by gabriel_sales | Jul 17, 2014
In our last blog, we discussed some of the main challenges B2B companies are having with sales and marketing today. To summarize, the three main challenges are technology implementation and use, developing content that engages customers and proving marketing’s value in a business sense.
This blog will discuss three ways a B2B outsourced sales team can help your marketing efforts by helping to solve these challenges for their clients.
1. They can tell you what types of content you need and what types of content you shouldn’t waste your time with.
Many B2B companies entering the complex world of content marketing know they need content, but they don’t what type of content works in B2B and what type is needed for their specific sales. B2B sales outsourcing teams generally have experience working with dozens of clients in multiple markets and industries and therefore can offer insights and best practices based on what has worked in the past.
For example, engaging in social media marketing can be a lot of work. A B2B sales outsourcing team can tell you which platforms are most and least effective for your solution or market, and save you from spending hours on Twitter when your customers use LinkedIn. An outsourced team can also help in optimizing the content you already have so it is more engaging for buyers. For instance, they may tell you to break up an hour-long webcast into 5-10 minute chunks, making the content more accessible and less overwhelming for those on a time crunch.
2. They can help you use technology to make sure the content gets to the right people.
In addition to helping you create content that delights and engages your customer base, an outsourced B2B sales team can also help you to target the best decision makers and implement technology solutions to help manage and streamline the entire sales and marketing process.
In regards to complex software solutions like marketing automation, an outsourced team can help you through the implementation process and give you the do’s and don’t they have learned along the way. Additionally, they generally know how to integrate content with marketing technology through features like email drip programs, content/lead scoring and real-time alerts.
3. Their reporting yields insights that enable you to quickly improve and refine as time goes on.
An outsourced B2B sales team should report on the work that they do. The type of reporting you receive may vary depending on what company you work with and what your specific sales and marketing goals are. For example, at Gabriel Sales, we provide our clients with at least 12 different types of reporting on a weekly basis—including conversion ratios, email campaign analytics, verbatims of cold calls, etc. We also have weekly or bi-weekly status meeting to discuss progress and needs for improvement.
With this level of detail and transparency, it becomes much easier for companies to understand the value that marketing efforts contribute to the overall business. With all of the relevant data in front of them, companies are able to make better choices regarding strategy, and spend less time trying to figure out whether or not something is working.
If you’d like to know more about the value of B2B sales outsourcing, read 3 Ways B2B Sales Outsourcing Can Turn Around Stagnant Sales. Feel free to check out our services page to learn more about what we do and how we can help.
by gabriel_sales | Jun 13, 2014
Looking to launch B2B sales marketing? Here are your options…
Most companies today have realized that the b2b sales marketing strategies and tactics that worked 10—or even 5—years ago do not work anymore. Marketing no longer revolves around positioning and impressions, and sales is more than endless cold calls and aggressive sales pitches.
B2B sales and marketing today is about having the ability to integrate your sales and marketing processes with digital tools and technologies to simultaneously improve effectiveness and increase efficiency. For B2B companies who have not yet gone through this integration, the process can be overwhelming and time consuming. For many companies, it can take over a year to implement and see results from a marketing automation platform.
In order to streamline these processes and handle the added complexity that comes with B2B sales today, many companies are currently looking to external resources. Companies have several options when it comes to outside sales and marketing resources, and the rest of this blog will look at the pros and cons of using freelancers for B2B sales marketing.
When Freelancers Work
- You have a specific, one-time project or issue.
- Hiring a freelancer can work when you have something that needs to be done that has a clear beginning and end (e.g. a website redesign or marketing brochure).
- You have a clearly defined gap that needs to be filled.
- A freelancer can be a fit when all of the other puzzle places are already in place. For example, you may have all the marketing technology you need running smoothly, but cannot keep up with the constant demands for content.
- You have project management processes and quality assurance standards in place internally.
- Because freelancers, by definition, are not your internal employees, they do not know how you work and what your standards for quality are. In order to get quality work on time, you need to have clearly defined processes and standards in place for freelancers to adhere to.
When Freelancers Don’t Work
- You are starting from scratch
- If you have yet to enter the world of content marketing, social media, customer relationship management and marketing automation, hiring a single freelancer is not going to get you where you need to be.
- The issues you are trying to solve involve different skill sets
- If the help you need involves both content creation and technology integration, you need an outsourced sales and marketing team, not a freelancer. Freelancers typically have very specialized expertise and cannot wear all the hats needed to set up and run a fully integrated sales and marketing program.
- You need help with strategy in addition to execution
- If you have a strategy and plan in place, it is relatively easy to plug freelancers into it. If you have yet to create a sales and marketing strategy, it is likely you need a more comprehensive solution before you will be able to execute successfully.
To learn more about the option of outsourcing your B2B sales marketing, read 5 Ways an Outsourced Sales Team Can Help Your Marketing Team. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by Glen Springer | Jun 5, 2014
In the first blog of this two part series, we learned that aiming to impress is not the most effective approach. In part #2 we will talk about aiming to empower.
The reason your prospect has shown up for your meeting is not to be impressed; it is to be empowered to solve their problem. Unfortunately, this is not how most salespeople sell. Most end up product dumping, talking way too much and not spending enough time probing, discovering and selling based on the customers responses and needs.
Features and benefits should be a part of your presentation, but they need to be tied to the idea of solving a specific problem raised by your prospect. Otherwise, you may spend a significant amount of time on irrelevant topics and features. You may even hit the right feature and benefit, but without knowing how it relates back to you prospect, you may totally miss why it matters to them.
