by Glen Springer | Apr 6, 2012
Sales and Marketing Outsourcing Alignment is More than Marketing Automation
As a company that specializes in sales and marketing outsourcing, Gabriel Sales is now a staunch advocate of pulling together an integrated sales and marketing technology stack to align sales and marketing around the one goal of helping your buyer to buy the way your buyer wants to buy. However the technology stack is only about 20% of the challenge we all now face. Getting that technology stack to do what it was designed to do may require significant shifts in both sales process and overall company culture (often from the top of the organization). This blog and the following blogs addresses those challenges at a very high level to arm you with some facts and figures to convince you to take a look at marketing automation and to help you understand that simply implementing a sales and marketing technology stack is no magic bullet.
First here is what a sales and marketing technology stack looks like:
Marketing Automation Software can tie together your inbound and outbound efforts data sets with your sales force database.
Second here are the challenges a sales and marketing stack will present for your business according to Gleanster:
As company known for its sales and marketing outsourcing prowess, we understand that implementing a sales and marketing technology stack requires that you align sales and marketing around the new rules of sales engagement that have the following five pillars:
- Sales Content and Marketing Content designed for helping your buyers where they are in their decision making process.
- Sales reps that are trained in the new rules of sales engagement and closing (hard closing no longer works) that is process driven.
- Giving Sales and Marketing a Shared Sales Quota that rewards putting sales qualified leads in the pipe that close that is metric driven
- Implementing the right technology stack for your sales and marketing organization to leverage as a team.
Success requires that you examine your sales and marketing outsourcing process. Technology doesn’t work unless your team has the incentive, desire, motivation and skill set to make it work.
If any of these struggles or challenges hits a register that resonates for you and your organization it may make sense to consider working with a business that is highly proficient in sales and marketing outsourcing. For more specific tactics you can implement right now we invite you to explore the discrete tactics in our Sell Smarter, Sell Faster White Paper of visit our B2B Demand Generation Knowledge Center. If you would like to receive a benchmark feel free to contact us directly to schedule a quick discovery session.
In the next blog in this series we will comment on some additional research that discusses some of the cultural challenges you may face as reported by Marketing Sherpa and finally we will look at what this means in terms of closing business so you can evaluate if you may be blowing your budget by not implementing the right sales and marketing process.
Related Content:
B2B Demand Generation Engine How To Video
by gabriel_sales | Mar 6, 2012
As an outsourced B2B demand generation company we understand that shifting your culture is not easy. Your sales team and your marketing team may not communicate fluidly. Your outsourced B2B demand generation effort may be focused on B2B lead generation and not closed deals. This blog give you a simple B2B demand generation scorecard as a first step to give Sales and Marketing a shared quota.
As the first step to integrate and align sales and marketing we recommend that you create an agreement between sales and marketing that clearly defines the different stages of a lead and what makes a lead ready to be worked by sales. As an outsourced B2B demand generation team we understand that to two organizations and even personalities within an organization will always agree what a sales qualified lead is so we recommend that this be done in writing. As a second step we recommend that you craft a very simple scorecard so the team works together towards a single goal – Closed business. Once this is done the entire team will be focused on working as a “team” to move deals through your sales process. Keeping the scorecard simple is essential. As a B2B demand generation process consulting firm this is the best practice to frame that scorecard.
Touches to Interest – How many times do you need to attempt to reach them before they show interest.
Interest to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – Interest in your information.
MQL to Sales Accepted Lead – Does it make sense for a Sales Representative to work the deal
Sales Qualified Lead to Proposal – Once a lead is an SQL you need to set benchmarks for how many buyers move to accepting a Proposal or Price Quote
Proposal to Closed Deal – There is no grey area to sales or marketing what the shared quota is all about.
For help, B2B demand generation process consulting or facilitation of conversation between your sales and marketing teams or get some free B2B Demand Generation bench marks feel free to CONTACT US.
For more information on how a top outsourced B2B Demand Generation company approaches increasing velocity in the new economy we invite you to visit more of our blogs:
Top B2B Demand Generation Requires Sales Content Marketing
Top B to B Demand Generation Requires Sales and Marketing Alignment
5 Steps to Launch or Turn Around a B to B Demand Gen Team
by Glen Springer | Jan 26, 2012
“The war of sales vs marketing is both legendary and debilitating. And yet it’s probably fair to say that the future of your company lies in your ability to make the two work better together.”
Geoffrey James wrote a great and succinct piece today on “Why Sales Hates Marketing: 9 Reasons- Here’s why your marketing team and your sales team can’t get along. Hint: The sales team is probably right.”
