by Glen Springer | Jun 26, 2017
In this accelerating and highly competitive business environment, innovation is critical for continued growth. As Bob Dylan aptly wrote, “Those not busy being born are busy dying.” In some cases, this is adding additional services for existing clients; while in other cases, this can mean a new product launch.
When your new product is ready to launch, you have a decision to make. You can give the product to your existing sales team, but this may distract them from staying focused on your core business. Or you may consider hiring a new sales rep – or multiple sales reps; however, the challenge with this approach is that hiring and training a new sales team that understands the market takes time and costs money. And with everything else surrounding a new product launch, most executives will already have a great deal on their plate.
This is when considering an outsourced sales product launch may make sense. An outsourced sales product launch will have the following key advantages:
- Quick and effective go to market strategy – an outsourced sales company will be able to work with your executives to craft a go to market strategy.
- Content production support – an outsourced sales company can recommend and cover gaps in the content required to take a new product to market.
- No recruiting costs – you can tap into a blended team of sales and marketing professionals, reducing the costs of launching your new product.
- Faster to market – with a team ready to go you will get to market faster, giving you a competitive advantage or keeping a competitor within distance.
- No hiring and training new salespeople – you will not need to spend valuable time training a team.
- Sales experts who can help you hone your strategy – an outsourced sales company will have a team that knows how to work together and how to communicate and share new strategies that may help your business as they’ll know what sales and marketing tactics work best.
- Tools for measuring success – an outsourced sales company that specializes in running new product launches will understand how to implement CRM and Marketing Automation Systems. Furthermore, they will be able to run these tools in parallel, or they can help you to refine your existing tools to measure the key metrics for success, so you get smarter faster.
- Lower cost to test multiple lead generation tactics – an outsourced sales company will be able to run multiple types of campaigns simultaneously, including:
- email campaigns to generate leads and build awareness
- PPC campaigns to generate leads and build awareness
- Cold Calling campaigns to generate leads from your most important targets
- Marketing automation campaigns to develop and score leads
- Follow up calling campaigns to qualify leads and set appointments
About Gabriel Sale Outsourced Sales Product Launch
If you aren’t sure how to effectively build a strategy or launch a campaign for a new product, an outsourced sales company may help get you to market faster and more effectively at a lower cost. Many companies have pursued this strategy effectively in the past. You can learn more about Gabriel Sales outsourced sales results from our outsourced sales case studies.
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.
by Glen Springer | Jun 19, 2017
Seeing your vision become a concrete reality ready to take to market is both a fun and rewarding experience for the executives and teams turning that vision into a reality. During the incubation period of most startups, the executives and founding team will typically work on every detail to reassure themselves the product works and is well designed, the books are in order, the office is running fluidly, and the early customers are satisfied with the solution. But eventually, the day-to-day responsibilities of running the business and the continued product development, and managing accounts, recruiting, and business development will leave them with so many responsibilities, they’ll be so inundated, they’ll start to look for help.
One of the key areas executives and founding teams will start to consider is outsourced sales for startups.
Here are three common outsourced sales for startups strategies for your start up business that will immediately give you more time to focus on your core areas of competence and interest:
Build a Proven Go To Market Strategy
Most start ups reach a point where they are ready for aggressive growth. But most companies new to the market will have limited metrics and no historical track record to access to craft an effective sales strategy. An outsourced sales company will be able to help you develop plans, strategies and forecasts based on their best practices and track record of taking similar products and solutions to market.
Most Start-Up Companies are not Prepared with the Tools Needed for Growth in the New Digital Buyer Market
The days are over when you can simply hire sales reps and have them cold call to generate a sales funnel and close business. The new digital buyer now uses digital education and your content (and your competitors content) to self-educate prior to even speaking to a sales rep. An outsourced sales for startups company will be able to immediately provide the tools required to scale your sales pipeline including:
- CRM implementation to manage your sales pipeline
- Databases to help you target specific markets
- Content production for you to share with your buyers
- Marketing automation implementation to simplify sharing content and scoring buyer’s interest
- Reporting tools to help you measure your progress
Blended Team to Run Your Go To Market Campaign
There’s no universal recipe for a scalable, repeatable sales process, which is why an outsourced sales for startups company is so helpful to a start-up company.
