by Glen Springer | Jan 24, 2017
Here’s how Gabriel Sales Outsourced Sales Team can help
When you have outsourced sales and marketing, one of the tactics your partner may manage will be creating content or organizing content. Creating a streamlined production of content so you should expect your sales partner to be able to manage landing pages or you should be prepared to offer this support.
Understanding the difference between your home page and a landing page or the difference between a landing page and a microsite is important. Using these different type of pages is important for outsourced sales and marketing success because they all you to address the buyers needs at different stages of the buyer journey. In this age of digital buying every page needs to have a goal to help generate business for your company. Here is the content framework we use.
How does a solid home page help you outsourced sales?
Your home page is the front door to your house. A buyer will use it to quickly get to know you. If they can understand what you do and start to understand how you can help them you will have accomplished your goal. You simply want to make a solid first impression. In face Google and Microsoft Research both report that most people will look around for between 10 to 15 seconds or less and make a decision to leave or to look deeper into your website.
So, the buyer needs to quickly understand that you understand their needs and problems and how you could potentially help them. This needs to happen quickly. If your home page engages potential buyers quickly this will help your lead scoring and your outsourced sales team. successful your lead scoring
How are landing pages leveraged by your outsourced sales and marketing team?
Landing pages are pages that continue the sales story. They will typically contain information about 1 topic or one issue that proves to the buyer that you understand their pain. Landing pages are also used for inbound lead generation and content offers. So you need to design landing pages to be used by both your sales reps to share individual pieces of information like white papers, checklists of infographics. But it is also important that you design them to easily embed forms. So the copy should be short and succinct. The major goal for all your landing pages is to turn site visitors into leads or to turn cold call leads into sales accepted leads as they engage with content.
How outsource sales and marketing use microsites?
Microsites are designed to organize your content to make it easy for your buyer to buy. They are used when buyers are moving from problem identification to evaluating your solution. You are simply trying to make it easy for this buyer to have this conversation with you digitally. Think about organizing content on your microsite to provide access to all three stages of content on this page. When you do this, they become very powerful for lead scoring and automation technologies. If you are not familiar with lead scoring you can learn more about that in this blog post What is Lead Scoring?
Gabriel Sales provides outsource sales and marketing services to start ups and Small and Medium Sized businesses. We specialize in helping companies build modern sales and marketing operations. To learn more about the areas Gabriel Sale can help you launch an outsource sales and marketing effort we invite you to learn more about us on our outsource sales and marketing services page
by Glen Springer | Jan 18, 2017
Outsourcing sales can rapidly increase lead generation
Lead nurturing is quickly becoming a staple of modern sales and marketing operations and outsourcing sales and marketing is a solid way for some SMBs to accelerate their volume of qualified sale opportunities. Here are some statistics from the 2016 Lead Nurturing Benchmark Survey of mid-market companies:
- Lead nurturing programs are now being tested by over 89% of B2B companies.
- The remaining 11% are planning on nurturing in 2017
- 42% of mid-market organizations are now moving into their third year of nurturing
In this new sales paradigm where content marketing and your sales team now need to work side by side to generate a sustained flow of leads educating buyers digitally, small business without internal resources and expertise can struggle to compete. Once you have made the business decision to commit to a sustained lead nurturing strategy, a sales and marketing outsourcing company could be a great solution to accelerate your organization’s ability to execute this strategy successfully. Below are the advantages an outsourcing sales and marketing company can provide your team to accelerate your lead nurturing program:
Automation platform selection
Marketing automation technologies are a critical tool to successful lead nurturing. Companies now have dozens of marketing automation technologies to choose from. And this choice can quickly become overwhelming with prices ranging from monthly costs of $200 to $2000 for companies just getting started. Add to this that terms can range from quarterly commitments to 2 year commitments and this business decision is a great deal to wade through for most small businesses. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will have a process in place to be able to work with you to make sure you pick the right solution based on your needs, current state of maturity, short term ROI needs and long term business goals.
