by Glen Springer | Mar 10, 2017
If you have been in business for more than 3 years it should now be abundantly clear that we all are experiencing a dramatic shift in sales and marketing where outsourcing sales can help you quickly address these issues:
- Buyers are now in control of the sales process and solutions are first “bought”— with digital content that proves you understand your buyers’ needs and pains—then “sold” by closers, once buyers feel educated enough to engage in deeper discussions.
- Buyers want to understand how you solve their problem, and then want to understand your product features. So your reps need content and tools to tell that story.
- You can no longer just throw callers at lead generation to solve your early stage funnel issues because buyers simply don’t pick up the phone as often as they used to.
Success now requires a team of sales and marketing professionals running integrated campaigns and technology to successfully sell to the new digitally driven buyer.
And once a business owner reaches this conclusion they will often decide to consider outsourcing sales. They will consider outsourcing sales as a solution to help them cover some of the talent and expertise gaps they have in their existing organization because they don’t have the time or the expertise to recruit, hire and train a team with the experts required to sell to the new digital buyer.
Below is a quick list of the sales and marketing talent an outsourcing sales company can bring to the table in less than 30 days.
- A senior strategist – Your outsourced sales campaign will be guided by a strategist that understand how to tell a powerful sales story using digital marketing and sales reps.
- Content producer – An integrated campaign will require content production. A sales outsourcing company will be able to supply a team of video producers, copy writers and graphic designers on a part time basis to support your efforts.
- Sales technology specialist – You will immediately gain access to a marketing automation and CRM specialist to make sure your systems are implemented with best practices to produce the results you need.
- Marketing manager – You will have a marketing manager to manage your inbound and outbound campaigns and reporting, and ensure your digital marketing and lead gen success.
- Database specialist – Managing an early stage pipeline requires clean and updated data. You will have a specialist that understands how to build and manage a database of leads.
- Buyer development and inside sales reps – Even if you can drive all your leads with inbound marketing you will eventually need someone to qualify your leads or manage the close of the sale. An outsourced sales company can provide and scale that team.
To learn more about Gabriel Sales ability to help you quickly build and staff a repeatable sales and marketing process please feel free to visit our outsourcing sales page.
by Glen Springer | Feb 26, 2017
Q1 should now be kicking into high gear and if you feel like you could use a little extra push to help put more sales qualified leads into your closers funnel, here are five quick projects an outsourced sales and marketing company could take on to quickly accelerate your sales funnel.
Make those extra calls
Most companies don’t wait to follow up on inbound leads because you want to call the best and most active prospects first – especially if you are in a highly competitive industry. And getting there first improves your closing % by as much as a 100%. As a result most inside sales teams will prioritize inbound leads as they come in and if your inbound volume is high enough your internal team will often give up on leads after 1 or 2 calls if they don’t connect.
If you have at least 400 dormant inbound leads most outsourced sales company can staff a rep to make those 3rd, 4th and sometimes 5th attempt to mine your previous investment. Odds are if you were not able to connect quickly neither were your competitors and there are opportunities sitting in your dead lead file.
Run an educational eMail marketing campaign
As Q1 is moving into full gear most companies have started to set budgets and are starting to work on their business priorities for 2017. Now is a perfect time for you to introduce your solution and build awareness for companies looking to prioritize your solution in 2017. An outsourced sales and marketing company can help you quickly pull the trigger on an email marketing campaign using educational content you already have to build awareness to a market of up to 75,000 new decision makers to generate as many as 5000 early stage leads for as little as $6000.
Automate your initial product demo or senior executives answering frequently asked questions
Most senior buyers are interested in learning more about businesses solutions. But if it’s not one of their immediate priorities they may not want to invest the 30 plus minutes it takes to sit through a full product demo or to meet with one of your senior leaders. An outsourced sales and marketing company can make it easier for your buyer by running a quick one day video production work shop. You can leverage this type of workshop to:
- Create a series of short demo videos that allow buyers to get a quick taste of how your solution works and what problems it solves for them.
