When to Outsource Sales if You Are a Small Business

When to Outsource Sales if You Are a Small Business

by | Dec 14, 2016

The Right Time to Outsource Sales

When you outsource sales and marketing this strategy can be a significant competitive advantage if the timing is right and your business is prepared for it. However the decision to outsource is not always the right option for every business. Below, we outline several items and issues that should be considered.

In general, the time to outsource sales makes sense when:

Speed to Market is Important – For startups, new businesses or established businesses that are changing their business model or going through new product launches, an sales outsourcing team provides a very quick path to both a fully trained and managed outsource sales team, and an experienced marketing team for one cohesive sales and marketing team that can provide turnkey support across the entire lead generation and buying cycle.

Your Executives Have Grown the Company and Bandwidth is Tapped – Many small businesses generate their first 500K to 2 million in sales on the backs of one or more of their owners or a single rock star senior sale executive. Companies at this stage typically need these resources to continue to focus on closing so the early stage sales funnel starts to suffer. You can start to outsource sales by leveraging an outsourced sales partner to fill your closers sales funnel with increased real sales opportunities. As your outsourced sales team learns more about your business the can continue to take deals deeper into the funnel.

You Are Ready to Implement a Repeatable Process – If you outsource sales, you will get the best production if you can sell your solution through the same staged process in a repeatable way. If you are confident that you are successful selling your solution in a similar way the majority of your time you can then expect your allow your sales outsourcing partner to document and script the process for methodical results.

Lack of Time or Resources to Build a Team– Many small business do not have a full time recruiter or HR professional on staff. A sales outsourcing company will have both the existing talent in place on the sales and marketing side. In many cases you will get access to a blended team of sales, marketing and executive talent for the price of one to two individuals.

You Need a Part Time Experienced Sales Executive – Many small businesses are started by founders with natural sales skills and closing abilities. But these same founders have also never built, managed and led a sale and marketing team. If you outsource sales executive to manage your account is typically part of the package. This will remove the need for founders developing the skills set and learning the systems required to manage a sales team.

You Have Not Invested in Technology or Infrastructure – Early stage lead generation and development now requires a suite of tools to score leads (marketing automation), and manage leads (CRM). If you have not invested in and implemented these tools, a sales outsourcing team will be able to provide these tools and leverage best practices to implement them at a fraction of the cost of launching them on their own.

Gabriel Sales is a full service marketing company that is adept in sales outsourcing. To learn more about our philosophy and approach, we invite you to visit our Outsource Sales Page Services and About us Page.

Outsourced Sales Strategies To Increase Sales for 2017

Outsourced Sales Strategies To Increase Sales for 2017

by | Dec 11, 2016

Outsourced Sales Strategies and Marketing Tips for Small Businesses 2017

2017 is fast approaching. Here are several quick ways Small Businesses can kick off 2017 to build a sustained and productive sales and revenue engine.

Build an Ideal Customer profile. Analyze the demographics of your current group of customers. Use this information to determine what companies give you the biggest profit, are the least demanding, and quickest to scale. Target more of these buyers for the top of your sales funnel.

Run a Campaign to put a Fresh Set of Leads into Your Sales Funnel. The start of the calendar year is not just a new beginning for your sales and marketing team. It’s also a new start for your buyers. January is a great time to build awareness to a large a group of decision makers and influencers, so as new initiatives are launched they are aware of you your solutions can help them achieve their goals and solve their pains.

Consider a Marketing Automation Platform – Marketing automation is becoming a requirement for successful B2B sales and marketing. In our experience as an outsourced sales marketing company, the insights and efficiency gains are critical for us to compete in the new new buyer driven economy. Marketing automation platforms allow you to stay top of mind with buyers that are not ready to buy with more cost effective email marketing. These platforms also allow your sales reps to measure a buyers digital engagement so you understand what a buyer is most interested in prior to them becoming a sales ready lead.

If You Are Using a Marketing Automation Platform Commit to More Content Marketing to Nurture your Sales Pipe. 60% of companies have now committed to using content for top of funnel lead generation and are 72% are planning on increasing this budget using content marketing. But 80% of companies that are using marketing automation platforms are not even experimenting with lead nurturing and lead scoring and even fewer are actually leveraging these platforms for any sort of personalization. By understanding outsourced sales strategies, your company may be able to gains a competitive advantage with a basic lead scoring and nurturing program in 2017.

Start Using Video to Help Buyers Understand How Your Solution Will Help Them Solve Their Problem – Once a buyer aware of your solution and the problems you can solve for them video is a great way to make it easier for the buyer to buy. If a software demonstration is critical to closing the sale, as an outsourced sales and marketing company we recommend that you create two to three short videos that demonstrate how your product solves a specific problem, and helps your potential client get a visual of how it works.

