by Carol Springer | Oct 17, 2016
Your buyer now expects you to make it easy for them to buy. So Gabriel Sales now provides both Sales Outsourcing and Outsourced Marketing support for our clients, because content is required to support your sales effort. Here are some rules of thumb and best practices we use to help create powerful content that will support your sales outsourcing without breaking the bank:
Generate Thought Leadership Content – For many companies the production of the content can be tough but the substance of the content is all around them. What we find when doing a content survey and initial interviews is that what our clients believe to be common sense and basic information, is not that common or basic for the buyer. With a series of headshot interviews, we can help them to create a series of blogs, checklists and short informational videos that are authentically educational.
Content Needs to Live Online – You need to make sure your buyers and your sales team can access your content online. This allows your content to be shared easily by your sales team and/or your sales outsourcing team. Your blog is the easiest way to start. And when we work with clients we supply our simple to use WordPress plug-in Digital Demand Center. This allows us to quickly organize content for campaigns to specific buyers. The tools allows you to contextualize all your content for specific buyers and also helps with search engine optimization & email marketing. The more you share the more business you will generate. Below is an example of how you can organize blog posts and videos using a powerful microsite in Digtial Demand Center to automate buyer education.
Use Multiple Formats – Not all buyers like to be educated by the same format of content. Turn this into an advantage for your sales reps and use a mix of video, blog posts, webcasts, checklists, and eBooks. We really like webcasts as anchor content because we find that we can take a well thought through webcast and turn it into multiple pieces of shorter content in different formats. Once again if you take care of the substance we can take care of the production to support your sales outsourcing clients.
Use Automation Technology to Score Your Leads – Automation technologies are here for good. They give you the ability to educated buyers, stay top of mind and prioritize leads for you sales outsourcing team. You should expect any sales outsourcing partner to be using these tools to increase your effectiveness and efficiency.
Don’t Forget Calls to Action – You should end every piece of content with a next step to make it easy for your buyer to buy.
If you would like to learn more about Gabriel Sales and our history please visit the About Us Page or feel free to Contact Us to learn more about how we can help with your sales outsourcing and outsourced marketing needs.
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 12, 2016
Since eMail is now preferred by 70% of buyers who want to learn about new products or services, eMail marketing is an important feature in our Integrated Outsourced Sales and Marketing Campaigns and Sales Automation Engines.
Over the next couple of weeks, we will publish several articles to help companies just getting started with sales automation and eMail lead generation, to improve results. The articles will address:
- Why using a Whitelisted Service Provider Makes Sense
- How to Design and Code Your eMails
- What Offers to Make
To kick it off, we will start with the basics of subject line writing to avoid filters, or if you are marketing to small businesses or consumers, Google’s Promotion Box. If you are not familiar with what this is, we have attached a screen shot below (and avoiding this box will also be addressed in articles down the road).
What to Avoid in Subject Lines
- Don’t use spammy and some not so spammy words like “Free”, “Urgent”, “Call”, “Marketing”, “Now”, “Income”, “Sale”, “Discount”, “Month”, and “You’re”. As an outsourced sales and marketing company, we have identified “words to avoid” when running campaigns for our clients. You can download a PDF of these words to use for future reference (and we have also included an image below). If you have a question about other words, you can also run it through spamassasin.com. This is a free online tool.
- DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS AND exclude MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! Not only is this obnoxious, but you’re more likely to end up being flagged by a spam filter.
- Don’t worry about number of characters and try to keep subject lines impactful. Remember, email platform users may only see the first 40-50 characters, or even less, and your email subject lines are even more compressed on mobile devices. Despite all the information about subject line length, studies show that length doesn’t actually affect open rates. Below are two examples of how an email could look in Outlook and how much of the subject line a buyer could see on an iPhone.
Try and keep the first 40 characters of your subject lines as impactful as possible for visibility, not delivery.
- Don’t use symbols or strange characters – $$$, <>, ###, ??? and Emoji will hit the filter immediately.
- Finally don’t oversell in the subject line – The goal of your email campaign is to get the buyer to open and engage. Do not expect one open and buy. This is the first step in a process. You will get more opens and more conversions with education vs. selling.
How Gabriel Sales Can Help
Gabriel Sales specializes in Outsourced Sales and Marketing Campaigns that helps buyers buy through integrated digital campaigns and sales automation engine implementation. We make all this easy and you can learn more about our point solutions following the links below.
Top of Funnel eMail Marketing Campaigns
Lead Scoring and Sales Automation Starter Package
And Tradeshow Support Campaigns
by Carol Springer | Oct 11, 2016
Gabriel Sales is an outsourced sales and marketing organization with a turnkey launch process poised to help you build a repeatable sales engine. We help you make your sales budget to work harder and smarter.
There are now many options and tactics for companies to drive sales other than simply building an internal team. When discussing outsourcing sales, we like to start the conversation with defining the word “outsourcing” itself.
Outsourcing involves the contracting of a business process – previously performed in-house – to an external provider.
Outsourcing = Process a previously performed task to be replicated and transitioned
With this in mind, very few companies are ready for or when we drill into actually looking for pure sales outsourcing. What companies are looking for is a combination of some or all of the functions below:
- An outsourced sales and marketing company to fill the pipe
- An outsourced sales management company to manage the sale
- An outsourced sales and marketing company to manage content development and automation systems to score leads
- An outsourced sales company to close deals
So to build a successful sales strategy you should expect an outsourced sales and marketing company to:
- Determine if you can outsource all or part of your sales function
- Determine if you should outsource sales and marketing
- Determine if you need full sales and marketing outsourcing or simply need to outsource part of your sales process
This blog is designed to help you understand what to expect during a preliminary assessment and what information you should be prepared to share to help an outsourced sales company craft successful outsourced sales and marketing program.
