitive or simply too expensive. This is why we often create leads with an outsource sales email campaign to help ramp our client’s sales funnels.
In most cases, email can be the fastest way to ramp a sales funnel. But simply buying a list and then blasting that list is no longer effective. Can-SPAM laws and Google blacklisting make this a high risk tactic.
Below are six steps you can take on your own or steps an outsource sales company will take to fill your top of funnel with a successful email lead generation campaign.
1) Define your goals
An outsource sales company will help you define your goals. How many leads do you need? How many leads can you handle? They will also work with you to understand how quickly you need these leads and set the proper expectations of what you can expect a campaign to produce:
- In the short term – immediately after the campaign
- In the mid term – with nurturing
- In the long term – once outsourced sales reps start to follow up
2) Target Your Ideal Audience
After defining your goals, an outsource sales company will be able to approach multiple third-party vendors to develop a campaign that hits the right audience at the right price. In most cases, this will include both decision makers and influencers because the best email marketing campaigns target the widest audience possible. This is because more and more decisions are now not make by a single decision maker but by decision making units that include:
- A business buyer
- A technical buyer
- An end-user
3) Build your campaign engagement plan
After you identify your target audience, an outsource sales company will help you prepare the copy and create the landing pages for the educational content offers you will be using as part of your campaign. The most effective campaigns are typically run in a series of three messages that will resonate with all the different types of buyers and influencers in your target audience.
4) Deploy your email campaign
An outsource sales partner will then deploy the campaign through the third-party vendor. This includes managing the tests and the best times to deploy. Typically the best campaigns includes testing messages on the first two parts with A/B split tests and then using the best performing offers and messages in the final campaign.
5) Measure KPIs
Identify the most relevant KPIs for each campaign and be sure to track results and performance. This also includes prioritizing what are the best leads to follow up with first if you do not have a nurturing campaign or if you are under immediate pressure to bubble up some early stage opportunities.
6) Move them into a nurturing campaign
In most cases, an eProspecting Email campaign is only the first step in a lead generation campaign. Once you have generated the lead, you will need to move them into your marketing automation campaign. An outsource sales company can help you with this as well.
About Gabriel Sales Outsource Sales Services
Gabriel Sales help companies generate a sustained flow of leads using multiple tactics as part of modern sales and marketing operations. To learn more about our approach we invite you to check out our page that discusses our integrated sales philosophy and our 20 years of history of helping companies scale sales with outsource sales services.
by Glen Springer | May 1, 2017
The top goal of modern sales and marketing operations for small business needs to be: build a repeatable sales process that can generate a steady stream of sales opportunities.
One of the critical tenants of modern sales and marketing operations needs to be specialization. For most small businesses, this means that closing and developing opportunities now need to be different functions. Outsourcing sales help your senior sales specialize on closing business by keeping their sales funnel full.
First lets discuss why your senior sales reps should not be focused on prospecting. Then we will discuss how sales outsourcing and marketing can help them to become more productive.
Why Senior Sales Reps Should Not Prospect
They are not effective – Experience sales reps hate to prospect. They love to close. They are also your most expensive resource. Does it make sense for them to cold call?
Sporadic focus – Prospecting is like the grind of training for any sport. There are tasks you need to do on a regular basis like running, stretching and strength training. If you don’t do them on a regular basis results will suffer. If a closer is working on getting a deal done the first thing to get tossed aside is prospecting. They end up with a great quarter and then have no new deals to work on. Closers need to focus on closing not training.
Unclear metrics – Sales reps are compensated by closing business. Not hitting top of funnel metrics. It is difficult to get sustained performance for something as minimal as daily new lead flow from a seasoned sales rep.
Closing is an Art – Closing is expensive because it’s an art. And like any art it takes creativity, attention to detail and complete focus. It takes a great deal of energy. It does both the rep and your business a disservice to deplete this energy.
Outsourcing Sales to Build a Steady Flow of Leads
Conversely here is why you should consider outsourcing sales to build a steady stream of sales qualified opportunities.
Not just calling anymore – The days of throwing bodies on the phone to call are over. Prospecting still requires calling but it also requires creating content and sharing that content with prospective buyers via email. Outsourcing sales will help you gain immediate access to the skills you need for effective prospecting.
Regular tasks on a regular basis – To be repeatable means you have to repeat tasks like emailing, cold calling, follow up calling and creating content on a regular basis. A sales outsourcing company will take over the daily grind required for success.
Tools and team for success – A sales outsourcing company will have the technologies’ and team required for success. This includes marketers, callers and sales automation technology experts.
Prospecting is a Science – Effective sales prospecting requires building a repeatable process. More importantly it requires constant measure and analysis to improve campaigns and results.
