by Glen Springer | Apr 26, 2017
Outsource Sales – Start with Sale Prospecting First?
When owners of companies with complex sales or solutions sales are ready to scale they often consider two options:
- Hiring an outside sales rep or outsourcing closing
- Outsource sales to prospect and fill the funnel
As an outsource sales and marketing company, we have a strong belief that in many cases the second path can make more sense. Or, in some cases it makes sense to hire an outside sales rep and outsource sales at the same time.
This quick blog article will quickly explore the pros and cons of both approaches and recommend an alternative path.
Lead with Outside Sales Reps First
Remember Outside Sales Reps Are Closers Not Lead Gen Experts
For the past 20 years the standard way for small businesses to scale sales is to hire an enterprise-level sales rep. This is because organizations believe that senior sales reps can leverage their extensive contacts to generate narrow leads and close deals. But every sales rep’s list of contacts is finite. When the rep gets through that initial push, leads dry up quickly.
And outside reps by the time they get to this point in their career, cold calling and content marketing to generate leads is not something they are doing on a regular basis. It is not something you should expect them to do.
In most cases if you invest in a closer first you are putting the cart before the horse. You are focusing on the bottom of the funnel and are in a high risk situation because you are counting on the outside reps ability to close deals. But you are also relying on them to generate leads as well. And the reality is a closer cannot do both effectively at the same time. So even in the best of circumstances you will generate a handful of initial deals and then the closer will not have a top of new set of leads in the top of the funnel to work. You are investing in the bottom of the funnel and not the top of the funnel, which leads to point two.
Outside Sales Reps Are Expensive
Simply throwing sales reps at your revenue growth problem without focusing on lead generation first is expensive. Domain experts with solid experience command a large base salary and substantial compensation package. Inside reps and a marketing team that can generate leads can often come in at the same or even reduced cost.
If you have a founder or internal resources that can close deals it often makes sense to ramp the lead generation first to:
- Ensure you have a sustained flow of leads
- Give your closer something to close as soon as they walk through the door
Outsource Sales to Fill the Sale Funnel First
Throwing bodies at a sales problem no long works reliably. Instead of hiring expensive outside sales reps it now often makes sense to invest in modern sales an marketing operations first to fill your sales funnel with a consistent and repeatable flow of leads. An outsource sales organizations can now:
- Fill your funnel with leads with PPC campaigns, email marketing campaigns and cold calling
- They can then use content marketing and marketing automation systems to score leads
- They can staff business development reps to qualify leads for your closer
- You can then continue to close deals with your existing team and when you have a funnel that is bursting you can hire that expensive outside sales rep and get them productive immediately
About Gabriel Sales
Gabriel Sales specializes in filling your sales funnel with warm sales qualified leads. We build modern sales and marketing operations that are crucial for sustained revenue growth – using a combination of marketers, business development reps and tools to maximize your investment. Visit our about us page to learn more about our approach and services for outsource sales.
by Glen Springer | Apr 24, 2017
Over the past several year’s buyers have shifted their early stage buying process and sales operations dramatically. 70% of buyers prefer to learn about new products on their own or to learn about new solutions through an educational email that shares educational content. The new digital buyer then prefers to have a brief conversation with a sales rep if it is supported by additional educational content. This includes content that allows the buyer to evaluate if your specific solution can solve their business problem, pain, or need.
This means the skills you require for modern sales and marketing operations have changed. This blog article will outline the skills a small business now requires from their internal marketing operations, or the marketing skills they can leverage with outsourced sales operations.
Skills Required for Building Modern Marketing Operations (and skills you can gain with an outsourced sales team)
Strategic Planning: The number of tactics that can be leveraged to generate leads is now endless. It is critical that you have a leader and strategic thinker that understand how all the pieces fit together and the ability to craft a plan so sales and marketing work together as part of an integrated, strategic plan. It is important to budget correctly to produce the desired results. It is also critical to keep your marketing efforts aligned with your sales team’s hard quotas and goals. Your strategic plan requires the ability to conceptualize the marketing strategy, select a course of action based on key success criteria, and determine upfront what the core KPIs of that integrated effort will be.
It is also critical that your strategic plan has a clear understanding of how both sales operations and marketing can most effectively use content for both sales and marketing efforts. Your strategic planning also needs to include a strategy for how to use content.
