by Carol Springer | Oct 31, 2016
As a sales outsourcing company, that specializes in building sales automation engines, we work remotely from our clients. One key ingredient of our sales engines is the ability to use content to prove to buyers that the product we are selling solves a problem for them. And over the past several years we have discovered that nothing is more valuable than video. And when creating videos, regardless if it is our team, or their team creating the content, we have one major rule.
Rule # 1 – Keep it Simple
People buy products and services because they want to solve a problem. That’s it.
Rule # 2 – Address Buyers Problems
We have found over the past several years of video production and distribution that videos that perform the best supporting our client’s sales outsourcing reps, our lead scoring, and our content marketing are the ones that offer solutions to a problem. This is especially helpful for lead scoring because if a buyer has watched the video you know they may have this pain.
The problem could be as simple as, “When launching an email campaign, I want to get notified when someone clicks a link in the email.”
Company X could make a short video that shows a marketing team launching an email campaign, and sales people are getting emails to follow up with leads.
Now, that sort of video documentation is way more interesting than a text explanation of the technology. Some other ideas for problem-solving with video marketing. Here is one that shows how lead scoring helps callers:
- Create video content with happy clients or customers (remember, they don’t have to be long to be compelling 1-2 minutes) offering short testimonials.
- Create easy to follow videos for each step of your product implementation, especially if it’s a software program
- Create a weekly webisode series that shows your company’s spokesperson running into daily life issues that are solved with your product or service. This could be the office “talent”, so someone that is camera-ready is preferable.
This leads in to my next point….
Micro-Video Strategy Applications
Let’s face it, there are moments in your daily experiences that people like to see. These are the most interesting and compelling content that you can capture, and the challenge is knowing how to identify it. Which we will get into later.
With attention spans plummeting, now is the time to begin developing a short-form content strategy that blends with your overall content strategy. This is very applicable to your micro-branded products or services.
At Company X, for example, John has started a new 3-minute video webisode series where he talks about everything marketing and sales. The great thing about Joe is that he is able to record each video on his iPhone, and no one expects anything more from the production value because it’s more about the thought leadership he provides.
Video content can also be used to automate the explanation of products, services, and customer problems to help make it easier for buyer to buy:
- For Example turn your sales reps initial intro pitch deck (that takes 10 15 minutes to present live) into a simple to produce explanation video that talks about the current situation in the market, the problems this creates and how you solve the problem. It’s mini webcast on speed – part educational and part quick intro to the solution. Here is one we crafted for our tradeshow support package
If you can identify all of the moments that might need explaining, and make a short video about each, you’ll be able to create a video strategy that is built specifically for that pain point.
Remember, people have different problems they need solved. It is your job as the marketer to identify those problems with your sales team.
They will love you for addressing their questions and/or problems quickly and succinctly, without having to sift through pages of blog content.
Remember the things to keep at the top of your mind to create the compelling video for your product or service is pain points.
Ask yourself these questions: “Is this something that someone else would find valuable? How long did it take me to figure this out, and will it help someone else reach this conclusion quicker?”
At Gabriel Sales, we have created a video production workshop that will help you create compelling content that will help amplify your sales tactics, support out sales outsourcing reps to share and to create a video library for your potential customers and clients that they will love.
To learn more about how Gabriel Sales can help you to tell your sales story powerfully to as many buyers as possible using our sales outsourcing and sales automation services please visit our strategy and sales outsourcing services page. To decide if our team is the right one for you please visit our About Us page.
by Carol Springer | Oct 28, 2016
How do we define sales outsourcing? Similar to outsourcing other functions like HR, IT and Accounting, sales outsourcing involves the use of a third party with the tools, team and talent to assume the management, execution, and in some cases, the strategy for existing sales programs. It is also a way to take new products to market. Sales and marketing outsourcing can take on a single function like top of funnel lead generation, or sales opportunity development. You can also leverage a sales outsourcing company to take the buyer through the entire process.
How can a sales outsourcing company help your business? Our clients have leveraged outsourced sales to improve their efforts in the following areas:
Sales Strategy. Sales strategy and execution is not always an area of expertise for many companies, especially small and mid-sized businesses. An sales outsourcing and marketing company can quickly help you frame a proven strategy.
