by gabriel_sales | Oct 24, 2016
Content is now a critical piece of the puzzle to drive sales conversations for your business development rep. In fact, buyers now typically engage with 7-12 pieces of content prior to engaging with a sales rep, and they continue to engage with content as they make their purchase decision. So you need to support your sales professionals with the following content to ensure maximum success. This is even more important when you are involved in B2B sales or B2B outsourced sales. Below is a table that details the type of content your sales reps will need to help move deals forward.
Prove You Understand and Empathize with Your Buyers’ Needs
When you are developing your buyer’s interest, you need thought-leadership content. This content takes the shape of blog posts, checklists, and short headshot video clips that are educational and easy to consume. Keep these short and easy to digest in two to three minutes.
Outsourced Sales Engagement
As a buyer starts to engage, you need to make it easy for them to understand your solution. If you are just getting started, you don’t need to break the bank creating this content. We find that most companies have the features and benefits content they need on their website already. So after most content audits, that we offer as part of our strategy consulting, we typically only recommend:
- A short animated power point presentation converted into a succinct video overview
- Video demo screencast of the product or solution
- Organized microsites that aggregate your thought leadership and solution oriented videos that make it easy for the buyer to buy.
Finally, we find that most companies have the content they need to convince clients to buy covered. Typically this content is found in existing PowerPoint decks, proposals, RFPs, and contracts. Or for professional services firms, it is found in the deliverables. In some cases, you may want to simply consider digitizing some of this content and making it accessible online.
Summary
As a B2B outsourced sales company, we are committed to supporting our business development reps with:
- Content that supports your B2B outsourced sales process
- The ability to score client engagement with that content to help you score and prioritize leads
As you can see from the content we described above creating this content does not need to be overwhelming. For a quick examples you can check out what we are talking about by checking out our own:
Sales Ready Leads Program
Tradeshow Support Package
It simply requires authentic thought leadership that is professionally produced (not over-produced). We find that we can typically create the content we need to be successful as a B2B outsourced sales company with a 1 to 2 day onsite content workshop. If you think we can help we make evaluating that for yourself easy. You can get started with a free assessment, and you can start that process by contacting us today.
by Carol Springer | Oct 19, 2016
eMail is now preferred by 70% of buyers wanting to learn about new products or services so eMail marketing is now an important feature in our Outsourced Sales and Marketing Campaigns.
As part of this race to the In-Box, companies are now facing more complex challenges in the day to day processes delivering eMail effectively. And recently Google has built an “organizer” within your Gmail to determine which messages go where as a filter called “Promotions”.
Even the buyer you signed up to receive updates can now land in the “Promotion” tab. And Google does this by examining the content of the email itself. As an outsourced sales and marketing company here are best practices we use. The one rule of thumb, as you check out the tips below, is that the more authentically educational and straightforward you are, the better your results will be.
The advantage and outsourced sales and marketing company provides, over a company doing this on their own, is that we see the results of many campaigns while SMBs may only see the results of two to six campaigns per month. We can help you with a cross pollination of best practices. So after reading this article if you feel like we can help please feel free to Contact Us. And in case you missed our article on What to Avoid in Subject Lines we recommend you read that as well. Here are some tips:
Mention the Reader By Name
Address your recipient by their first name by always using the Merge Tag inside of your tool. This personalizes your story and makes buyer feel more connected. Every automation system has this feature. It also dramatically increases the likelihood of deliverability.
Keep Your Links Down
The more links you have the more likely you will be filtered by Gmail and other spam filters. An email with a signature will already have at least one link. And your email will also have a second unsubscribe link. As a rule of thumb include no more than 1 to 2 additional links and offers in an email to keep those links down. We recommend 1 when possible but you need to weigh giving your buyers options vs. what will drive the quickest engagement. Is it worth losing top of funnel engagement for deeper engagement.
Write in Traditional Letter Form
Keep your message simple and clean. While the occasional high budget and heavy HTML designed email still works, a simple email written in letter format makes the reader feel like you are writing directly to them. Your product and solution and the pain you solve are more important than being flashy. It also gets past Google more often.
Lose the Images
eMail does not work like Social Media. Get rid of images. Google and other spam filters often see images as a sign of a promotion or spam message. You will increase your volume of readers by not having pictures. The point of email is to drive traffic to content on your website (especially if you are using a lead scoring automation tool). This also includes those small 1K gifs of your logo in the footer.