Improve speed to market
Time is money. And a lead nurturing program takes between 6 months to 18 months to provide a sustained return. Slow speed to market gives the competition an advantage. A sales and marketing outsourcing company can help to minimize that advantage and tilt the playing field in your direction in the following ways:
- If you do not have a database of opt in leads to nurture an outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to generate those opt in leads for you quickly and cost effectively
- A sales and marketing outsourcing company will be able to implement your technologies in weeks
- A company adept in sales outsourcing will be able to create the first wave of sales automation and marketing content to launch your nurturing program
- This type of company will be able to staff the calling resources or train your calling resources how to convert early stage leads into sales qualified leads
Set benchmarks and keep you focused on best practices
An outsourcing sales and marketing company that has implemented multiple lead scoring programs will already understand what early success looks like. Automation technologies give you visibility into a buyer’s digital footprint. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to work with your team to help you understand what the early data and trends mean so you can use your customer insights faster to scale your investment in lead nurturing appropriately.
Stay prioritized
Lead nurturing requires a commitment to a process. Once your lead nurturing program has been launched it needs to be sustained. In some cases this means increasing your budget, but for many small businesses we have seen that long term success simply requires:
- Building a database of your core target market
- Track the content that has been of most value to your early stage buyers
- Simply remain focused on the buyers highest educational priority and continue to create that content on a regular basis creating more customer friendly content
The days of simply throwing more money at sales and marketing is not always the right solution. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will help you stay prioritized on the closest to the dollar activities to help you get the best return from your lead nurturing investment.
To learn more about Gabriel Sales’ approach to outsourcing sales and marketing to decide if we can help you to quickly modernize your sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our About Us page.
by Glen Springer | Jan 16, 2017
As a sales outsourcing company that has been providing B2B sales outsourcing services for over a dozen years we have seen a seismic shift in the rules of selling. And many of our clients come to us because throwing more callers and closers at sales is no longer working. But what exactly are these new sales and marketing rules and how are they different from the traditional and historical approaches of B2B sales and marketing.
New Approach – Our sales outsourcing approach now focuses on the buying process
Buyers now have 24/7 access to digital information. And this access to information in almost any industry means the buyer now controls the sales process. And when a buyer has a need that can have a positive impact on their business the fact is that they like to buy. And they can now buy without being “sold”. So as a sales outsourcing company we now customize our clients approach to helping the buyer buy and have shifted away from selling and hard closing. You need to build a sales outsourcing process that helps the buyer to buy (especially early in the decision making process) and then sell the buyer once they are educated and ready to be closed.
New Approach – Your content and website should do the heavy lifting for early stage buyers
According to all the data from 2016, after the initial contact is made and a buyer is aware of your product or solution, buyers now do a majority of their short listing of companies by using your website to educate themselves digitally. In fact depending on your industry this can range from a low of 20 percent to as high as 90 percent. And this ratio is just expected to grow over the next several years.
This means you need to focus on using content and your website to make it easy for your buyers to buy. Jobs that used to be the exclusive domain of inside or outside reps now need to be done by your content as well. In many cases, as a sales outsourcing and marketing company, our job is to now to clone what works for your early stage buyer education process and digitize it. Below is the content framework we use.
New Approach – Don’t hide your information
Historically many companies were reluctant to share too much information. There are two main reasons for this:
- Competitors could steal the information
- They were worried prospects would build on their own
But the truth is, there is typically going to be a fair amount of information about your business domain out there online and if your buyers don’t find it from you they will find it from your competitor. If you want to help buyers buy then do it. The more you share the more you will get back in return.
New Approach – Nurturing is critical to sales success
As a sales outsourcing company we will always prioritize inbound leads. But 3 years of data and other research has shown that once a client engages with your content there are just as many prospects that will buy in the short term (within 90 days) as there are that will buy in the long term (after six months or more). These buyers considered themselves qualified so you need to stay in touch and share relevant content on a periodic and regular basis because these will be your buyers six months to a year from now. If you don’t, as a sales outsourcing company, we can guarantee that your competition will.
