Outsourced Sales Can Strategically Help a Small Business

 

Most companies are aware that an outsourced sales company can help them recruit, hire, and train sales and marketing talent. This allows them to get to market faster than building a team on their own.

 

You should expect and an outsourced sales and marketing execution company to help you generate leads and qualify sales opportunities to help you hit your revenue, market penetration, and sales targets.

 

However, if you are a startup or small business, you should also expect your outsourced sales company to act as a strategic partner to support your executives’ goals to increase shareholder value by increasing the value of your company.

 

Here are five ways that an outsourced sales company can help you provide strategic value that increases the value of your business.

 

An outsourced sales company should make your more agile – Market insights are critical to sustain sales growth. Your outsourced sales partner will implement feedback loops that provide you feedback on what markets are most interested in your solution, what buyers and decision makers do you help the most, what messages and story are resonating with audiences and what types of content are they most interested in.

An outsourced sales company should lead to predictable sales – The faster you can forecast, the faster you can grow your business. You should expect an outsourced sales company to provide data that will help you to measure conversion metrics at every stage of your sales funnel. Better conversion data will allow you to make smarter investment decisions in both the short term and the long term.

An outsourced sales company will help you build for scalability – Nothing is more painful than building sales momentum and then hitting the wall. An outsourced sales company allows you to scale sales and marketing operations in the areas you need at the right time. In addition, an outsourced sales company will craft a repeatable sales and marketing process that you can add resources to in weeks.

An outsourced sales company will be able to benchmark your results – Outsourced sales companies will have years of data and experience executing across multiple tactics, to multiple verticals and multiple decision makers. They will be able to provide insights where there is opportunities for improvement, and where your ratios and results are predictive of success.

 

An outsourced sales company will be able to guide your technology decisions – Over the past several years there have been a proliferation of tools and technologies for marketing automation, social media marketing, and customer relationship management. Each and every product has pros and cons based on the size of your deals, the velocity of your sales, and the number of sales reps and volume of leads you will need to manage. An outsourced sales company will help you to maximize your investments and make sure you make the right investment at the right level when you need it and not before you need it.

 

If you need assistance scaling your company’s revenue, building modern sales and marketing automation or just need to put more sales qualified leads in your closer’s sales funnel Gabriel Sales may be able to help. To learn more about our approach to outsourced sales we invite you to check out our outsourced sales services page.

What to Ask an Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company

What to Ask an Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company

Asking an outsourced sales and marketing company the right questions could benefit YOU

As a startup company or small business ready to grow, you have spent a year or more developing a product or solution to solve a problem for buyers. After estimating how much time it would take for you to recruit, hire, train, and manage a small sales team, you’ve decided to use an outsourced sales and marketing company, which means you are looking to work with an organization that will help you both strategically and tactically.

Initially you’d like to work with a company like this to determine what specific target markets you should go after, and help you tell a compelling sales story.  Here are some questions we recommend that you ask when you are working with an outsourced sales and marketing company to decide if they are the right fit to take your product into the market for you:

Gather general background on the company

You should ask how long has your company been operating and you should also find out how long they have been providing sales outsourcing services and outsourced marketing services.

If the company is offering cold calling reps and buyer development reps you should ask where they are located. Are they making sales calls from the company headquarters? Are they working remote or is the outsourcing company company partnering with another company for these services?

Ask for case studies

Most sales and marketing outsourcing companies will have references that you can speak with deeper into your sales process. But when you first engage in conversations with a particular company, you should ask to see certain companies that are selling similar solutions at a similar stage and to similar markets.

You should understand who will be responsible for building target lists.

If you are working with an outsourced sales and marketing company, it’s important to understand who will be responsible for building target lists.

If you will be cold calling, you should find out what databases they have access to. If they will be running email campaigns, you should make sure they have access to rented opt in lists so you do not run up against CAN-Spam compliance issues.

If the company will be using marketing tools you should understand what kind of access you get to those tools

Most outsourced sales and marketing companies will need to have a social media management tool, a CRM, and a marketing automation platform to execute email campaigns. You should understand if you will have access to these tools or if the company will simply be providing your reports.

 

Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting & outsource sales and marketing services to companies to help them build modern sales and marketing operation that reputably produce results. To learn a little more about our approach and how we can help you build a sales and marketing revenue engine from start to finish, please visit our outsourced sales and marketing services page.

Improve Small Business Sales Outsourcing Sales and Marketing

Companies of any size can benefit from outsourcing sales. Outsourcing sales for small businesses can often have the most significant impact because these companies often need it the most – especially if success requires modern sales and marketing operations. Below are just a handful of ways a small business can benefit from outsourcing sales.