The reasons you think your product is cool may not even register at all with your prospect and vice versa.
When buying a car, you aren’t sold until you’ve driven the car. Most people decide to purchase a car during the test drive because they are taking actions aimed at solving their own problems and envisioning themselves behind the wheel.
In your B2B sales meetings, giving your prospect the keys and the power to solve their problem is equivalent to:
- Allowing him/her to share the problem
- Encouraging dialogue
- Asking open-ended questions
- Relating the benefits back to his/her pain
- Allowing your solution to show how he/she can specifically ease that pain
Just let them be sold on their solved problems. Stop Talking. Ask a question. Listen. Tie everything back to the reason they showed up in the first place. If they haven’t mentioned interest in a particular feature, rethink whether it’s even worth mentioning. Wow them by giving them solutions—not another sales presentation.
By attempting to empower your prospects rather than impress them during your sales meetings, the sale becomes significantly easier and less stressful for everyone involved.
Learn more in this blog called The #1 Mistake Salesmen Make. You can learn more about the services we offer as a B2B sales outsourcing company here. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by Glen Springer | Jun 4, 2014
When presenting your product or solution, it is often the approach to attempt to impress your prospect with every feature and benefit, rave about personal accomplishments and achievements or your software’s bells and whistles.
From our experience as a B2B sales outsourcing company, we have seen that this is not the most effective approach to closing deals. What is often missed and lost is that your prospect set aside time, has most likely read and digested some of your content and has now actually shown up to your meeting. A great deal of the battle has already been won.
This is now the time that your prospect is willing to open up, if you let them (most don’t). Trying to get someone to open up on a cold call is the total opposite: they don’t know who you are, why you called, what the call is about—and you most likely interrupted their day.
But, if you have your prospect in a sales meeting, you are past that point. Take advantage of the fact that you have the prospect all to yourself with little to no distractions. Don’t feature dump or sell on every benefit; if that is all your prospect wants, they can usually get this information on their own.
Your product or solution will also most likely be vetted by a technical person, so save the technical selling for him; he likes it. Business buyers want problems solved, and ROI helps them see it. You will get the next step if you’re a fit.
To get your prospects talking in a sales meeting, you don’t need any secret sales questions. Just ask them to recap why they agreed to meet and explain their situation and what they might be looking for. In doing this, they will tell you their pain that is why they are talking to you—not because you are such a great salesperson, or your product is wicked cool. Despite what we think, people really don’t want to talk to us (sales).
People only want to talk to sales when they think you can help solve a problem. That is where the focus needs to be, solving the prospect’s problem, not yours (more sales).
It transfers through the phone when you are self-serving. When the majority of what you do is talking, you lose. When you are listening and taking notes the majority of time, you’re winning.
Continue reading.
by gabriel_sales | Jun 1, 2014
This is the second half of a blog series on how B2B sales outsourcing can turn around stagnant sales. Part one can be found here.
2. Track sales process using technology and analytics
Until about a decade ago, there weren’t that many ways for marketers to measure their direct contribution to P&L. Today, technologies like customer relationship management (CRM) programs and marketing automation software make it easy to monitor and track lead engagement through every part of the buyer lifecycle.
For companies that have yet to invest in these types of technologies, the learning curve for implementation can be rather high. It can often take a year or more for B2B companies to start to see the results they’re looking for. A sales outsourcing company that offers sales technologies implementation and support services can help streamline the implementation process and get companies up and running much faster than they could on their own.
3. Keep up with increasing demands for marketing content
As we’ve written about previously, marketers today are increasingly expected to act like publishers. While content demands in the B2B may be slightly less than B2C, they can still be quite overwhelming for the average B2B company with limited resources.
Outsourcing your B2B content creation can help you keep up with the increasing content demands while opening up internal resources to work on other activities. It is often easy for companies without a full time content creation staff to get sidetracked on other initiatives; leveraging an outsourced sales and marketing company ensures you keep a steady flow of quality content your readers will find relevant and valuable.
For more on the advantages of outsourced B2B sales, you can read 5 Reasons to Outsource Your B2B Sales in 2014. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | May 29, 2014
While B2B sales is always going to be about building relationships and creating trust, the way we go about doing those things has changed dramatically in recent years. Social media, marketing automation and other digital sales tools and technologies have enabled a new and more effective way of selling while simultaneously making the whole process much more complex.
The new digital marketplace requires better synergy between sales and marketing teams, a steady flow of digital content and web tools to track and measure your efforts. For some companies, making this transition can be hard to handle and involves a long learning curve. Because of this, many companies find an advantage in leveraging B2B sales outsourcing services to help them change and adapt to this new way of selling.
As a B2B sales outsourcing company, we obviously have some bias here, but here are three of the main ways our services bring value to our clients:
- Align digital content with buyer need
By now, most B2B companies know they need to create marketing content to use in the course of their sales process. The part some companies struggle with is creating content that is both relevant to the buyer and contributes to moving prospects through the sales cycle.
A B2B sales and marketing outsourcing company has the experience to know what content works and what doesn’t. They also know how to craft content that speaks directly to your buyers’ greatest needs or pains. At least initially, your content should be able to let your prospects quickly decide whether or not they have any interest in your solution; sales outsourcing services can help you create a content strategy aligned around this goal.
Continue reading.
In our last blog, we discussed some of the main challenges B2B companies are having with sales and marketing today. To summarize, the three main challenges are technology implementation and use, developing content that engages customers and proving marketing’s value in a business sense.