- Have your executives answer some of the most frequently asked and business critical questions on camera.
This content can be used by your internal sales team to make it easier for buyers that are on the fence get off the fence and generate that first critical sales call.
Gain a competitive advantage and finally pull the trigger on a marketing automation platform
Everyone knows that automation is the future. In fact 85% of B2B technology companies and most retailers and CPG companies have already adopted marketing automation technologies into their mission critical sales technology. But in some industries adoption is still well below 30%. This gives your business the ability to gain a competitive advantage other businesses in your industry may not have, but most companies don’t pull the trigger because they don’t have the core expertise in house to do it effectively and/or they don’t have the internal capacity to do the heavy lifting to set these systems up. An outsourced sales and marketing company can help with both in as little as 30 days.
About Gabriel Sales Outsourced Sales Solutions
We believe that calling efforts are still critical to sales success but that the new digital buyer now requires and integrated approach to sales and marketing.
Gabriel Sales works with start-up companies and small business trying to scale their sales and marketing efforts. We specialize in helping build modern sales and marketing operations to build a sustained, repeatable and consistent flow in new sales opportunities. We do this by helping companies implement integrated solutions or by simply and immediately plugging capacity gaps in our clients existing efforts. This is not your father’s outsourced sales and marketing solution and we invite you to learn more about our new approach to outsourced sales to decide if we can help your business thrive in both the short and long term.
by Carol Springer | Feb 3, 2017
A privately held professional service company developed a server based solution to optimize delivery for their existing professional services clients. The solution was so well adopted they developed a SaaS solution to service a broader market.
Selling a 20K to 40K annual license with 30K start up fee to Mid-Level Management in SMB market. Sales cycle was 120 to 1 year once engaged (annual budget cycle).
Company needed an outsource sales and marketing solution to generate new qualified leads for closer. Executives had deep industry domain expertise and wanted to acquire sales and marketing strategy expertise and build the sales funnel prior to hiring and outside rep. In addition company wanted to build awareness in core market vertical first and over time expand solution to additional verticals.
Challenges:
- Company was self-funded and wanted to run lean
- Buyers were not aware this type of solution existed in the market
- SEO and Inbound marketing tactics would be of limited use because no one was searching for the solution
- Executives had sale expertise but had no interest, experience or desire to manage a lead generation team
- Company was starting from scratch with no database to target
- SEO and Inbound marketing was of limited value because
- Mid-level management
- Sale required selling different value props to the end user, management and C-suite for final budget approval
Initial 6 Month Outsource Sales and Marketing Solution:
Sales and Marketing Strategy, Target Market Research, Content Strategy, Content Production Marketing Automation and Sales Automation, B2B Lead Gen Campaign, Outsource Sales and Marketing Execution
- Gabriel Sales implemented our agile sales acceleration workshop to develop a comprehensive integrated sales and marketing strategy.
- Researched multiple verticals to determine size, viability and ease of reach using SEO, social media, email marketing and cold calling
- Documented buyer persona and buyers journey for 2 specific verticals and 2 decision maker levels.
- Implemented Pardot as Marketing Automation Tool, SF.com and integrated Digital Demand Center™
- Conducted onsite content workshop to develop content for new lead generation and to automate the early buyer education process including video demos, head shot FAQs, blogs, checklists and webcasts
- Executed eMail marketing campaigns to build awareness and target specific markets
- Staffed blended marketing team to manage ongoing email nurturing and marketing automation campaigns.
- Scored leads
- Staffed outsource sales reps to leverage the marketing automation platforms to set appointment for senior reps.
Initial Results:
- Executed and outbound awareness campaign to 50,000 buyers and influencers and generated initial database of 5000 decision makers in key verticals
- Outsource sales reps Generated 14 Sales qualified opportunities transitioned to company closer
- Proved lead scoring and automation was a viable way to develop buyers
Ongoing Engagement:
- Company hired in house marketer to enage score leads and to create an ongoing flow of content to use in engine.