Revisit Your Overall Sales and Marketing with Outsourced Sales Strategies – In B2B sales and marketing, there are numerous strategies and tactics that have potential to drive sales growth, With the advent of new technologies, the adoption of new content marketing strategies, and the change of buyer behavior, now may be a great time to take advantage of the sales consulting services and outsourced sales and marketing company provides. An outsourced sales and marketing company stays on top of best practices, and a brief consulting engagement may provide the two or three nuggets you need to transform your sales and marketing in 2017.

Gabriel Sales helps companies transform their sales and marketing with:

  • Sales Consulting
  • Outsourced Sales and Marketing
  • And Sales Automation Systems Implementation

To learn more about outsourced sales strategies and how we may be able to help we invite you to visit our About Us page.  Or you can check out our outsourced sales and marketing services here.

Outsource Sales and Marketing for Effective Marketing Automation

Outsource Sales and Marketing for Effective Marketing Automation

by | Dec 5, 2016

When you outsource sales and marketing to help transform and modernize and scale your sales and marketing operations, one of the greatest benefits you will realize in the short term will be the outsourcing of your marketing automation systems.

First let’s look at the benefits of hiring an agency to implement your marketing automation platform vs. hiring a full time employee (FTE). Hiring an FTE to implement and manage a marketing automation platform used to mean that you had a person sitting in your office available right next door. However in today’s business environment odds are that one or both of you are working remotely, so that’s no longer the upside it used to be. Also, hiring a single FTE would mean they would have one or two key strengths and skill sets – it could be systems integration, copy writing, content management, content production or sales messaging. Successful sales automation requires all of these skills sets to have the greatest impact. When you outsource sales and marketing, you will have access to a blended and dedicated team experts in automation with both depth and breadth in marketing automation, content marketing, databases management, CRM and sales. So you will be accessing a wealth of insight, strategy and skill.

So your next concern would be that this blended team will be more expensive than an FTE. That’s not the case because the costs of hiring that one employee with the limited skill set can go as high as $120,000.

Let’s start with simply finding that person. Marketing automation as a discipline is in high demand so you will need to start by advertising, hiring a recruiter, and interviewing. Your employee hasn’t even started yet and you’ve already spent weeks or months on the search and $1000s of dollars.

Next they join the team. You’ll have the regular salary, and benefits package that will be between 25% to 40% of their income including typical benefits like insurance, dental plans, paid vacation etc.

Once established in the office, you’ve got to allow time for ramp up; which takes an estimated 20 weeks for professionals and 26 for executives. One survey of CEOs in Harvard Business School estimated that the average mid-level managers require 6.2 months just to offer break-even value.

Simply stated you’re paying out long before you will start to see a return. Even more detrimental is that only 50% of hires pan out the first time, so you could be out twice that investment.

So now to the kicker when it comes to marketing automation and ROI. Marketing automation requires that you also invest in software. Marketing automation typically takes 3 to 6 months to start producing a more consistent set of leads. So while you are also waiting for your new FTE hire to:

  • Implement the system
  • Create the content use to fuel the system
  • Generate the leads to put into the system

You are burning through valuable resources and delaying the net return on your investment by not getting the tools and system as productive as quickly as possible. When you outsource sales and marketing along with marketing automation you will have sales ready leads before an FTE will even have your engine off the ground.

Bottom line, when you outsource sales and marketing in combination with outsourced marketing automation you will hit the ground running, with no training costs or ramp-up period required.

Having a blended teams collective experience, tactics, best practices and expertise at your disposal will give you access to a marketing automation and lead scoring brain-trust no single FTE can match. Especially when you consider that this blended team will have the collective experience of over 20, 30, or even 40 implementations under their belt to cross-pollinate best practices and set benchmarks from their past implementations.

So yes, when you outsource sales and marketing you will get all the benefits detailed above. But when it comes to building an automation system, the return will be even greater because ultimately all the investment will be returned even faster when your new and improved marketing automation program delivers a higher ROI faster because your blended team put the right skills behind the technology.

Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting & outsource sales and marketing automation services to companies committed to modernizing that sales and marketing operations. To learn more about our  outsource sales philosophy and how we can help you build a sales and marketing revenue engine from start to finish, please visit our outsource sales and marketing services page.

Sales-Ready Lead Campaign to Cure Marketing Automation Woes

Sales-Ready Lead Campaign to Cure Marketing Automation Woes

by | 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.

 

The Five Myths of B2B Outsourced Marketing and Sales

by | May 2, 2013

myth versus realityIn our work as a B2B outsourced marketing and sales company, we have found that many people have a misunderstanding of what sales and marketing outsourcing companies do. This blog explains these misconceptions and details how an outsourcing company uses their services to solve business problems and drive sales growth for their clients.

At Gabriel Sales, we understand that many businesses are just now beginning to look into the possibility of outsourcing marketing and sales.  Most B2B businesses have no prior experience working with an outsourcing company, they therefore may be confused or apprehensive about hiring one.