Immediate sales and marketing infrastructure

Many small businesses don’t have the most critical infrastructure for modern sales and marketing operations in place. In today’s market success, especially if you are competing against larger companies, they require multiple pieces of infrastructure and technology to compete against larger competitors including:

  • Access to databases
  • Marketing automation platforms
  • A CRM solutio

An outsourcing sales company will have both the tools and the expertise in place to give you access to these tools immediately.

 

Professional sales recruiting and management

Most small businesses don’t typically have professional sales recruiting and management in house or a process to recruit sales talent. This may lead to hiring the “wrong” sales personnel. Even if a business does hire the “right” sales person, without effective and daily sales management, that individual has a higher propensity to fail.

Using a partner for outsourcing sales will allow you to access sales recruiting, management and culture/environment that most of your larger competitors have. .

Quickly focus on specific gaps to accelerate your sales funnel

Most small business owners are wearing multiple hats, and in many cases the owners are also qualifying leads, creating the marketing material, and closing business. They are doing this on top of delivering the solutions and running day to day business operations. They have the knowledge and skill to run sales and marketing but they simply lack the bandwidth.  An outsourcing sales and marketing solution can help the small business owner cover specific gaps at specific stages of the sales process. This includes:

Lead Generation – An outsourcing sales and marketing company can quickly turn on a multiple tactics for lead generation including:

  • Email marketing
  • Outbound calls
  • SEO and SEM
  • Social Media Marketing

Lead Development – An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to implement a content marketing strategy and marketing automation platform to help you develop leads in your funnel digitally.

Lead Qualification – An outsourcing sales organization will be able to staff an outsourcing sales rep or outsourcing sales team to help you qualify and educate early stage buyers and set appointments for your senior team.

Depending on your sales cycle, an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help improve small business sales in as little as 90 to 180 days.  A small business can retain an outsourcing sales company and get access to a pool of talent and tools with less risk and more certainty.

To learn more about the problems we help small businesses solve with sales outsourcing and marketing services and how we approach building modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to visit our Resources page.

Outsourcing Sales to Improve Small Business Sales

Companies of any size can benefit from outsourcing sales. Outsourcing sales for small businesses can often have the most significant impact because these companies often need it the most, especially if success requires modern sales and marketing operations.  Below are just a handful of the ways a small business can benefit from outsourcing sales.

Immediate sales and marketing infrastructure

Many small businesses don’t have the most critical infrastructure for modern sales and marketing operations in place. In today’s market success, especially if you are competing against larger companies, they require multiple pieces of infrastructure and technology to compete against larger competitors including:

  • Access to databases
  • Marketing automation platforms
  • A CRM solution

An outsourcing sales company will have both the tools and the expertise in place to give you access to these tools immediately.

Professional sales recruiting and management

Most small businesses don’t typically have professional sales recruiting and management in house or a process to recruit sales talent. This may lead to hiring the “wrong” sales personnel. Even if a business does hire the “right” sales person, without effective and daily sales management, that individual has a higher propensity to fail.

Using a partner for outsourcing sales will allow you to access sales recruiting, management and culture/environment that most of your larger competitors have. .

Quickly focus on specific gaps to accelerate your sales funnel

Most small business owners are wearing multiple hats, and in many cases the owners are also qualifying leads, creating the marketing material, and closing business. They are doing this on top of delivering the solutions and running day to day business operations.  They have the knowledge and skill to run sales and marketing but they simply lack the bandwidth.  An outsourcing sales and marketing solution can help the small business owner cover specific gaps at specific stages of the sales process. This includes:

Lead Generation – An outsourcing sales and marketing company can quickly turn on a multiple tactics for lead generation including:

  • Email marketing
  • Outbound calls
  • SEO and SEM
  • Social Media Marketing

Lead Development – An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to implement a content marketing strategy and marketing automation platform to help you develop leads in your funnel digitally.

Lead Qualification – An outsourcing sales organization will be able to staff an outsourcing sales rep or outsourcing sales team to help you qualify and educate early stage buyers and set appointments for your senior team.

Depending on your sales cycle, an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help a small business accelerate sales in as little as 90 to 180 days.  A small business can retain an outsourcing sales company and get access to a pool of talent and tools with less risk and more certainty.

To learn more about the problems we help small businesses solve with sales outsourcing and marketing services and how we approach building modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to visit our About Us page.

How an Outsourcing Sales and Marketing Team Build Buyer Trust

Developing trust with your buyer early in the buying and selling process is one of the top reasons to consider outsourcing sales and marketing. Outsourcing sales and marketing to build this rapport and trust with potential buyers early in the sales cycle can save you both time and money because building this trust can create a significant time drain on your senior resources. In addition, this can quickly increase your cost of sales percentage if your most senior resources are dedicating too much time to this task.