Recruiting, hiring, training and managing sales and marketing professionals. Like any function of your business, success is often dependent on finding, training, managing and retaining the right talent. A sales outsourcing and marketing company has these disciplines and functions ingrained in their business. You should expect any sales outsourcing company to have a marketing support staff.
Sales and Automation Technology Expertise and Experience – For many companies, success now requires the ability to run integrated campaigns and to cost effectively score leads. A sales outsourcing and marketing company will have expertise implementing and integrating multiple systems like CRMs and Automation Technologies. This helps you to avoid the time and expense of finding this expertise. Understanding these best practices is a significant advantage for a business that does not have these tools in place.
Access to Databases – The ability to be successful with outbound sales and marketing efforts requires access to quality contacts to target, and the ability to segment these targets against your ideal customer profile. A sales outsourcing company will have subscriptions and access to multiple sources that have been previously vetted.
Speed to market. A business that needs to launch a new product must focus its efforts on development, and servicing/supporting the product or solution. An sales outsourcing company can help you move much faster than your competitors.
Additional Cost Benefits – Beyond many of the costs associated with the items mentioned above, an outsourced sales team helps you avoid costs like office space and equipment. In most cases, you can avoid the expense of hiring a full-time executive to manage your sales effort. In fact, you can often have a team of reps working for you for less than the cost of this one expense.
How Can Gabriel Sales Help
Gabriel Sales works closely with our clients to:
- Run sales ready lead campaigns to fill your funnel
- Recruit, train and manage our clients’ sales and marketing team
- Leverage the most recent technologies to make your sales process more efficient and more effective
- Provide total transparency and metrics so you can measure success at every stage of the sales process
To learn more about our approach please visit our About Us page. If you are looking for a point solution, you can visit our solutions here:
by gabriel_sales | Oct 26, 2016
Coming out of the downturn, and in combination with Tim Ferris’ (now almost classic) “4-Hour Work Week” and automation technologies to help businesses measure success, business are now open to outsourcing most functions. However, Tim Ferris’ painted a slightly rosy picture of how easy this could be. This is especially true when outsourcing sales. As any executive who has attempted sales outsourcing will tell you, outsourcing sales is not always a quick path to profitability or as straightforward as advertised. This is especially true when dealing with companies that have hung their shingles over the past 3-4 years that are now proliferating in Google Adwords.
Here are several perspectives to consider as you consider outsourcing sales for your company:
The One Eyed Man is Not Necessarily King in the Land of the Blind
As an outsourcing sales and strategy consulting company we are experts in sales processes, and all the tools required for outsourcing sales successes. However if you do not have a sales process already in place it will take us at least one or two sales cycles (taking buyers through their buying process and your sales process) to refine our collective approach. Sales outcomes will not change overnight because buyers don’t change the way they buy overnight. We typically let our clients know that the more they can stay engaged through the initial 3 to 6 months the smoother and faster outcomes we will be able to collectively produce (more on this below). Most companies are successful for a reason and that typically starts with the sales knowledge in their executive’s brains.
If you do not understand why your buyer buys we can help you nail this down with some consulting workshops and then real time feedback from buyers. But it will take time before the path to growth becomes clear and concrete because our most successful outsourcing sales are a result of building a repeatable process.
Can you stay engaged especially during the initial 90 days of launch?
Numerous entrepreneurs see outsourcing sales as a one time deal – you sign an agreement with an outsourced sales company, and afterward sit back while your new outsourced sales reps start closing deals. Obviously, as we all know, closing business is never that easy.
We have found that executives that stay engaged during the initial 90 days will accelerate success stories. You don’t need to stay hands on daily but we do recommend that you attend the weekly meetings and digest the data. There will be insights you can provide and rabbit holes you will be able to help your outsourcing sales partner to avoid.
We love the feedback, because feedback allows us, as a team, to fix issues quickly to get the best results.
Embrace the Pareto Principle when Creating Content to Support Outsourcing Sales
As an outsourced sales and marketing company we are trying to build a repeatable communication process. What we find across 100% of our engagement is that 80% of your deals are going to care about the same 20% of the information. It could be the same objections that need to be overcome. It could be the same business pains you solve. You should expect your outsourcing sales partner to have a process to help document what 20% of information needs to be shared to drive that 80% of your engagement. You should then expect to create content that will give the buyers the ability to educate themselves digitally in these areas.