Copywriting: Your marketing team now needs strong writers to tell a strong sales story. This team must be strong writers, as they construct the messaging that represents your company. They also write persuasively with an authentic and concise style. In addition, they are able to write in different formats including copy for websites, blog articles, video, webcasts and email marketing.
Video Production/Editing: Video is one of the most preferred ways for buyers to learn about and understand solutions. Your modern marketing and sales operations requires a resource that understands how to produce multiple types of professional and educational videos.
Graphic Design: Visuals are becoming more critical in modern marketing, and basic graphic design skills are key important to create value and social agility of your marketing assets. Similar to coding/programming (discussed below), modern sales and marketing requires someone on the team that understands graphic design or a outsourced sales partner.
Website Management: Your website is now a lead-generation and buyer education platform. In short, your website now needs to be a dynamic publishing tool that supports inbound marketing, outbound marketing, buyer development, and your sales team. The goal of your site should now be to carry on sales conversations with prospective buyers to generate new leads and develop existing leads into qualified buyers for your sales team.
Lead Management/Nurturing/Automation Systems – Simply generating leads with cold calls no longer works with the same level of effectiveness. Once you generate that initial lead from a call, a Pay-Per-Click ad, SEO, social post, or email campaign, you also need to leverage your automation system to develop the lead and score them for your sales reps. It is essential that you develop leads with automation, and organize them so your reps can focus on leads most likely to buy. This is essential to organizing and engaging these leads through the funnel. This requires personnel with both technical expertise and best practice experience in running CRM and automation platforms.
Coding/Programming: Unless you are a software company, most small businesses don’t need to staff developers full-time. But at least one member of your marketing team does need to understand the basics of coding/programming to get the most out of your automation technologies.
Email Marketing: Opt-in email marketing is an effective way to generate new leads and to develop leads with marketing automation. When executed correctly, it is the quickest and most cost effective way to jump start a lead generation program, and to develop leads without hiring expensive calling resources. Email marketing is also a great way to maximize your investment in content that you create. Email marketing requires multiple skills including understanding the buyers journey, how to build target lists, how to segment messages, and how to tweak campaigns based on data.
Data Analysis: There is a growing need to prove ROI in marketing investments. Marketers must have strong analytical skills—the ability to interpret website and marketing data, gauge the success of a campaign, and communicate meaningful results. They must be able to turn information into intelligence, and intelligence into action.
Paid Search Management: If designed effectively, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can drive results for your business. If left unmanaged, they can be a vortex that swallows budget. Modern sales and marketing operations now requires technical understanding of how paid search programs work, and how to continuously evolve strategy based on results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): When you are using content to support campaigns, it makes sense to optimize that same content for SEO simultaneously. Just like sharing this content in social media (discussed below), a little extra effort by a marketer that understand SEO can go a long way to producing incremental results across an integrated campaign. As my grandfather used to say, “little snowflakes make big snow falls”. When you optimize your content for both social media and SEO, these little wins eventually turn into big wins.
Social Media: Social networks are becoming increasingly critical to sales and marketing success. Social media does not need to be complicated, but it does need to be leveraged in support of your content marketing, email marketing and outbound marketing campaigns. A little extra effort allows you to improve the results of not just social media, but all of your other campaign efforts by sharing messages used in one channel.
Sales Manager/Lead Generation Manager – Companies now need someone to manage this flow of leads and to ensure that the right buyer is being followed up by the right rep at the right time. In many cases, sales can now be managed and facilitated by an inside sales manager with skill in managing an automation system and the deals can be closed by domain experts and sales engineers. Or, in the case of lower-end SaaS products, by customer service reps, an account manager, or onboarding reps.
Buyer Development Rep – Generating new business now takes a more customer friendly approach. You need to focus on helping to educate the client first, understanding their needs second, and selling third. This means you can leverage reps that lack deep domain expertise to share educational content and to ask probing questions. When the buyer starts to give off buying signals, they can be introduced to the senior talent with scheduled meetings; saving both the buyer and seller time and money.
How Can an Outsourced Sales and Marketing Team Help You Build Modern Sales and Marketing Operations?
Most small businesses have the most critical pieces in place to scale which are:
- They have closers or executives on staff that know how to close
- They have deep domain expertise in the area of their solution
- They have a team that can successfully deliver the solution
- They understand the steps in their sales process (even if it is not documented)
What they typically lack is a blend of the new skills required to build and manage successful modern sales and marketing operations. It’s not hard to understand why.