An outsourced sales for startups company will not just create the strategy, they’ll also turn that strategy into an executed sales process. They will staff the marketing automation experts, the database managers, the email-marketing experts, the cold calling reps, the sales development reps, and the management layer to turn your strategy into a fully functioning sales engine.
Gabriel Sales Builds Modern Sales and Marketing Operations with Outsourced Sales for Startups
Gabriel Sales specializes in working with Start-ups and Small Businesses looking to build modern sales and marketing operations. We help companies transform their sales and marketing with:
- Sales Consulting
- Outsourced Sales and Marketing
- And Sales Automation Systems Implementation
To learn more about our philosophy and how we may be able to help you, we invite you to visit our approach to outsourced sales for start-ups Or you can check out our outsourced sales and marketing services here.
by Glen Springer | Dec 16, 2016
Over the past several years, buyers have decreased the effectiveness of cold calling by as much as 50%. Because of this, buyers simply no longer pick up the phone as often and prefer to learn about new products and solutions through digital education first. So, success now requires a team that understands how to build awareness with buyers, engage those buyers and then convert those buyers which requires a combination of:
- eMail Marketing Talent
- Copywriting and Content Management Expertise
- Content Distribution Capabilities
- Lead Scoring Experts
- Phone Talent
Here are 5 Reasons why Start Up Sales Executives consider an outsourcing sales team for prospecting:
Consistent Results – Achieving results with all these moving parts is high risk. If there is a breakdown or lack of consistency on a daily or weekly basis at one stage of the process it will impact the sales funnel downstream. Knowing that sales executives need to stay focused on closest to the dollar activities, An outsourcing sales team will provide you with the consistent daily activities required to keep a steady flow of sales qualified opportunities and well educated buyers entering your sales funnel.
Speed to Market
Building a team with expertise in outbound marketing and lead generation takes time, and getting that team to work together towards a common goal takes even more time. An outsourcing sales team with marketing support can be turned on and start producing results in a little as 30 days as opposed to months or quarters that may be required to build a team on your own. In addition, you will avoid the 80 to 160 plus hours of bandwidth required to recruit, hire, and train your own internal team.
Daily Management Bandwidth
There are only so many hours in week and it is often more effective to have sales reps focus on those opportunities already in the sales funnel and leave the front-end work to someone else.
An outsourcing sales team is a fast and simple way to get a pipeline-building organization up-and-running to see results. After implementing this team, you can expect to eliminate the daily management requirements, employee headaches and conflicts, HR issues or employee churn.
Flexibility
Using an outsourcing sales team gives you more flexibility when it comes to staffing for specific campaigns. Most salespeople carrying quotas don’t have time to target and penetrate new markets. An outsource sales team makes it easy for you to staff for these campaigns while you focus on closing deals already in the pipeline.
When you are testing a new market you don’t always have the time to conduct market research, test a new message, or determine what customers are saying about your products or services so that you can uncover new opportunities. An outsourcing sales team can help you do all these things at a lower cost for a specific period of time.
Gabriel Sales helps companies transform their sales and marketing programs to generate more leads in this new buyer driven landscape. To learn more about our philosophy and approach to supplying an outsourcing sales team we invite you to read more about us here.
by Carol Springer | Oct 14, 2016
In 2014, as we shifted from pure sales outsourcing to a sales outsourcing and outsourced marketing company, we searched and found a framework that would help us to do 4 things:
- Continue to craft solution sales scripts to leverage inside sales rep
- Craft a powerful story that could be told using video for thought leadership
- Provide a framework for content producers to continue to support that story
- Most importantly – force alignment between sales and marketing around a consistent a value proposition that would drive deals forward to transactions.