This is probably the best summary we have ever seen on the challenges that a company faces in the in B to B marketing and we felt like it was appropriate to reduce the blog entry from a Top 10 to a Top 9. We also felt like it made sense to simply include Mr. James thoughts (although redacted in quotes below, to include his fix and then to include our best practices as a sales and marketing outsourcing company that builds b to b demand generation engines as part of sales machines.
We agree with every point Mr. James makes below and before we jump in would like to recommend you read it in its entirety. There is another link at the end of this blog.
1. Marketing Acts Superior
“Many marketers have business degrees, so they think they’re better than sales reps who don’t…” The Fix: Make certain that every marketer you hire has at least six months of experience selling something.
When building a b to b demand generation engine we think it makes sense to take it a step further. The manager running that machine should have experience selling media and advertising.
2. Marketing Doesn’t Believe in Sales
Marketers are often taught in b-school that good marketing makes a sales force unnecessary. However, unless a product is a plug-and-play commodity, your only differentiator is how you sell it. The Fix: Make it clear in the charter of the marketing team that they are there to support the sales team, not to replace it.
3. Marketing Thinks Selling Is Easy
…Many “demand creation” activities don’t create all that much demand–especially in B2B, where customers generally ignore ads, brochures, and such. The Fix: Have the marketers make sales calls–or field inside sales calls–so they can see how hard it is.
Design your b to b demand generation program anchored in what the customer is telling your sales reps. Make these feedback loops a required part of your inside sales teams comp plan.
4. Marketing Avoids Being Measured
…Marketers generally get paid when they produce leads, brochures, white papers, and so forth–even if none of that activity results in a single sale… The Fix: Compensate marketers on the ability of the current sales team to generate revenue and profit from the sales leads that marketing produces.
If your products price tag is 20K or greater and you are doing more than 20 deals per year (I know this is somewhat weak but we are talking minimums) you need to implement a marketing automation platform like Pardot. (as full disclosure we are a Denver CO Pardot Partner). This software gives you the ability to measure marketing’s digital content contribution to the sale. If you need a hard ROI calculation at other figures we can help you run those.
5. Marketing Claims to be ‘Driving Sales’
…I’ve heard this phrase dozens of time from marketers who are trying to take credit for sales, even when they had absolutely no impact on making those sales take place. The Fix: Make Marketing subservient to Sales on the organization chart.
Once again implementing a marketing automation platform will allow you to measure marketing’s contribution.
6. Marketing Pretends It’s Strategic
Brand is a reflection of product and service. If those are good, the brand is good; if not, the brand is bad. The Fix: Reward marketers for behavior that directly results in a measurable increase in revenue and profit.
Not to keep hitting on Marketing Automation but it gets rid of some of this issue. We also recommend that you have your inside sales team become involved in helping to create your digital sales content map DISCUSSED IN OUR BLOG ALIGNING SALES AND MARKETING YOUR B 2 B DEMAND GENERATION blog series.
7. Marketing Wastes Money
…Sales is perfectly capable of wasting money (big time)…there’s also no question that marketers often expend cash on fancy brochures, advertisements, and trade show junkets that have little or no business value. The Fix: Give the sales team veto power over all pricey marketing activities.
There is no reason not to market test all of your content digitally. As an outsourced sales organization most of our clients have failed before they get to us and over 50% of the time we generally find that about 70% of the material (especially designed for print) has lost its initial impact within 6 months. We are living in dynamic times which requires a dynamic approach to content.
8. Marketing Pretends It’s Engineering
While marketers often attempt to set a firm’s technical direction, most of the time, the marketers have never even spoken to a customer–and have no idea what’s technically feasible. The Fix: Let your engineers do the engineering.
B to B demand generation is not about engineering it’s about stage management. Your demand generation strategists job is to move the actors the customers wants to see on an off the stage. Stage management is about 60% science (driven by data); it’s knowing what to put the spot light on during the sales process. It’s about 30% listening (where do you get the applause and who comes back from intermission) and 10% heart (caring about getting the prospect to the proposal). Closing is about 33% product knowledge (knowing your lines inside and out), 33% business (being able to make the business case) and about 33% art (charming enough to take center stage when required).
What you want from demand generation strategist is the ability to listen to the customer, the skill to analyze the numbers and the ability to clone the closers. You need your demand generation manager to manage that stage.