Consider Mobile
Depending on who you are selling to, up to 60% of your email may be opened on a mobile phone. You need to consider this when thinking about the length of your email and offer. Know your audience and consider this when drafting your text and subject line.
How an Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company Can Help
As an outsourced sales and marketing company you can quickly gain the expertise, capability and capacity start leveraging eMail marketing as part of your outsourced sales and marketing campaign immediately using a blended team including:
- Sale strategists
- Systems integrators
- Content producers
- Marketing coordinators
- Database marketers
- Trained business development reps
What makes Gabriel Sales unique is that we can build a repeatable outsourced sales and marketing process as we also build a sales automation engine. When it makes sense, you can transition all or some of the parts of that engine in-house. To learn more, please check out our Sales Ready Leads Educational microsite.
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 Carol Springer | Oct 4, 2016
In one phrase: A Sales Ready Lead Campaign helps you overcome the barriers of marketing automation and produce sales-ready leads faster and with less risk.
Risk 1 – Lack of an effective strategy (52%) – A Gabriel Sales’ Sales Ready Lead Campaign is designed from the best practices of over 40 marketing automation implementations. Your strategy should be proven and tested, and it can be with our historically successful deployments.
Risk 2 – Complexity of the system (42%) – An outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales can implement a system in a matter of days with a focus on what is critical. We will not get distracted by all the bells and whistles that are not critical to the ultimate goal of generating sales ready leads for your sales reps.
Risk 3 – Inadequate contact data quality (38%) – Each Sales Ready Lead Campaign starts with a cost effective awareness and top of funnel lead generation campaign to ensure that your engine is fueled with enough volume of real targets from day 1.
Risk 4 – Lack of employee skills (32%) – An outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales will bring a blended team of experts to the table including:
- Strategists
- Content Producers
- Systems Integrators
- Marketing Coordinators
- Database Managers
And once your engine is up and running you can lower costs downstream by hiring and training a coordinator to manage your engine.
Risk 5 – Lack of relevant content (31%) – If you do not have enough content to fuel your automation process we can run a quick and intensive content production workshop to create both sales automation and thought leadership content.
Risk 6 – Marketing and sales alignment (30%) – We understand that the digital conversation and the sales conversation are the same conversations with the same shared goal of putting sales ready opportunities into the hands of your closer.
Risk 7 – Budget constraints (27%) – With a sales-ready lead campaign you don’t need to commit to an annual software agreement with a marketing automation software company that will quickly run you $20K to $30K before you even get started. Your automated campaigns can start month to month, which allows you to use your budget for more content and more leads to fuel the funnel and not the software to develop the funnel.
by Carol Springer | Oct 3, 2016
Not all outsourced sales organizations are made the same. Below are 4 things to consider when interviewing a sales outsourcing group:
Will your outsourcing sales and marketing company assign a go-to-person to deal with day to day management of your dedicated sales representative?
Imagine you are a recently hired sales rep. You stroll into the workplace on your first day and nobody comes to welcome you. There’s no introduction or onboarding process and no exchange of objectives. From the looks of things, you don’t have an assigned supervisor. What is your shot of being successful?
An outsourced sales firm is no different. When seeking an outsourced sales relationship, you will need a sales manager to bolster the daily execution. In a perfect world, this individual should have prior and proven sales management experience and domain expertise in the verticals you will be selling to.
Does your outsourced sales company have domain expertise selling to your decision maker business function/buyer persona?
Not all decision makers are the same, simply because different types of decision makers have different personalities. Look at your own organization, does your technical group have the same personality as your marketing team and sales team? You should expect your outsourced sales organization to have experience selling to both technical buyers and business buyers. If your sale is highly technical you should expect to be able to supply a sales engineer to help develop and in some cases take over the sales process once a lead has been qualified.
Is your outsourced sales partner using the latest technologies?
As more and more products are first bought through digital education and then sold with a systematic process, following up with digitally scored leads now requires automation platform and other sales technologies to be successful. Here are a handful or question you can ask:
- Are they using a CRM to capture what happens on each call
- Are they using a lead scoring tool to help prioritize what buyers are ready to buy
- Are they using an email engine to automate lead development
If your outsourced sales partner is not using these tools they may not be optimizing your investment
Can your outsourcing sales company provide you with transparency?