To hire and find this talent is often difficult because most of these disciplines are relatively new, so there is not a large pull of experienced talent to pull from. Most small businesses can’t afford to staff full time resources in all these areas because there is not enough work to justify full time or even meaningful part time positions when the budget does not exist.
Because of these reasons, outsourced sales and marketing is an ideal solution for companies looking to scale. The company can focus on the delivery of the solution and rely on their outsourced sales team to provide a team of blended sales and marketing strategists, technologist, and sales and marketing execution specialists. You will get all the talent you need, staffed in the right amounts at a competitive price.
We invite you to visit our approach to outsourced sales and marketing. more about our proven methods and philosophy to building modern sales and marketing operations.
by Glen Springer | Apr 7, 2017
Gabriel Sales specializes in generating leads for small businesses using a combination of:
- eMail Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Inbound Marketing
And at some point in the sales process your buyer is going to need to speak with a sales rep to qualify the opportunity to try and set an appointment with your sales rep to take the deal further and deeper into the sales funnel.
What follows are some tips for follow up sales calls and sales outsourcing for small businesses.
Have Probing Questions Ready
Some follow up calls you make will move along faster than others. Even if you have the prospect’s attention we still recommend that you don’t sell too hard on the first follow up call. The best way to engage the customer for the long haul and to build the trust required to close the deal downstream is to use the first follow up call to learn more about your buyer’s needs. To do this you need a handful of questions ready to go. Keep them short:
- How are you solving the problem today?
- Have you tried other ways to solve the problem?
- Who else is involved in a decision like this?
Smart questions turn into smart conversations. With smart targeting you will occasionally wind up calling the right person at the right time. If handled correctly and with smart questions this timing could translate into an immediate opportunity.
Ask for the Appointment but Be Ready with an Additional Piece of Educational Content
If a buyer engages in a meaningful conversation after you start asking questions then you are ready to ask for an appointment. But it’s important that you do this politely in a non-pushy way. We recommend something like this:
“Well Mrs. Buyer…it sounds like we have something that may be a fit. Do you think it would make sense for you to speak with our Product Specialist to learn more about the way our solution can help you solve (insert the problem here).”
If you have had a meaningful conversation you should get a yes about 50% of the time. But be prepared for that no. If the “Yes” comes – set a firm time and date. If the answer is no, be ready with a new piece of educational content. Offer to share it and then let the buyer know you will follow up at a later date for additional conversations.
Prioritize Inbound Leads First
Gabriel Sales uses multiple tactics to generate leads including email marketing to rented opt in lists, Google AdWord campaigns, long term content marketing, and cold calling. We also use marketing automation technologies to score leads. But of all the leads you get, you need to prioritize inbound leads first. If a buyer is submitting a request for more information, in most cases, they will also be submitting them to other potential vendors too. Make sure you get to the buyer before your competition does.
Track Results
Just like any marketing program you need to build a systematic process. Keep a record of the calls you’ve made and track the results. You can only improve what you measure. If you don’t have a CRM in place, an outsourced sales and marketing company will be able to help you select the one that is right for you. Tracking results can help you continually refine your sales strategy.
Set Goals and Call Daily
Just like cold calling, follow up calling needs to be disciplined and done daily. Create a plan for follow up calls and stick to it. Plan to make 10 to 50 follow up calls daily. Start with inbound leads first and then the highest scored leads in your marketing automation system. When combined with educational content marketing on a regular basis, and part of your regular daily tasks, you will start to see results with a sustained effort.
Gabriel Sales specializes in building modern sales and marketing operations. We use multiple tactics including:
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- And business development reps
to generate real sales opportunities for our clients.
To learn more about our services for follow up sales calls and sales outsourcing for small businesses sales approach and overall philosophy visit this link to sales outsourcing.
by Glen Springer | Apr 5, 2017
How cold calling is involved for outsourced sales
As an outsourced sales and cold calling for small businesses agency we still leverage business development reps as one of several tactics to generate sales leads. We do this because quick phone conversations are still a viable way to introduce prospective buyers to a small business services or solution. But we also let our clients know that it only makes sense to cold call if:
- You leverage this for targeting buyers you are 100% sure can transact with your company
- You target potential buyers that are a spot on fit for you solution
It is also important to understand that in today’s digitally driven buyer landscape that you strongly consider leading with an email marketing campaign first. And then be prepared to support this effort with:
- valuable educational content that explains what problems you solve for the buyer
- additional content that allows them to quickly understand the basics of your solution
- the ability to track a buyers digital engagement with a lead scoring and marketing automation platform
As an outsourced sales and cold calling company for small businesses, here are some tips we recommend you use if you are going to leverage the phone to generate new leads.