9. Marketing Argues About Lead Quality
Marketing frequently provides Sales with lists of unqualified or under-qualified leads, and then accuses Sales of being clueless because it can’t close the deals…..a lead is only good if it’s possible (or even easy) for the sales team to close. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time. The Fix: Reassign (or fire) marketers who can’t provide leads that the sales team can close.
Gabriel Sales can cover all or part of your outsourced demand generation and sales and marketing outsourcing needs. We invite you to learn more about our approach that lets sales reps skilled in marketing help to bridge the gap between customer feedback and marketing and our tactics for helping our clients drive sales and marketing alignment. We do this out of self- interest as a sales outsourcing firm because when sales and marketing is aligned you have happy customers and happy customer means more closed business and everyone wins.
Thanks to Mr. James for providing the material for us to comment on at: on “Why Sales Hates Marketing: 9 Reasons- Here’s why your marketing team and your sales team can’t get along. Hint: The sales team is probably right.”
To learn more about how Gabriel Sales can help you can CONTACT US or check out more tactical tips in the B2B Demand Generation Education Resources section of our website.
by Glen Springer | Dec 12, 2011
Why should you choose our sales outsourcing services over Rolodex?
This blog discusses the pros and cons of using a sales outsourcing organization like Gabriel Sales vs. hiring a Rolodex Rep specifically for new product or service launches.
Gabriel Sales is an organization to work with when outsourcing sales. In short, what we do is build sales engines. Those sales engines are usually for new product launches and new service launches but we also work with companies looking to turn around under performing sales teams, improve effectiveness of cold callers or anything else you can think of that has the end goal of generating sustainable revenue through a solid sales process. Because we are not a rep company, when we take on clients launching a new product, we are required to wear many hats – sales consultants, marketing consultants, lead gen rep, inside sales rep, closer, sales manager and market research (so we can accurately forecast and create an aligned sales content strategy).
One question that comes up frequently when discussing a new product or service launch is: “Should I hire a Rolodex Rep or hire Gabriel Sales?” There is no clean answer to that question because it depends on:
- Short term and long term strategic needs
- Short term and long term revenue goals
- Competitors
- Maturity of the market
- Maturity of the solution
We can make recommendations once we understand all the specifics with relation to the bullets above but here are some general thoughts (based on experience) for boards and executives to consider when evaluating Rolodex vs. Sales and Marketing Outsourcing.
Pros of hiring a Rolodex Rep
- Rolodex Sales Reps have established relationships.
- They can generally get you in front of a handful of decision makers quickly- By quickly we mean they should be able to spend 2-4 weeks reaching out to their network and another 2-4 weeks doing the first round of meetings. So within two months you should have 6-10 meetings completed and if the product or service is the right fit you can get some quick deals in the pipe depending on the sales cycle.
- If it works you are a hero. If it does not work you are no further along than when you started and you will have lost two quarters (1 quarter waiting for that rep to produce and another putting another solution in place).
- If it does work you can show investors traction but not scale.
Cons of hiring a Rolodex Rep
- The ability of a Rolodex Rep to penetrate the market is limited. Studies have shown that the average Rolodex Rep can maintain 7-20 really strong relationships with senior buyers and another 15-30 plus friendly relationships. If you have a finite market this could be a great solution.
- In most cases you have no visibility into what a Rolodex rep is doing for you until they actually produce something.
- It has been our experience that Rolodex Reps with valuable relationships (20 strong relationships with senior buyers and 30 plus friendlies) are not cheap.
- An experienced Rolodex Rep with genuine value in their network are often reluctant to take on a product until its proven unless you are willing to give them an exclusive for a period of time.
- Rolodex reps rarely sell using a script (process in not necessarily repeatable and sometimes does little to convince investors you can scale) and do not provide and significant sales ratios for future pipe forecasting.
- If it does not work you are no further along than when you started and you will have lost two quarters (3 months waiting for that rep to produce and another 3 months implementing the next solution).
Summary of hiring a Rolodex Rep
When a Rolodex produces it’s a huge win! Hiring a Rolodex Rep is generally high risk and high reward. Gabriel Sales is often brought into an organization after this approach has been attempted unsuccessfully. We are also often brought in simultaneously to start the lead generation engine so when the Rolodex Rep’s pipe runs dry we are filling it to sustain the sales momentum.
Pros of hiring an Outsourced Sales Company (like Gabriel Sales)
- Outsourcing Sales Companies sell using a repeatable sales process. They generally get on the phone to start filling the pipe leveraging a scripted and repeatable sales process.