What to expect
During our initial preliminary assessment with potential clients looking we identify what is working and what is not working. We look at these issues separately and the areas you should be prepared to explore will include:
- Sales Scripting
- Outsourcing Lead Generation (Top of Funnel Leads)
- Outsourcing Lead Nurturing/Content Marketing Readiness
- Outsourcing Sales Qualifying and Lead Development
- Outsourcing Sales Closing
To help us help you best, you should also be prepared to answer some questions about your existing conversion metrics:
- What is the historical sales cycle?
- How accurate was last year’s forecast?
- How many meetings does a typical sale take?
- What is the material presented in each one of those meetings?
- What digital content is being consumed as part of the sale?
- How many cold calls does it take to put a prospect into the pipe?
- How many prospects are currently in your existing database?
- What is your typical conversion metrics?
- Do you have cold call scripts? First call scripts?
- Is the pricing model fixed? When was it last changed?
- Who are your top three direct competitors? Indirect?
- Why do you win? Why do you lose?
- What markets have you targeted?
- What decision makers do you sell to?
- What technology platforms are you utilizing and how?
Finally, we will need to discover what story you are telling the market:
- Do you have a buyer persona?
- Do you have a message map?
- Do you have a positioning document?
- Do you have a messaging document?
- How much collateral do you have and of what type?
We ask you to be patient during these initial discovery sessions and to be as transparent as possible. This ensures:
- The right sales outsourcing fit
- And saves you time and money, ensuring you get the best strategy possible, as soon as possible.
If you are interested in getting to the market with speed and would like to learn more about how we can help, please CONTACT US for a free assessment today.
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 4, 2016
This article will eventually detail why we believe a Sales Ready Lead Campaign is the best way to implement a sales automation engine for first-time users. Before jumping into that business case, we wanted to share some facts and figures that explain why automation systems are now a requirement for sales success.
Automation Facts & Figures
The Sales Automation Engine is quickly becoming standard best practices for sales and marketing success. Here are some recent statistics:
- Best-in-Class companies are 67% more likely to use a marketing automation platform. – Aberdeen Group “State of Marketing Automation Processes that Produce”
- 63% of companies successful in marketing automation plan to increase their marketing automation budget. The companies with successful marketing automation programs will invest in further success in the coming year. – Marketo & Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Strategies for Sustaining Success” (2015)
- 63% of companies outsource all or part of marketing automation strategy planning. With t. 37% using in-house resources only. – Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016).
- 79% of top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for more than 2 years. – Gleanster “2016 Marketing Automation Benchmark”
Automation and lead scoring through a Sales Automation Engine are critical because more and more products and solutions are first bought through digital education, and then sold when your buyer is ready to be sold. And you need automation systems to address this shift in buyer behavior.
Over time marketing automation helps you win more business faster and at a lower cost. But the time delta for success ranges between 3 months to well over a year depending on your existing sales cycle.
And according to Ascend2 “Marketing Automation Trends Survey” (2016), the most significant barriers to marketing automation success are:
- Lack of an effective strategy (52%)
- Complexity of the system (42%)
- Inadequate contact data quality (38%)
- Lack of employee skills (32%)
- Lack of relevant content (31%)
- Marketing and sales alignment (30%)
- Budget constraints (27%)
With those types of barriers and timelines, this makes proving that a sales automation engine will work for your business and getting it right the first time is at least as equally critical as hiring the right sales reps the first time to avoid sunk costs with no results. But what makes getting this marketing automation team hire right even more difficult than finding and hiring the right rep is the fact that marketing automation is just starting to become mainstream. There is simply not enough talent out here with the requisite experience (with the bumps and bruises and wins and losses) to ensure your initial success. Bottom line, demand for talent and experience is not keeping up with the supply of talent to ensure success.
Most marketers that are in-house talent only have one or two implementations under their belt. We believe that working with an outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales is worth strongly considering for four reasons:
- We have multiple implementations under our belt across multiple verticals selling multiple solutions with varied sales cycles so we can cross-pollinate best practices.
- Outsourced sales and marketing companies appreciate marketing metrics but understand the only metric that counts is closed revenue.
- We understand how to create and use content to automate the sale and leverage the technologies to score leads.
- We can build your engine and sales automation process faster at a lower cost and then transition the engine when it is fully productive.
How Gabriel Sales Outsourced Sales and Marketing Capacity and a Sales Ready Lead Campaign Can Help
Gabriel Sales has more than 40 Marketing Automation implementations under our belt. We bring both the capability and capacity you need to get it right the first time with a blended team of:
- Strategists
- Systems integrators across most automation platforms and Salesforce
- Our own low-cost tools if you are not initially ready to commit 20k annually for a full marketing platform like Pardot, Hubspot, or Marketo
- Content producers
- Marketing coordinators
- Database marketers
- Trained business development reps
More importantly, we can have you to market in weeks with Sales Ready Leads flowing so you avoid the quarters it takes to build on your own.
And once the engine is built and functioning we can continue to sustain or scale indefinitely or you can take over in-house with a seamless transition of your engine and systems.
To learn more about our approach and how it all works check out this short 3-minute educational video and educational microsite. Watch the embedded video below. Or contact us for a free readiness assessment that evaluates how large a market you can target, your content readiness and a preliminary result forecast.