About Gabriel Sales Sales Outsourcing
Gabriel Sales helps companies build modern sales and marketing operations to help closers specialize in closing while we fill the top of the funnel utilizing a team of experts in driving leads with integrated sales and marketing campaigns. To learn more about how our team can help you, visit our page on modern sales and marketing operations and sales outsourcing.
by Glen Springer | Feb 10, 2017
Once a small business has decided that they don’t have the time, expertise, and/or desire to recruit, build, and manage a small sales team, their path to growth will then depend on picking the right outsourced sales team.
For small businesses that have a history of closing business, this typically means that you will need to transition the knowledge and expertise from your organization to the outsourced sales team you will be working with. Asking the right questions early in your search will help you find the best sales organization for your business. It is in the best interest for your company, your end customer/potential buyers of your solution, and the outsourced sales team partner that this fit makes sense for all three parties involved. We have put together a handful of questions you can ask to help you understand how the sales talent will be deployed for your sales success.
What is the Outsourced Sales Team Staffing Model
The first question you need to ask is how your outsourced sales team will be staffed. Depending on your needs and the volume of calls you need to make, you could have multiple people staffed on your team or you could have shared resources. For example, when we are just getting started building outsourced sales team we typically staff at several levels. We will leverage buyer education reps to managed the initial awareness campaigns. We will staff a person that is adept at asking probing questions, qualifying questions, and asking for the appointment. Finally, we will staff closers.
In some cases these resources will be shared., but in some cases, it may make more sense to staff dedicated reps at all or some of the levels. Dedicated resources typically cost more and the more complex your sales, the more experienced the closer will need to be, which will include increased costs upfront. You and your outsourced sales team provider need to be clear on budget and needs to ensure you get what you need.
How will your outsourced sales team be managed?
The next question you need to ask is how will your account will be managed. One of the main advantages of an outsourced sales team is that you do not have to manage the account. Most outsourced sale companies will have an experienced account rep responsible for the day-to-day communication and success of your overall sales (and in our case marketing support). This person will be responsible for day-to-day communication and managing regular sales meetings.
How do they train your outsourced sales team?
You need to ask how your outsourced sales team will be trained and understand how involved you will need to be.
As part of our onboarding process, we do a deep discovery into the clients sales processes; what makes the company, and product or solution we are selling unique, and craft a scripted sales story and all the early stage calls. Because we also offer content marketing strategy and content production, we automate the sales process and clone our clients thought leader. Although this process makes it easy for us to train reps and requires minimum training support from the client, you should expect to attend weekly sales calls while ongoing training occurs.
For new clients, we typically begin the campaigns with experienced proven existing reps, and in that case, we typically can prep our rep on a new client in 3-4 days. They know how to come across smart and intelligent while not having all the details, and if prospects start asking buying questions, we will go for the appointment.
If we do staff closers, it is typically 60 to 90 days after the initial campaign once there is a funnel to close. At that point we will do more technical training. Initially, we require a domain or technical expert on the client side to manage the demo until we are competent.
How We Can Help?
Gabriel Sales builds moderns sales and marketing operations and staffs and outsourced sales team and a blended marketing team to help companies accelerate their lead generation, lead development and revenue production. To learn more about our approach to building modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to visit our outsourced sales and marketing approach page.
by Glen Springer | 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.
by Glen Springer | Nov 28, 2016
In 2015 Live Webinars were one of the top 3 content formats leveraged by buyers to help them learn more about a company’s solution. But according to DemandGen’s 2016 Content Survey webinars slipped slightly from this position in 2016 for the following reasons:
- Lack of time to view a full webinar: 88% of buyers surveyed said they prefer shorter content formats
- Too much content available in general: 83% of respondents said they are overwhelmed by the amount of available content
- The need to watch webinars live: 73% of respondents said they prefer to access audio/video content on-demand.
But on the positive side…if you create compelling webinars buyers that do invest the time are more likely to convert into Sales Qualified Opportunities. So as an outsourced sales and marketing we still love webinars because they are a killer piece of content to make it easier for your buyer to buy and a great predictive tool in your lead scoring strategy.
So as an outsourced sales and marketing company here are 5 tips we give our clients to ensure they get the most out of their Webinars to maximize their content marketing investment.
Turn one webinar into multiple pieces of content Outsourced Sales and Marketing Team can leverage
We can get a dozen pieces of content because that one webinar can typically be repurposed into:
- 4 to 5 Short Weblette Videos
- 4-7 Blog Posts
- A White Paper and/or an Ebook.
These also are shorter pieces of content which buyers now prefer.
You don’t need to always have live webinars.
Having live events are a great way to generate leads but you don’t need to always go into the extra work of making these live events. If you do have live events you should expect as many as 50% to 60% not to show. But this does not need to be a huge cause of concern. You can still follow up with these with additional content marketing. Remember to send them a notification when the live webinar is recorded. And we have also found that if senior buyers sign up its worth as many as seven follow up calls to these senior decision makers because they signed up for the event because they had a problem they needed to solve. It’s worth as many as 7 calls.