Embrace the Pareto Principle when Following Up with Leads
As an outsourcing sales company we have embraced automation technologies for one reason. Once an outbound lead has been generated (agreed to accept additional information either through an eMail campaign or cold call campaign) we use this technology to help us score a leads propensity to buy. Because what we typically see is – of the leads that do agree to engage only about 20% have an immediate need (next quarter or two) and the remaining 80% are interested but nowhere close to being ready to buy. Success in the age of digital buyer education requires that you use an automation technology to score leads. You should expect your sales outsourcing partner to be adept in the use of these tools.
To learn more about how a business with a 15 year track record can help your business contact us here. Please feel free to check out our sales consulting and sales outsourcing services page to learn more about a full sales outsourcing engagement and if you have your process buttoned up and are simply looking for more sales ready leads we can help with a sales ready lead campaign.
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 21, 2016
Trends come and go and we are currently in a cycle where 70% of your buyers prefer to learn about a new product or solution via email with solid educational content. So generating leads with this tactic is one of the most cost effective ways to fuel the top of funnel with leads required for a successful sale automation engine and cold calling team.
But getting your messages through spam filters and into your recipients’ inboxes is not as easy as it was six months ago. It is even more daunting for B2B Sales. Smaller businesses, especially those unfamiliar with email’s thorny technical issues and best practices, can struggle at first.
Here are some basic tips for companies new to eMail marketing (and this will hopefully give you some food for thought addressing why you should consider B2B Sales Outsourcing to help you if you are just getting started):
Don’t send your initial cold emails to people that have not agreed to receive it
Start building your email list the right way with these two proven methods:
- Use callers to get buyers to opt-in. (But in many verticals this can be expensive unless you know exactly who you need to target)
- Start with a rented opt-in list. There are multiple providers that can send emails for you, and Gabriel Sales works with several that specialize in B2B targets.
Hitting buyers that are not anticipating or that have not agreed to receive email makes a poor brand impression and violates ISPs’ terms of service. Simply buying a cold list and emailing it, especially through an automation platform, practically guarantees deliverability issues. This approach will eventually damage your brand and get you blacklisted (cause email to bounce). Your list and your deliverability are both hard assets, and you need to treat them that way.
Don’t use gimmicks
Your email shouldn’t be deceptive. We have recently seen other companies send a barrage of email with subject lines like; “Missed the meeting”, “Following up on your question” or “Missed you on the call”. These emails are being sent by people that we have no idea who we are. These may work in the short-term, but in the long term you will end up being on the receiving end of spam complaints.
Keep volume low when you are just getting started
If you are sending marketing email through your corporate server, you’ll want to keep outbound email volume low. In fact we don’t recommend doing this at all. Although email amounts vary wildly between ISPs, sending more than about 1,000 identical emails at a time is practically inviting an ISP to take a closer look on what appears to be bulk email pouring from a personal email server. This is one of the many reasons it makes sense to leverage an automation platform to manage your outbound email efforts once you have a target that has opted in. This is also why we use Whitelisted Service Providers to generate your initial opt ins.
Consider an eMail Service Provider
Delivery now takes place in an ever increasingly complex environment. A good service provider or a marketing automation platform (once you have an opted in lead) will improve deliverability by:
- Providing increased technological capability to deliver emails
- Continuously monitoring and diagnosing to solve delivery challenges such as authentication and new ISP filtering practices-as they crop up
Providers work with hundreds if not thousands of customers to spot trends first. This is simply too daunting for an SMB to manage.
How Gabriel Sales Sales Outsourcing Can Help
eMail marketing for both top of funnel lead generation, and for developing and engaging buyers are just two of the many tactics we leverage to generate sales qualified opportunities for our clients. If you are new to eMail marketing you can started with us in two ways:
As a B2B Sales Outsourcing and Outsourced Marketing company, we understand that ROI is important. For both of these packages, we offer a free preliminary assessment to see if eMail marketing is viable and/or the right strategy for your business.
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.
