by gabriel_sales | Sep 19, 2012
A recent Deloitte survey on outsourcing pointed to a projected increase over the next several years. What is driving this across the board is a desire for companies to focus on their core competencies. What was interesting to us as an sales and marketing outsourcing company is the expected anticipated growth of sales and marketing outsourcing specifically of 22%. Why are so many diverse companies, both big and small, turning to outsourcing? Organizations chose to outsource for many reasons, and when asked which objectives were the most important to their outsourcing initiative 87% said reducing operating costs, 73% said improving customer service, and 49% said gaining a competitive advantage.
As an outsourced sales and marketing company we find that the largest area we are able to reduce operating costs for our clients immediately is in our ability to take over your sales recruiting, sales management and marketing management overhead which can run into six figures plus annually (not including staffing the reps). With this headache off your plate you can focus on your core competencies.
The report goes further and talks about some of the areas that are critical to a successful outsourcing engagement that we believe also applies specifically to sales and marketing outsourcing. They are:
- A spirit of partnership between the vendor and the company. This is especially critical when the goal of sales and marketing outsourcing is closed deals.
- Clear service levels
- Strong and joint management of the relationship. This is especially critical in sales and marketing outsourcing which may require pivots, as feedback from the market drives modifications in how the market should be approached.
- Detailed contract terms
- Strong vendor account management team. When outsourcing sales and marketing this should include both a marketer and a sales manager.
- A strong company management team. We strongly recommend that you do not just plan on turning sales and marketing outsourcing on and walking away. Staying engaged on a monthly or weekly basis can help the relationship flourish and generate more leads and closed business for your company. Sales and marketing outsourcing companies are experts in selling but they cannot immediately replace your thought leadership in your product and market.
To discover if an outsourced sales and marketing company outsourcing is right for you please contact us for a quick review to see if our strategies can help.
by Glen Springer | Sep 14, 2012
Content Marketing is now required as ground cover for your sales team. If you haven’t started you need to start now. As a sales outsourcing company working to successfully launch sales content marketing efforts for multiple clients we often hear that “it take to much time, or I am not ready to commit.” Our position:
- Content marketing does not need to be complicated for B2B marketers to meet the needs of sales. As a thought leader you have tons of little snippets of value to share on a regular basis.
- You don’t have a choice if you want your sales reps to successfully compete and win.
As a sales outsourcing company we understand that, especially for company’s new to content marketing, it may seem daunting. But it’s easier than you think. We are experts and thought leaders in sales and marketing tactics and strategies. You are experts and thought leaders in your product and solution area. One of the values we bring as a sales and marketing outsourcing company is that we have a methodical system to quickly turn your thought leadership into tools that will empower your sales and marketing efforts.
Below is our framework for content marketing that will help empower your sales team with the tools they need to be successful.
Using our framework we help our clients to quickly determine what specific content is required at specific stages of the sales cycle. We implement Digital Demand Center™ our proprietary Content Management System to accelerate this process. As the survey below indicates the majority of the content required can be initially distributed with blogs. When combined with our expertise in sales storytelling, educational webcasting and sales video content production we can get your sales team (or our sales outsourcing and marketing effort on your behalf) to market with a winning sales content marketing strategy in a fraction of the time you may be able to achieve on your own.
Can Sales Outsourcing Help Your Company?
To check out what your peers are already doing check out this previous blog post. To discover how we can help accelerate your sales integrating multiple tactics and strategies please feel free to reach out for an initial conversation.
by gabriel_sales | Sep 14, 2012
Content Marketing is now required as ground cover for your sales team. If you haven’t started you need to start now. As a sales outsourcing company working to successfully launch sales content marketing efforts for multiple clients we often hear that “it take to much time, or I am not ready to commit.” Our position:
- Content marketing does not need to be complicated for B2B marketers to meet the needs of sales. As a thought leader you have tons of little snippets of value to share on a regular basis.
- You don’t have a choice if you want your sales reps to successfully compete and win.
As a sales outsourcing company we understand that, especially for company’s new to content marketing, it may seem daunting. But it’s easier than you think. We are experts and thought leaders in sales and marketing tactics and strategies. You are experts and thought leaders in your product and solution area. One of the values we bring as a sales and marketing outsourcing company is that we have a methodical system to quickly turn your thought leadership into tools that will empower your sales and marketing efforts.
Below is our framework for content marketing that will help empower your sales team with the tools they need to be successful.
Using our framework we help our clients to quickly determine what specific content is required at specific stages of the sales cycle. We implement Digital Demand Center™ our proprietary Content Management System to accelerate this process. As the survey below indicates the majority of the content required can be initially distributed with blogs. When combined with our expertise in sales storytelling, educational webcasting and sales video content production we can get your sales team (or our sales outsourcing and marketing effort on your behalf) to market with a winning sales content marketing strategy in a fraction of the time you may be able to achieve on your own.
Can Sales Outsourcing Help Your Company?
To check out what your peers are already doing check out this previous blog post. To discover how we can help accelerate your sales integrating multiple tactics and strategies please feel free to reach out for an initial conversation.
by Glen Springer | Sep 9, 2012
A Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company can take Tips from a Rock Star?
As a successful outsourced sales and marketing company it’s important that we keep our outsourced sales reps and marketers up beat and motivated. Success in life no matter what your pursuit all take the same basic building blocks. This quote was particularly helpful in demonstrating that with our sales team so we felt like we would share it with a wider audience.
Bono In response to the question about U2’s drive for huge worldwide success:
“Be honest. Are you really telling me that you’d never contemplated failure before?”