To help clear up some of this confusion, here are the five myths or misconceptions about sales and marketing outsourcing that we see the most:

1.    “If I outsource, I will lose control of my sales process.”

While it may feel as though you are handing the keys to your Corvette convertible over to a complete stranger, this does not mean you have to lose control over your sales process.  It is no doubt unnerving to hand the reigns over to someone else, but we have found that open communication between both partners can alleviate this tension.  At Gabriel Sales, we keep our clients informed of all of our activities and progress at all times and during all situations.

2.    “Hiring a full-time sales rep will not do anything for me.”

We understand many businesses do not want to staff a sales rep full-time, but our experience shows us this seldom works in the long-term. Usually, a company will start with a part-time rep, but soon needs to scale to full-time. A sales and marketing outsourcing company can help you to determine what the most effective balance is for you in this regard and help you to implement it. Gabriel Sales offers temporary, part-time, and full-time options for lead generation and inside sales.

3.    “I don’t need outsourcing because I already have a sales team.”

Just because you have a sales team in place already does not mean you cannot benefit from sales outsourcing.  Many of our clients already have internal sales teams of their own.  It is our job as an outsourcing company to improve on what you have.  We can act as an extension of your current sales team, and if we do employ a sales rep, it is usually exclusively for setting sales appointments, sales qualifying or B2B lead generation. We have also been taken on primarily to aid in the launch of a new product.  There are a variety sales services an outsourcing sales company can provide to an existing sales team; to see more of them, check out our services page.

4.    “My recruiting process cannot be improved.”

If you are now considering outsourcing your sales and marketing, that is a good indication your current process needs improvement.  An outsourced sales company can certainly help if you do not have years upon years of experience attaining salespeople who can execute at a high level. Hiring an outsourcing company allows you to take advantage of the vast sales expertise experienced sales personnel provide to them and therefore saves you the time and money usually put into the recruiting process.

5.    “Hiring an outsourcing company builds the outsourcer’s brand, not mine.”

Once you have hired an outsourcing company, their job should always be to sell you and not themselves. At Gabriel Sales, we perpetually put the client first and train our sales reps to act as your employees during all business calls and interactions.  We define our success in terms of your success.

We hope this blog helps to clear up any confusion you may have regarding sales and marketing outsourcing companies.  If you have further questions or concerns, or would simply like to know more about B2B sales outsourcing, please feel free to contact us.

What’s the difference between a Sales Cycle and Buying Cycle?

What’s the difference between a Sales Cycle and Buying Cycle?

by | Nov 29, 2012

Understanding the difference between a Sales Cycle vs. Buying Cycle may be the most critical shift an organization needs to make to see significant and sustained revenue growth, especially for complex or highly competitive sales.

In a nutshell, the Sales Cycle is how your company looks at moving deals through their own sales pipe and sales process to close deals.  Typically the flow looks something like a lead, marketing qualified lead,  sales qualified leads,  needs analysis,  proposal,  negotiation,  verbal, and closed.    This is a company centered view.

A buying cycle is looking at your sales cycle from what the customer needs. Probably the best example we have seen of a buying cycle is from Robert Jolles book Customer Centered Selling.    Below is our brief explanation of how we look at this cycle, addressing some of the implications it has for us as an outsourced sales and marketing company with how we divide the sales and marketing functions.

Sales Cycle Vs. Buying Cycle

Phase 1 – Intention to Buy

  1. The buyer starts satisfied with their current solution
  2. The buyer acknowledges to themselves that they are not satisfied
  3. The buyer makes the decision to do something about it
  4. The buyer starts to think about “what are the criteria” to consider moving forward

As a lead generation and a demand generation company, we understand that intention is meaningless without action.   The world is full of people with great intentions that never actually take any action.   Your job as a sales person and marketer is to understand that your first task in generating demand for your solution is to help educate a buyer on the “criteria” they need to consider.  You need to appreciate that given a choice, most buyers will sit on the fence for as long as possible.  They want to move forward,  they know it’s good for them to move forward, so you need to help educate the buyer enough so they do in fact move forward.   Your first job as a sales and marketing professional is to inspire and catalyze the desire that gets your buyer to move from the passive buying process to the active buying process.   More and more, this is becoming the function of your content marketing and inside team.

Phase 2 – Active Buying

  1. The buyer needs to figure out how to measure the solution to: justify the purchase, understand the impact of doing nothing vs. changing,  see the impact on topline, recognize the implications for bottom line,  feel subjective relief of pain or risk
  2. The buyer investigates deeply, typically with short list of solutions and a deep dive into one or more solutions
  3. Selection is made; a front-runner is chosen
  4. The buyer reconsiders their decision

During the “Active” buying process, your sales team is typically on point.   It’s at this point that marketing should take a back seat – with one exception: marketing  needs to continue to support the sales team with the content they need to help deal with the reconsideration phase of the sales cycle.   Your marketers need to be prepared to help the buyer remember why they were no longer satisfied and embarked on their buying cycle in the first place.