That is when we came across Michael Skoks’ “4Us”. See the article on Forbes here. The framework was originally designed for Michael Skok to decide what companies to invest in as a venture capitalist.
But we felt like it had powerful implications for successful sales and marketing acceleration. It just made sense. If a product or solution was worthy of investment the same characteristics should also make it faster to scale sales. It will make the solution a “must have” not a “nice to have”. If you focus on the reasons it is a “must have”, you have a better shot of scaling quickly .
After using this framework for the past several years, it has become a valuable tool in our strategy consulting (especially when combined with a Buyer Persona exercise and a Message Framework). The reason it is so powerful is deceptively simple but worth stating -This framework forces both sales and marketing to focus on the real reasons buyers buy and move into the sale funnel (spoiler alert: it’s not technical features and benefits). Buyers buy because it will give them a personal win, a professional win or both. Here is how it works.
Is the problem Unworkable? Does your solution fix a broken business process where there are real, measurable consequences to inaction? Will someone get fired if the issue is not addressed?
You need to focus on fixing problems that do not already have an easy to fix or easy solution. If your solution is a commodity you need to look for another unique value or you will be out gunned by companies with more money to spend.
Is fixing the problem Unavoidable? Is it driven by a mandate with implications associated with governance or regulatory control?Not all solutions will be mandated but you should always look for them. However, there are tangential ways you can get the same flavor -most often by focusing on the customer in your area like your buyers’ customer satisfaction scores, increasing customer retention, and improving customer loyalty.
Is the problem Urgent? Is it one of the top priorities for a company? In selling to enterprises, you’ll find it hard to command the attention and resources to arrange a deal if you fall below this line. In our experience, (and this is putting on our sales hat) there are really only three key criteria that make a problem urgent for a buyer:
- It will help them hit their quarterly or annual bonus compensation
- It will help them get promoted
- It will keep them from getting fired
Matching this value prop to specific buyer’s personas becomes extremely powerful, especially for sales. If you can hit this hard, it will keep you from a stalled sales pipeline and help you avoid getting the dreaded “no” decision.
Is the problem Underserved? Is there a conspicuous absence of valid solutions to the problem you’re looking to solve? Focus your initial message on the whitespace or the gap between solutions. This is especially powerful if you are taking on incumbents, and gives you a wedge offering to pilot your solution if you can price effectively.
Exiting this exercise you should have 4 to 5 bullets that become your core value prop from there alignment becomes simple because you can craft a powerful sales story that both sales and marketing can work together on. You simply put your buyers personas into buckets and you have a clear understanding of what story you need to tell to move them through the sales pipeline. Here is an example of what that looks like.
How Gabriel Sales Can Help
Gabriel Sales specializes in helping companies committed to growth scale. Scaling starts by aligning both sales and marketing around a powerful sales story. We have found no faster path to this story than anchoring that story in repeatable and clear value propositions that can be supported by simple content and clear sales scripts.
To learn more about how we can help you identify and share this message with your ideal target markets and buyers you can contact us here. Please feel free to check out our sales consulting and sales outsourcing services page. Or if you have your process buttoned up and are simply looking for more sales ready leads we can help with that as well.
by Glen Springer | Jul 23, 2016
Magic bullet for sales outsourcing
There is no grey area for Gabriel Sales that sales outsourcing for new product launches is ultimately about closing business. However as a sales consulting firm that has driven millions in closed deals and over 200M in exits with successful new product and service launches over the past 10 years we also understand that we can drive wealth for the entrepreneurs, executives and investors that we serve by empowering the entire organization. This is done with the right feedback loops and insights so our clients can make the right strategic decisions for their business. Below are ten business intelligence and strategic areas that the right sales outsourcing partner for new product launches can and should execute against as sales consultants drive the entire enterprise. For additional resource for new products launches and go to market strategies please visit our Sales Strategies for New Product Launches Resource Page.