Gabriel Sales provides sales outsourcing services to help small business quickly adapt to the new rules of sales and marketing. To learn more about how we help companies transform their sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out sales outsourcing services page.
by Glen Springer | Jan 13, 2017
Benefits of Outsourced Sales
While many smalls businesses and startup companies embrace outsourcing for their IT, financial and human resource needs as standard operating procedure sales outsourcing has still not hit similar adoption levels. However over the next two years this trend may be changing. And according to Dun & Bradstreet research, outsourcing sales and outsourced marketing is now the third most considered area for outsourcing after finance and IT. And according to several reports from Forrester and Dun & Bradstreet, sale outsourcing is expected to increase by 3X to 5X over the next several years.
Many outsourcing sales decisions begin with the goal of getting instant accesses to talent, processes and marketing expertise that is not currently accessible within the company. Outsourcing is generally explored primarily to drive smarter, faster and more efficient topline revenue growth. But outsourcing sales can also provide this topline growth while helping to provide some solid financial and business benefits beyond simply driving more sales. These benefits include:
A reduction of direct costs – Outsourcing will provide the economies of scale. Outsourcing sales and marketing companies offer the equivalent sales and marketing functions at lower direct cost than in-house companies. This is not driven by paying sales reps less than you would need to on your own. It is primarily driven by the direct sales management costs you would incur building a team on your own. In additional outsourcing sales companies will typically be located in more economically favorable employment markets than if you need to employ in more competitive locations like the Bay Area, New York City, Boston and Southern California.
A reduction in indirect costs – The expense of in-house Marketing and Sales support are typically underestimated. Sales reps and marketers need to be recruited, trained and given technology, software and hardware to do their jobs. When you combine these costs with employee churn your indirect costs can be doubled or tripled before getting an effective team in place. A outsourcing company has the experience to resolve the issues as part of the daily course of doing business so you don’t need to. This allows you to focus your internal team’s attention on high value activities which leads to more productivity and a significant reduction of indirect costs.
A reduction of opportunity costs – Focused outsourced programs improve sales coverage. More leads are qualified, geographic regions or channels are covered in greater depth, and more sales can be wrung from secondary sources. In these and other cases, sales are recovered from previously overlooked sources, improving sales performance at low marginal cost.
Turn fixed costs to variable costs – Sales growth is rarely a clean and systematic month over month increase. When a company is going through a growth spurt, sale outsourcing can help a company deal with expansion or contraction by turning a fixed cost into a variable cost. Outsourcing sales allow companies to grow a sales organization or launch a new product without the need for investing in the fixed costs of adding and supporting headcount.
To learn more about Gabriel Sales approach to outsourcing sales we invite you to visit our outsourcing services page.
by Glen Springer | Jan 11, 2017
Outsourcing and cloud computing are still frequently referenced as the two most important business shifts since the turn of the millennium. Both are based on the principal “If it isn’t your business’s core competency, then you need to take that activity, technology or business process and outsource it.”
According to the Outsourcing Institute the Top 7 Reasons a company outsources any function is to:
- Reduce and control operating costs
- Improve company focus
- Gain access to world-class capabilities
- Free internal resources for other purposes
- Resources are not available internally
- Accelerate reengineering benefits
- Limit functions difficult to manage/out of control
And with the addition of marketing automation and CRMs, outsourced sales and marketing are now becoming part of this outsourcing trend. In fact according to Dun & Bradstreet, with the visibility these tools now provide, outsourced sales and marketing is now just behind outsourced financial services and technology services as the third most outsourced function. Below are just some advantages you can now expect with outsourced sales and marketing:
Sales process improvements –An outsourced sales partner will have expertise across multiple products and can typically cross pollinate best practices. In addition executives at an outsourced sales and marketing company live to improve their processes daily and is required to stay current with all the competitive advantages of new approaches and new trends. And probably most importantly a sales outsourcing and marketing company will be able to benchmark your current sales performance, which is necessary for any sales outsourcing program. Your sales outsourcing partner will typically point you in the direction to simple and powerful solutions that quickly remedy any shortfalls you make have. And if you do not have a set of metrics you are constantly trying to improve upon, an outsourced sales and marketing company will help you set them quickly. Bottom line, an outsourced sales and marketing company getting sales processes right is a matter of their businesses ability to thrive, so in turn, you will get an immediate lift to your organization as well.