Simply Start with an On-Demand Webcast
Building on two of the points above, doing webcasts live puts more pressure on the presenter and the moderator. Now that buyers prefer on demand webcasts you can start there.. Simply simulate a live webcast. With video editing software it is now easy to clean up any mistakes if you don’t like how you presented a section. So in one session with some basic editing you can create an impactful piece of content that can be used for an extended period of time faster and with less pressure.
On-demand webinars are essentially DVRed TV shows, Demand Gen Report’s 2016 Content Preferences Survey showed that 73% of respondents prefer to access audio/video content on demand.
Send Email Promotions Strategically: Blasting multiple emails with the same message and content is not the right strategy. Send the first mail about two weeks prior to the event, the second two days before the event and the last mail the day of the event. And articulate what they will learn from the event with slightly different subject lines and content.
Conclusion
Webinars should be a staple of any marketing, education and lead scoring program. But they are just one important part of an integrated outsourced sales and marketing program. Marketers should stop thinking about them as events and start thinking and using them as part of an overall strategy to tell their sales story to the market in a substantive way.
To learn more about how Gabriel Sales can help you get more out of your webcasting and overall content marketing and sales efforts and how we can help you build more modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our outsourced sales and marketing outsourced sales and marketing or the About Us section of our website.
by Glen Springer | Nov 25, 2016
Sales outsourcing give you access to the modern Business Development Rep (BDR)
In today’s business environment buyers have access to a wealth of information and educational material to help research and evaluate products and solutions. As a result the roles and responsibilities for Business Development Reps are constantly evolving.
The days have past when BDRs are given a list to make cold calls. Modern BDR’s are now supported by tools that give them insights into a buyer’s needs, content to educate those buyers and the ability to score leads with automation technologies so they know where to focus their time.
Let’s take a quick look at what you can expect from your modern sales outsourcing business development rep.
Your modern sales outsourcing rep will be targeting your Ideal Customer Profile
For a sales rep to succeed they need to focused on buyers most likely to buy. When working with a sales outsourcing company you will have a strategy in place to target your ideal customer. You can also expect your sales outsourcing rep to understand that customer, what makes them a great fit for your company and what group of buyers and influencers will be part of the decision making unit. Different buyer personas that you have defined in your ICP targeting will have different needs and the modern business development rep will have the ability to personalize their approach to meet the prospects’ needs.
Your modern sales outsourcing rep will know what problems your buyers are trying to solve
To close business you need to have a great product. But before pitching the product you need to know what problems your buyer is trying to solve. Modern BDRs will be aware of product features but more importantly they will also be aware of the problems and pains the buyers have. Today’s buyer is more concerned with solving problems and not features and benefits early in the buying cycle. Understanding the problems a buyer is trying to solve will help your closers and sales engineers present the product to potential customers in a way that highlights the solution to their major problems.
Your modern sales outsourcing rep will have content they can share with the buyer to prove they understand the buyers needs and pains
In 2017 top sales outsourcing companies will have the ability to create content like headshot videos, blog articles and webcasts to help educate the buyer. This content can be shared directly by the rep and will also be shared as part of ongoing drip nurturing campaigns for buyers that are not ready to buy.
Your sales outsourcing rep will have the automation tools to prioritize leads
One of the most valuable features of automation technologies is the ability to help you prioritize leads. These tools score your buyers likelihood to buy based on their Ideal Customer Profile fit and your buyers’ engagement with different types of content. The modern sales outsourcing rep will know how to access these scores in the CRM and will also be able to observe the specific pieces of content your buyers are engaged with to help them personalize the questions they ask the prospect.
Your sales outsourcing rep will follow a repeatable sales process
Modern BDR’s know that smart work flow is critical. Your sales outsourcing partner will help your sales reps leverage technology to enable your sales team to follow a persistent and measurable process with outreach that combines a mix of phone, email and social. This approach drives better conversion rates.
Your sales outsourcing reps mind set has shifted from always be closing to always be helping
With all the educational tools at your buyers disposal more and more products are first “bought’ and the buyer educates themselves digitally. Your modern BDR’s number one focus needs to be to help your buyer facilitate that part of your buyer’s process. As your BDR does this they will be building trust. As you are sharing content, scoring leads and asking the right questions as part of your repeatable sales process your buyer development rep will know the right time to ask for the appointment and ask for the business with one simple question “Are you ready to speak with a sales executive?”
Gabriel Sales provides sales outsourcing and marketing services to help Start Ups and SMBs modernize their sales and marketing operations. To learn more about our approach to helping companies address the new digitally driven buyer you can also check out our About Us page.