Sales Strategies for New Products
Rapid Communication – It’s critical that direct feedback loops are created from the sales team directly back to product development, the marketing team, and the CFO. These feedback loops need to be available all the time. Speed directly from the market back to the team is critical. One of the advantages of a sales outsourcing firm that specializes is new product launches is that we have designed our internal systems to provide these feedback loops and are contractually accountable for them. The right internal feedback loops will improve the product and align sales and marketing for shared success.
Commit to Digital Content…especially Blogging – We are a sales outsourcing firm making 1000s of outbound calls a day. Customers are not waiting for us to call. If we get them on the phone being able to share a quick piece of content (video, landing page, short demo) goes a long way to getting them to spend more time with us on call two and the same content can also be leveraged to disqualify prospects. The average customer leveraged 10.7 pieces of content in their buying decision in 2011 and this is projected to increase in 2012. If you have a limited budget we have strategies and tactics we leverage for our customers that allow them to take advantage of our sales outsourcing for new product launch tactics that turn your blog into a virtual sales rep.
Be Prepared to Educate the Market – Most new products are offering a new solution that is disruptive to the market. Many new product companies are enamored with their technology (since they have passionately developed it) and forget that in many cases before you get to share those technical specs you need to help the customer understand and define the business problem they are trying to solve. You also need to be prepared to educate your customer how to calculate return. Don’t underestimate the value of keeping it simple for the prospect especially in the early stages of the sales cycle. For more info on how to frame your content strategy, please check out our B2B content framework graphic in our blog What is Successful Sales Collateral?
Sell from Scripts – This is one of several areas where a new product launch sales outsourcing firm has some strategic value over hiring individual internal reps or rolodex reps. Outsource sales firms are designed to sell using a repeatable process so selling from scripts is critical. It gives us something to measure and a way to anchor the success of the sale in the message and the story as opposed to the personality.
Commit Focused Energy to your Initial Ideal Customer Profile – If you don’t know what this is we have a short blog series dedicated to this. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE. You need to take your best guess at what verticals and what decision makers will buy and champion your product. And then test those assumptions and measure those results.
Document the Buying Process and the Sales Process – As you take your first customers from MQL or Cold Call through Sales Accepted to Sales Qualified to Closed deal you need to understand the key events in that cycle. As a sales outsourcing firm this is one of the sales consulting functions we offer our clients. We believe it’s critical because when combined with the right sales metrics (see below), mapped to the Ideal Customer Profile (see above) it gives us the ability to start to more accurately forecast dollars in and dollars out investments for the entrepreneurs and boards we serve. It’s also critical to remember that the same digital content we discussed in point 2 at the top of this blog is contributing to the sale. You need to get your sales reps and marketing team to score that as part of the buying process as well. Documenting the buying process allows you to build a sales process that allows the buyer to buy on their terms which means a sales ramp that consistently moves up an to the right and we are all in this entrepreneurial business to build sales machines that turn growth rates into hockey sticks.
Measure the Right Success Metrics – You need to measure the success of your early pipe efforts from day one. A sales outsourcing solution for new product launches has the advantage of having years (at least 10 years in our case) of historical data to benchmark your efforts against similar sales to similar markets and similar decision makers. This is especially critical for new product launches that have no historical data to benchmark against. To learn more about the metrics Gabriel Sales feels are most critical feel free to reach out to us to Learn if you can Build a High Velocity Sales Machine.
Know Why You Win and Why You Lose – If you are measuring the right data you will already be well on the way to knowing why your new product launch is successful. Its also important to understand why you are not winning when you lose. One value-add we provide as a sales outsourcing consulting service for new product launches is that after losing a deal we will call the decision maker if possible and ask “ for own learning, is there anything we could’ve done better?” We will take notes and pass that information on to our clients.