Take it Slow and Do it Quickly
When you cold call a buyer you are essentially a stranger that has walked up to someones door with no notice and knocked, interrupting their day. Be ready with a quick and succinct script of who you are and what problem you solve. Then be prepared to ask for permission to send a quick piece of educational information.
Once they accept your content promise to follow up in a few days to check on interest. We rarely suggest you ask for an appointment on the first call unless the buyer expresses a great deal of immediate interest. Your marketing automation platform will let you know if the prospect is interested by scoring their engagement with the educational offers.
With this automation technology in place you can let your buyer digest your educational content. If they are interested you will know from their lead score and you can follow up in a day or two to continue to build the relationship.
Target the Right Type of Buyer to Maximize Your Investment
Over the past several years with the advent of cloud computing and Artifical Intelligence your access to databases has increased. Most outsourced sales and cold calling for small business companies will have subscriptions to these databases. These databases will allow you to target specific decision makers with access to direct phone lines. Many of these databases will also have email addresses that you can use to send information once the buyer has agreed to receive your content. With calls to connect ratios at 10% (average time your business development rep can expect a buyer to pick up the phone every time they dial) a typical cold caller will only connect with 1 (or at most 2) potential buyer(s) an hour. It’s important that if a business development rep connects on a call that they are speaking to the right type of buyer. If you are not connecting with the right type of buyer you are simply wasting your investment of time and money calling. Targeting the right buyer is critical to successful cold calling.
Have a Script But Don’t Sound Scripted
As discussed above connections in today’s business environment are gold. Have a plan for what you’ll say. Your opening line should be no more than 10 to 15 seconds. Then you should ask a question. After the buyer answers the question, ask for permission to speak for about 30 more seconds and then make your educational offer. To do this you need to have a plan for what you want to say.
But if a call sounds too scripted it will turn the prospect off. No one wants to part of the masses and nothing is more off putting then to be interrupted in the middle of the day with a canned speech. So have a script but don’t sound scripted. A little practice will go a long way producing more effective results.
Gabriel Sales helps company’s build modern outsourced sales and marketing operations. To learn more about our approach to outsourcing sales and how we use multiple tactics including smart cold calling to generate more sales ready leads for our clients, check out the following link to learn more about our new and modern approach to outsourced sales for small
by Glen Springer | Mar 22, 2017
As we have discussed on other articles in the past, when a small business or start up is considering scaling sales and marketing operations for the first time, we believe that the function of closing business should remain in-house and with the primary responsibilities of the principal, founder or senior staff on the client’s team. We believe this because the in-house team typically has a track record and the domain expertise to do this quickly.
However, successful sales also requires generating leads for the closer to close which includes introducing the firm to prospects and determining where that buyer is in their buying cycle. This is an area where companies that are just get started scaling a sales effort can get the quickest bang for their buck using an outsourced sales and marketing company.
This is because an outsourced sales and marketing company will be able to help you implement a repeatable and scalable lead generation process that will anchor you in the following 5 pillars required for a sustained flow of sales qualified leads. You should expect your partner to apply these 5 pillars to your outsourced sales lead generation efforts.
- Targeting. The first step in building any successful outsourced sales lead generation effort is to ensure you are targeting the right buyers for you solution. This becomes the foundation of your lead generation efforts. Think of your database as this foundation. Without the proper data management and hygiene in place, your marketing operations and sales lead generation will suffer. It’s nearly impossible to generate meaningfully leads for your closers without the right database of targets that can both buy and have a need for your solution.
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- Engagement. Successful outsourced lead generation requires that your marketing is centered on the customer. Your marketers and sales reps can no longer relegate communications to more general company conversations. To engage a prospect, you need to focus on their needs first in a meaningful way. You must also develop content and messages that can be shared both in phone conversation, email marketing campaigns and on your website. An outsourced sales and marketing company will be able to help you develop tactics to address customers with content and messages across all these channels.