Responded:
“I don’t remember it. I would get angry, I would get upset that we weren’t what we could be. I don’t remember thing that we never would be successful. I always thought we would. And as soon as we did, it would be clear. Doubt, self doubt, was about the current material we could improve, but the destination was never a doubt. See, there is a chasm between envy and desire, OK? Envy is like wanting something that’s not yours, not worked for. But desire is different. Desire comes out of wanting what is yours, and still wanting it even if it’s not yet there. When desire becomes envy there is a difference. And there is a difference between the point of view of the fan. When (a fan) looks up at desire they think I can be”
Great quote but what does this have to do with sales and marketing. We think the difference between desire and envy, where you are coming from in your heart and head is often the difference between success and failure. Obviously you can’t get much more successful then U2 has. And its clear from this quote that this was not an accident.
What does this quote demonstrate to help create a successful outsourced sales and marketing company?
- Success requires passion but not anger. A drive to push yourself and your team.
- Success requires knowing what your chief aim is. Visualizing it.
- Success requires never doubting that you are capable of it.
- Success requires coming from a place (desire) where you believe in what you are doing (selling, marketing)
- Success is about never forgetting that your success requires that you genuinely care about your fan (customer).
If your sales pipe could use a boost feel free to contact us to see if one of our programs can help.
by Glen Springer | May 8, 2012
Can a Marketing Automation Software make your sales team more productive? Generally we find that the answer is yes. However with all the features offered in these software solutions the more important question from our perspective as a B2B sales and marketing company is where should you focus the software during the initial implementation to gain traction. With the right focus you can start to produce and ROI quickly. We recommend you look at your Sales Process and Marketing Automation in tandem. To decide where and how to prioritize your initial implementation it helps to consider:
- Where you can get the best lift by improving your current sales process
- Are there parts of your process you can automate quickly
That stated here are some questions you can ask yourself to start thinking about where to get started.
ROI around lead volume:
- How effective is your company converting inbound leads into sales qualified leads. How much time/bandwidth does your sales team devote to converting inbound leads? Do you follow up one or two times then drop that effort?
- Consequentially…how many dead leads are sitting in your database?
- How effective is your sales team in prioritizing your inbound requests. Are they pursuing leads and working opportunities that don’t convert.
If this is a challenge you can focus initially on automated drip marketing programs. You can score a leads engagement and prioritize much more effectively.
ROI around decreasing your reps time spent educating the buyer:
- How complex is your sale? Or an even better question how many problem does your solution solve for your customer?
- How much education is required for your customer to become a viable prospect?
- How strong is your brand? Do you even have a brand or do your sales reps need to establish your credibility and thought leadership position with your customers?
- How educated is your customer about your category and solution area? How much time do your senior reps spend educating the prospect?
- Does your sale require a champion on the buyer side to educate their internal team?
If this is your challenge you can focus on creating a series of Webcasts, short videos and if you are working with Gabriel Sales you can implement our Digital Sales Base Camp™ to decrease the amount of time your senior reps invest in educating the buyer while simultaneously watching how the buyer consumes your content by contextualizing your content (including blog posts) for specific customer segments.
ROI from understanding your metrics
- What percentage of your revenue comes from new leads?
- What percentage of total opportunities come from existing prospects?
- Does most of your business come from leads generated in the last 30 days?
- How much of your business comes from customers that first demonstrated interest 3 months ago? 12 months ago?
- What is coming in from cold calling? PPC? SEO?
- Do you offer free trials or evaluations? At what rate do those free trials convert to paying customers? What is the process a buyer goes through to convert post a free trial?
- What ensure a trial implementation is successful?
- How deeply do they engage during a free trial?
A marketing automation software is also a great repository of all sorts of data sets. With a smart marketing and sales analyst you can really drill down into multiple different areas of your sales process in half the time or less it used to take to do serious deal flow analysis. Gaps and future areas of improvement are much easier to identify and get right from incremental and in some case exponential revenue gains. We have also found that this data is invaluable for clients that are getting beat up by Venture Capitalists. With hard data they are able to defend their valuations with hard data.
When approached the right way and asking the right questions of your sales process you can experience some quick wins with your marketing automation implementation. We are experiencing some fantastic initial success reducing cost of sales percentages for both ourselves and our clients. The learning curve is exponential. So pick a lane and get started.
If you have not checked out what these platforms can do here is a quick overview from Pardot 5 Minute Overview of Marketing Automation. If you have a stalled implementation or just want to get more out of your efforts and are curious if an outsourced sales and marketing company can get you on a faster track to sales results feel free to contact us for a quick consultative call.
For more information from Gabriel Sales on business to business marketing strategy, marketing and sales services, please visit our Knowledge Center. We also invite you to check out our White Paper that has several sections that give you some hard ratios on how you can calculate your hard ROI base on sales conversions.
by gabriel_sales | May 3, 2012
Gabriel Sales helps companies move leads from marketing qualified to sales qualified deals faster. As a b2b sales marketing company here are a several things we suggest you avoid when following up on inbound leads.
- Handing leads to your rep without them being educated on the piece that generated the lead.
- Not leaving a voice mail.
- Leaving a voice mail that just talks about your company. Try something like “This is Mary from ACME, we help companies solve this problem, and I wanted to see if we could share another piece of content about.”
- Always leave your number at the beginning and end of the message.
- Don’t ignore non-business email addresses. Repeat…do not discount these. According to the latest TechTarget Media Consumption research, approximately 40% of corporate IT buyers indicate that they use their personal email account regularly for business.
A marketing automation is also a big help in increasing you ability to generate more business from your inbound leads. If you have not checked out what these platforms can do here is a quick overview from Pardot 5 Minute Overview of Marketing Automation .
If you curious if an outsourced sales and marketing company can get you on a faster track to sales results feel free to contact us for a quick consultative call.