Commit to Marketing Automation and Nurturing Prospects “Not Yet Ready to Buy” – Our clients are investing in more than closed deals when they are choosing to outsource part or all of their sales and marketing operations. We are not going to win every deal the first shot we take especially for new products. Some may not have budget immediately, others may be waiting for our clients to have a couple more customers, others may need to champion into their organization. Data from Forrester states that 70% of Marketing Qualified Leads will buy in a solution area they invest time in exploring within 18 months. If nurtured correctly 25% of your MQLs will hit your pipe within a year according to Aberdeen. If you put 400 MQLs into the pipe in your pipe during your initial launch this means (assuming your product hits the mark) that you will have 100 SALs by year if you invest in nurturing out of the gate. Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting to assist with multiple nurturing from lead scoring, to social media outreach, content testing and marketing automation software implementation.
Lead with Value Proposition but Sell with Differentiators – Selling starts when a customer says “No” and arguments are never made in a vacuum. Value propositions are a great lead but they only take you so far. To close a deal your business case needs to make sense in the context of a category. We take all of our new product launch sales outsourcing clients through a quick and proprietary process that helps us and them to tell that story. This does not mean that you need to sell directly against the competition it simply means that the story will include what the prospect/marketplace has heard from the competition. In many cases we find that that competition is an internal competitor.
To see if our Sales Consulting and/or Sales and Marketing Outsourcing Solution is right for taking your new product to market we invite you to visit our New Product Launch Sales Strategies Resource Page. CLICK HERE
For a custom Go-To-Market Evaluation please feel free to CONTACT US to benchmark the market and see if a High Velocity Sales Machine is a possibility for you.
by gabriel_sales | Mar 5, 2014
Companies that are taking new products or services into the market, or existing products or services into new markets, have a distinct set of challenges. Solving the right pain for the right markets quickly can make all the difference between simply surviving vs. thriving.
By engaging experts to thoroughly analyze and research your space on both a qualitative and quantitative level, you can eliminate many of the obstacles companies usually face when going to market with a new product or service.
Here are three things you can learn from go-to-market strategy consulting:
1. You are targeting the wrong people/market.
Through quantitative analysis, go-to-market consultants can help you determine your overall market size. They also help you to then do market segmentation and database research to further analyze the market and determine how many people or decision makers are in each segment. These numbers help you create your ideal customer profile.
On the qualitative side, consultants can help you identify buyer pains by vertical and decision-maker and also analyze what verticals and decision-makers your competitors are going after. Using this information, consultants can help you to clearly identify your differentiators and then incorporate them into a sales story that is the basis of all of your sales and marketing content.
Going through this process gives you confidence that you aren’t just shooting in the dark and are actually targeting the people most likely to purchase.
2. Your content needs to be organized/segmented differently.
Most B2B sales are somewhat complex in nature. Many times, B2B solution sales require a well-strategized content marketing process with different pieces of marketing content for each vertical or decision-maker and each stage of the buying cycle. If you aren’t organizing your content in this way when you take your product or service to market, your buyers may end up abandoning the sale prematurely because they cannot immediately find the information they are looking for. Go-to-market consultants can help ensure your content is organized and articulated with the language of value, making it easy for your buyers to learn what they need to and make a purchase.
3. You are not meeting your audience where they are.
By going through segmentation exercises, database research and other analysis with strategy consultants, you will have a clear idea of where your buyers are looking for information on your product or service. For example, when you know the titles your prospects are most likely to have at their jobs, you can look for social communities or other online forums related to those jobs and post your content there. When you know who to look for, LinkedIn groups and Google circles can be a great place to start conversations and engage buyers.
Go-to-market consulting essentially shows you your entire landscape and everyone in it. It also allows you to better understand who you buyers are, how to talk to them, what type of content they want to consume, and where/how they want to consume it. Rather than guessing all the time about what to do, this gives your sales and marketing campaigns a well-designed and actionable strategy backed with logic and data.
To learn more about new product/service launches, visit this extensive resource page on the topic. You can also check out our Go-to-Market Strategy Consulting Page.
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