Sales and marketing agility – Outsourced sales and marketing companies design their technologies and processes to scale quickly. This ability to scale and pivot quickly allows you to test new markets and products within months without the need to build, design and deploy new teams, messages, content and solutions on your own from scratch. An outsourced sales and marketing company is an ideal fit for companies that want to test or scale new products or solutions in the market.
Company needs sales and marketing expertise – Many small businesses are launched by engineers, or operations experts. These executives and founders are able to scales their business to a specific level, but in order to achieve their next level of growth, they need to look outside their organization for sales & marketing expertise.
Tactical focus – Sales outsourcing can range from lead generation, to lead qualification, to lead development to closing. Many companies have one or two areas of these covered and an outsourced sales and marketing can help fill in a specific gap to help you grow your sales funnel quickly.
Speed to market – Another reason companies consider outsourced sales and marketing is the need to get to market faster and more effectively. It is much faster to have a well-trained and managed outsourced sales and marketing team, that already knows how to work well together to take you to market than it is to launch or rebuild a team on your own.
To learn more about Gabriel Sales approach to outsourced sales and marketing we invite you to check out our outsourced sales and marketing services page.
by Glen Springer | Jan 10, 2017
When outsourcing sales and marketing we help companies build modern sales and marketing operations. As we help build these integrated marketing and sales automation engines we focus on selling to your buyers the way your buyers want to buy. According to Forrester Research and Marketing Sherpa Surveys in 2016 70% of your buyers now prefer to learn about your product solution by an introductory email followed by additional education content.
This means that Email Marketing to rented opt in lists and email nurturing with a marketing automation tool is now critical to a lead generation and deal development process. What follows below are the two types of email support you should expect when outsourcing sales and marketing. We also share a handful of best practices we use when providing outsourcing sales and marketing services.
Email Blasts to Opt In Lists through a Third Party Provider
The first step to being able to educate buyers with digital content and lead nurturing programs is to build a database to market to on a regular basis.
While buying a list and simply blasting it is an option; as an outsourcing sales and marketing company we highly discourage this approach for several reasons:
- Compared to renting a list it is typically more expensive
- You will quickly run into CAN-SPAM issues and will get your email server blacklisted
- In some cases your delivery will be less than 50%.
Best practices dictate that you identify a vendor that has buyers that fit your target market that have opted in to receive educational content. You can then rent this list and send a series of three emails to that opt in list with educational offers that address a business need or a business problem they are trying to solve. The vendor will be responsible for sending these emails through their white listed and approved servers so you will not be violating any SPAM regulations.
The email themselves should not be flashy. In some cases those email can simply be text only with a link to the content offer. The content offer should be educational. You do not want to try and sell on the first contact. Once the email recipient opens the email you can continue to market to them with additional nurturing emails.
Nurturing Emails
Once a buyer is interested in your area of expertise your next goal should be to build trust and to stay top of mind with your potential buyers until they are ready to buy. This is when a marketing automation platform to deliver the emails and to score the buyers engagement becomes important for the following reasons:
- You can schedule the emails on a regular basis
- You can track opens
- You can score your buyers interest in your solution when they engage with content
As an outsourcing sales and marketing company we typically recommend that companies start nurturing once they have a database of over 1000 targets and that once again you keep the emails simple and educational.
We also recommend that you keep the content easy to digest and informative. Blog posts, short articles and both short and long form webcasts or short videos will all work.
Always end the email with a way for the potential buyer to contact you directly. And if you discover through your automation platforms lead scoring process that a buyer is giving off potential buying signals you should have your outsourcing sales rep call the lead to qualify and set an appointment.
To learn more about how an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help with your email marketing and other lead generation and marketing needs we invite you to visit our outsourcing sales and marketing services page.