- Outsourced Sales Organizations staff blended teams so you get the advantage of being able to hit 1000’s of decision makers with their dedicated telemarketing staff, leverage direct marketing campaigns and still have senior inside reps and part time enterprise reps to close business.
- Unlike a Rolodex Rep, Outsourced Sales Companies are collecting critical market data for long term strategy and growth, creating a sales content strategy (and in our case producing digital sales content ).
- When Outsourcing Sales and Marketing you don’t have to deal with all the database management and acquisition work. You get the advantages of a dedicated sales team without the 100K-200K of technology and support team investments required if you were to build your own technology stack. In addition you get rid of some of the fixed costs you would incur by hiring a Senior Sales Executive and Senior Strategist to frame your own engine. The savings is usually in the 100K -150K+ range.
- With an Outsourced Sales and Outsourced Marketing Organization you get accountability, market intelligence and transparency on a weekly basis.
- You get into the market fast and you get infinitely smarter faster.
- Unlike a Rolodex Rep with a Sales and Marketing Outsourcing Company your sales momentum is just starting to build heading into months 3 and 4 which is generally when a Rolodex rep is starting to run out of steam.
Cons of Outsourcing vs. a Rolodex Rep
- The same principle applies here as with a seasoned Rolodex Rep: The better the Sales Outsourcing Organization, the more expensive they can become. (On the plus side neither comes close to the sunk cost of building and managing your own team).
- These organizations can get you into the market much faster than you could get there on your own but it will still take a little time to customize your sales machine and build a process that is both sustainable and repeatable.
Overall Summary
The best solution if you can afford it is to hire both. However in this market you are better off walking away with something if you can’t afford to risk walking away with nothing. Good Rolodex guys are not cheap and you don’t know if you are getting anything back on your investment unless guarantees are made up front. With an Outsourced Sales Organization you are guaranteed call volumes, weekly reports to help you shape future metrics, market intelligence, a sales pipe with multiple stage deals that you can at a very minimum if the product you are taking to market does not quite hit the mark.
At the end of the day everyone is looking for the fastest cheapest way to fix their problem. While you might be able to get something in the short term from a Rolodex Rep you will not get anything for the long term. Building a sales engine is like building house and you have to do it the right way, build a strong foundation and lay the groundwork for success, or you will end up dealing with repairs on a consistent basis and wishing you had invested that extra effort up front.
For more background on the type of consulting you can expect and to understand some of the additional options you have we invite you to check out our blog post on Sales Consulting vs. Sales Outsourcing. If you are looking to drive sales faster while building a sustained foundation for a high velocity sales machine we invite you to contact us for a free consultation to see what we can do to help.
by gabriel_sales | Nov 11, 2011
Your company is ready to jump on your lead generation opportunities and use sales to quickly increase your revenue. The problem is, you don’t know how to make it happen.
As a sales outsourcing company that specializes directly in solving this problem, we can offer some insight as to how you should proceed. The new digital marketplace has changed the way business, especially the sales process, gets done. If you want to beat the competition, you need to understand how you can use this new way of doing business to work as effectively as possible. To do this, you first need to evaluate your current process to look for your strengths and the areas where you need to take action.
Sales outsourcing may be able to augment sales gaps and increase sales pipe velocity. Three things to look at when evaluating how to proceed are the efficiency of your current sales team, your strategy for marketing and your ability to execute.
Sales Team Efficiency
- Look at the structure of your team. Is it set up to achieve your goal of increasing revenue and developing new prospects? Can your sales manager organize and encourage your team to close deals in a time efficient manner? Does your team need extra training to make this happen?
- Evaluate your sales process. How do you monitor your sales process and evaluate its effectiveness? Do you use marketing automation or sales force technology? Do you have a way to understand changing market conditions and respond accordingly?
Marketing Strategy
- Look at how you spread information about your service or product. Are you using social media to your advantage? Do you have digital educational content available to customers to help in the sales process? Is your website capable of finding new leads for you?
- Evaluate your message. Is everyone at your company sending out a consistent message? Are your sales and marketing teams aligned? Do they work with each other to create an effective lead generation strategy?
Execution Ability
- Look at how you deliver your service or product. Is your team set up to make this process go as smoothly as possible? Do you have people who are constantly available for customer support? What might it take to make this happen?
If these questions expose some holes or deficiencies in your current business process, it may be time to look into possible solutions. If you are willing to devote time and resources to finding solutions and building a scalable sales machine, Gabriel Sales, as an sales outsourcing company, can provide you with tools, strategies and people to make it happen. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in learning more.