Building on the point above, this new age of digital education and integrated sales and marketing processes metrics are now critical to successful results especially as you are are initially filling the sales pipeline.
Is your outsourced sales and marketing provider willing to share metrics:
- eMail conversion metrics
- eMail click through data
- Call to connect ratios
- Connect to conversion ratios
- Call verbatim reports
- Call recordings
- Weekly success scorecard
Your outsourced sales partner should be committed to your collective success. Success will require teamwork. Teamwork requires transparent and direct communication
Does your outsourced sales team see itself as a permanent fixture of your company?
Outsourced sales companies are a great solution for fast growing and stagnant companies. They help to accelerate revenue while minimizing the expenses associated with empowering internal sales reps.
However, all good things must come to an end at some point. As your business matures you may want to bring your sales or part of your sales function in-house.
If your outsourced sales partner does not have the automation tools mentioned above and has not been transparent throughout, your engagement transitioning will be difficult.
We recommend you address your provider’s willingness to transition prior to starting and engagement to avoid being held hostage years later.
Conclusion
Sales outsourcing needs to begin by level setting what you can expect in both the short-term and the long-term to ensure both short-term and long-term success. Make sure to ask these questions of your potential provider to ensure your success.
To learn more about how sales outsourcing can help you, read more here.
by Glen Springer | Dec 9, 2015
It is becoming more and more a commonplace business practice to outsource sales and marketing. However, with so many solution providers out there and the high level of complexity involved with outsourcing sales and marketing, it’s important to have a high level of transparency with any partner you are considering working with. This short blog will present 4 different questions that you should discuss with any potential outsourced provider. Remember that discussing these items should help you gain insight into the areas that outsourcing can help you the most, as well as bring to light where you are succeeding the most.
Does sales need to be a core competency?
This question can only be answered by the owners, executives and Board of Directors/Investors of our clients. This is the question that we typically work with and sweat over the most. Many times when we integrate into an organization for an engagement, we encourage that our clients retain product specialists, sales engineers, client service leads and professional servicing as their core responsibility. We want to focus our efforts on managing and executing the sale. When our clients effectively own that core competency, everyone wins. Most importantly, control of the business and long term customer relationships stay with you, the client. Once the engine is in place, decisions can start to be made towards where you should be focusing effort to close as much business as possible. The question then arises, does it make sense to have a team dedicated to generating new business and closing pilot deals while your internal team can focus on cherry picking the pipe for low hanging fruit?
Do I need to focus on my core business?
Today’s economy is fickle, at best. It’s becoming increasingly important that you have your talent focused on where they can create the most value and have the most success. This includes both closing deals and solution delivery. Do you need to grow delivery alongside sales? How focused will your executives and management team be on client satisfaction and product development? How much time should be spent on biz dev? Keep these questions top of mind while discussing with a potential outsourcer.
Do I have access to the talent I need to ramp up my sales and marketing efforts?
Sales and marketing are evolving rapidly and no longer live in their own silos. Buyers now control the sale. You have to have your sales and marketing efforts aligned to effectively capture the market. This means the right talent needs to be in place to execute campaigns, manage lead generation efforts, develop messages, manage technology platforms, complete the requisite ROI analysis, train reps, and MOST IMPORTNANTLY close the sale! In our opinion, the more complex the sale the more processes you need to effectively manage. An outsource sales provider ensures that you focus and drive excellence in each individual phase of your sales cycle. We can bring a dedicated, dynamic team to the table from day one.
Do I have the knowledge to execute?
Sales execution used to be simple. All it involved was making or scheduling meetings, giving presentations, scoping and closing deals. There are now more decision makers and influencers on the other end of the deal. The expectation is that your company will bring experts to the table and be educated on relevant technology platforms. They need to know you can communicate fluidly and manage process and technology effectively. Understanding the adjacent technologies and how they can be applied is more critical now than ever. Do you have the time to commit fully to stay current and knowledgeable?
For more information on how to outsource sales and marketing can help accomplish your goals, please feel free to take a look at our previous blog.
If you would like more information, or would just like to chat with us about issues you may be having or how we can help, please contact us.