Here are 5 Ways Outsourcing Sales and Marketing Can Help you Build Trust with your Buyers:

  1. Follow up with inbound lead immediately – Senior sales resources and executives are busy, in meetings, running operations, managing accounts and leading the company. Outsourcing sales will ensure you are focused on potential needs when the buyer expresses them with an inbound request. Outsourcing sales will help you get to the buyer faster. And as multiple studies continue to explain, the first person back to the buyer has a 50% advantage closing that deal over competitors.
  2. Producing thought leadership content – Most outsourcing sales and marketing companies will have frameworks to help you create thought leadership content in the form of webcasts, videos, blog posts and checklists. This digital content can act as a surrogate for your senior talent early in the sales process. Your “digital thought leader” can demonstrate and share their expertise early in the sales conversation and build trust without needing to engage in early stage sales conversations.
  3. Distribute that thought leadership content – Outsourcing sales and marketing companies will have the technology, the capability and capacity to share that thought leadership with potential buyers. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to do warm, friendly, and helpful calls to buyers where they will share your thought leadership.
  4. Implement a marketing automation solution to score leads – A sales outsourcing and marketing company will have the necessary technologies in place to automate email marketing to a list of potential buyers. They will also have the ability to track those buyers, score their interests, will follow up to be even more helpful, and ask intelligent probing questions. And if it makes sense, they will introduce your senior sales team if the buyer is interested.
  5. They will recap and share what they have learned from the buyer with your senior rep – Your outsourcing sales rep and marketing team will be able to communicate what content your buyer has digested digitally and will also share what they have learned about the buyers needs so your senior sales resource can quickly recap and confirm the buyers needs and understanding. This saves both your buyer and the seller time and builds trust in your entire team’s professionalism

In conclusion, creating this initial positive impression early and building trust is a requirement for almost any sale, and this is one area where outsourcing sales and marketing can help you build this trust and generate more sales qualified leads at a lower cost.

Gabriel Sales helps businesses build modern sales and marketing operations and then supports those operations with a variety of sales outsourcing and marketing services.  To learn more about our approach we invite you to check out our outsourcing sales and marketing services page.

Quick Tip Prior to Outsourced Sales and Marketing Lead Generation

Gabriel Sales provides outsourced sales and marketing services.  Our outsourced sales and marketing solutions help small businesses and startups build repeatable sales and modern marketing organizations.  When we work with our clients we also help them to implement the right technology stack to help them benchmark every stage of their sales process so data can be leveraged for continuous improvement at every stage of the buyer’s journey.  Once the lead generation engine is built and productive we can then quickly and simply transition a client’s  outsourced sales lead generation to the company for continued self-management or we can continue to scale the effort.

What follows are several tips for companies that are just starting to consider if an outsourced sales lead generation and marketing solution is right for their business when they are specifically considering an outsourced lead generation function.

Know who you want and need to target. The first step for success when you engage in outsourced sales and marketing lead generation is to define the market you need to target.  The better your targeting the better the results.  You should expect your outsourced sales partner to work with you to define both your ideal organization and the ideal roles within that organization for you to target.

Outsourced sales and marketing lead generation should be used to scale not invent.  Before getting started with a fully outsourced sales and marketing lead generation program you should have your  prospecting process written down and tested internally first.  If you have not fully documented this process or have not yet run your own lead generation program you should expect your outsourced sales and marketing partner to work with you on a preliminary sales consulting project first to help you define and document a sales prospecting process.

You need educational content and collateral for a successful outsourced sales and marketing lead generation program. 70% of buyers prefer learning about a new product or solution with a quick conversation and/or an email that links them to educational content.   And then depending on your industry 20% to 90% of prospects use digital content to short list the vendors that they want to engage with for deeper sales conversations.  You will need to provide your outsourced sales lead generation team the content  they need to engage and interest buyers.  You will need email templates, FAQs, blog articles, educational assets and features and benefits sell sheets.  If you do not have this material your outsourced sales and marketing company should be able to work with you to create this content.

Agree to success metrics.   Prior to getting started you will need to define what success will be measured on.  You should not expect your outsourced sales lead generation team to close deals for you.  If this is your success criteria you will need to engage your partner for more than lead generation.  However you can expect your outsourced lead generation team to qualify leads if that is agreed to in advance.

Have a plan in place to transition leads.  If leads are not followed up with on a timely and consistent basis you will just be wasting your outsourced lead generation investment.  Before pulling the trigger on an outsourced lead generation program have a plan and at least one sales rep to transition the leads to.

How Gabriel Sales Can Help

If you are an outsourced sales lead generation program Gabriel Sales has developed a turnkey Sales Ready Lead and Sales Automation Starter Package

As a B2B outsourced sales and marketing company, we understand that ROI is important so this package includes a free preliminary assessment to see if outsourced sales is the right solution for your business.  To learn more about our approach you can also visit the About Us page.