- Conversion. Outsourced sales organizations are now using technology that makes it easier to have a digital conversation with buyers and then scoring the buyers actions in real-time. This allows them to identify buyers most likely to buy, and then pass them to a closer or an inside sales rep to start to engage in qualification discussions. Automated campaigns with smart phone engagement have much higher conversions rates and are much more cost effective to maintain. And by automating your campaigns, you can improve the buyer’s experience and develop deeper relationships faster.
- Analysis – Success requires accountability. And accountability requires analysis. Successful outsourced sales lead generation requires you to track and analyze the different tactics and different messages you will be using across tactics. An outsourced sales and marketing company will have these benchmarks in place to help you understand what you need to measure. They will also be able to help you implement systems to better understand the impact of each of these tactics. This level of insight helps you refine strategies and develop repeatable processes for success.
- Marketing Technology. Organizations across all sizes and industries are leveraging tools to simplify business processes. Successful marketers understand the importance of aligning marketing automation, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms in the cloud. An outsourced sales and marketing company will quickly extend your lead generation capabilities with cloud applications by integrating other key technologies to connect the dots of internal efficiency to maximize prospect and customer interactions.
Gabriel Sales mission is to help companies access all the tools and talent they need to transform sales and drive real revenue growth in this new buyer driven landscape. We combine a combination of technology, marketing tactics and lead generation staff to help companies build modern sales and marketing operations.
To learn more about how we approach build scalable and successful outsourced sales lead generation engines we invite you to check out our modern approach to outsourcing sales.
by Glen Springer | Mar 15, 2017
When companies need to get a quick burst of new leads to accelerate their sales funnel and increase the productivity of their internal sales reps they often turn to outsourcing sales and marketing as a viable solution. And that outsourcing sales company will use:
- Lead Gen Reps
- Email Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Lead Scoring
- Content Marketing
These integrated campaigns give you the ability to generate leads using a combination of outsourced sales reps and modern sales and marketing technologies. And with the advent of these integrated campaigns a lead may be ready for your closers without having spoken with your outsourced sales rep. This is done with marketing automation systems that score leads. You can download our leadscoring whitepaper here.
Below is quick summary of how we recommend you classify leads at different stages. It is also representative of the different type of leads you can expect from an outsourcing sales partner using modern technologies.
Lead Gen and Early Stage Leads – These are the earliest stage leads. They are typically leads that are the right type of decision maker in the right vertical. They can be cold lists or leads that have opened one email in an email campaign. They are not cold leads but they have not demonstrated any interest in your solution. All other leads are transitioned during a weekly meeting.
Marketing Qualified Leads – These are leads that have started to engage with your company. They may be opening emails consistently and looking at your early stage educational content. They are demonstrating early stage interest either by accepting additional information from a buyer development rep, or by reading blog articles.
Tele Sales Accepted Lead – If they are engaging with buyer developments reps and are agreeing to follow up calls (but not formal appointments). They are not volunteering what there pains or problems are yet.
Sales Accepted Leads – These buyers are starting to engage with your content in meaningful way. If you are scoring them in your marketing automation system that are watching demo videos or looking at your solutions page or even looking at pricing. If they are engaging with buyer development reps they are answering probing questions and discussing their existing solution or their problems.
Sales Qualified Leads – These buyers understand the problems your business solves and the problems you can help them solve. They have expressed a need, and agree to an appointment with your senior sales reps. Finally in many cases they have acknowledged that they have a budget, a path to budget of a timeline for making a decision.
Finally when should I take a lead over from my outsourcing sales team?
An outsourcing sales campaign will generate multiple types and stages of sales leads so there is no right time to take a lead over. When to take a lead over is your decision and depends on how much time your senior reps have on their hands. Over time, most leads will be either Sales Accepted or Sales Qualified but early in the campaign you can take leads sooner rather than later.
Long term we find that the best leads have both a high lead score in the marketing automation platform and are agreeing to next steps or appointments with your buyer development rep after being probed for need and other qualification criteria. In short, they are moving through a process. So by outsourcing sales you can take leads over at any time especially if your closers are cold calling because leads at any stage that are engaging will be more productive than a cold lead. A client will sometimes cherry pick the pipe early in the sales process if closers have extra time to develop leads or there is a great deal of pressure for early revenue. But over time you can expect your outsourcing sales rep to take them through sales ready to appointment setting.
To learn more about our new approach to outsourcing sales and how we can help you build sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our approach to outsourced sales and marketing.