- Gabriel Sales trained in use of the tool
- Gabriel Sales continues to add 5000 fresh leads into the engine an a semi quarterly basis with additional email marketing awareness campaigns
- Gabriel sales continues to manage the blocking an tackling of automation system and outbound email marketing
- Gabriel Sales manages social media content distribution and tightly controlled PPC and retargeting campaign
Ongoing Results
- Engine continue to generate 2-4 new qualified opportunities
- Engine continues to develop 100 sale ready early stage leads month ready for initial engagement
- Engine itself sustains enough lead flow for enterprise sales rep
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by Glen Springer | Jan 10, 2017
When outsourcing sales and marketing we help companies build modern sales and marketing operations. As we help build these integrated marketing and sales automation engines we focus on selling to your buyers the way your buyers want to buy. According to Forrester Research and Marketing Sherpa Surveys in 2016 70% of your buyers now prefer to learn about your product solution by an introductory email followed by additional education content.
This means that Email Marketing to rented opt in lists and email nurturing with a marketing automation tool is now critical to a lead generation and deal development process. What follows below are the two types of email support you should expect when outsourcing sales and marketing. We also share a handful of best practices we use when providing outsourcing sales and marketing services.
Email Blasts to Opt In Lists through a Third Party Provider
The first step to being able to educate buyers with digital content and lead nurturing programs is to build a database to market to on a regular basis.
While buying a list and simply blasting it is an option; as an outsourcing sales and marketing company we highly discourage this approach for several reasons:
- Compared to renting a list it is typically more expensive
- You will quickly run into CAN-SPAM issues and will get your email server blacklisted
- In some cases your delivery will be less than 50%.
Best practices dictate that you identify a vendor that has buyers that fit your target market that have opted in to receive educational content. You can then rent this list and send a series of three emails to that opt in list with educational offers that address a business need or a business problem they are trying to solve. The vendor will be responsible for sending these emails through their white listed and approved servers so you will not be violating any SPAM regulations.
The email themselves should not be flashy. In some cases those email can simply be text only with a link to the content offer. The content offer should be educational. You do not want to try and sell on the first contact. Once the email recipient opens the email you can continue to market to them with additional nurturing emails.
Nurturing Emails
Once a buyer is interested in your area of expertise your next goal should be to build trust and to stay top of mind with your potential buyers until they are ready to buy. This is when a marketing automation platform to deliver the emails and to score the buyers engagement becomes important for the following reasons:
- You can schedule the emails on a regular basis
- You can track opens
- You can score your buyers interest in your solution when they engage with content
As an outsourcing sales and marketing company we typically recommend that companies start nurturing once they have a database of over 1000 targets and that once again you keep the emails simple and educational.
We also recommend that you keep the content easy to digest and informative. Blog posts, short articles and both short and long form webcasts or short videos will all work.
Always end the email with a way for the potential buyer to contact you directly. And if you discover through your automation platforms lead scoring process that a buyer is giving off potential buying signals you should have your outsourcing sales rep call the lead to qualify and set an appointment.
To learn more about how an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help with your email marketing and other lead generation and marketing needs we invite you to visit our outsourcing sales and marketing services page.
by Glen Springer | Jan 3, 2017
How outsourcing sales can accelerate revenue for your business
With 2017 just getting started, most companies will be considering how to accelerate revenue production. If you and your sales and marketing team killed it in 2016 congrats…now is a perfect time to consider how you can leverage that momentum and build on it.
If you didn’t hit targets, we encourage you to ask yourself what you can do differently in 2017 to get sales back on track and Accelerate Revenue production.
Here are a just a few tactics that you can implement quickly in Q1 to help get off to a flying start. And if you are a little pressed for resources we briefly explain how outsourcing sales may be able to help with specific functions to help you build more modern and productive sales and marketing operations.
Top of funnel lead gen campaign
As an outsourcing sales company we find that many of our clients have a great solution that fills a need in the market. But many companies fall prey to the misguided notion that increasing sales means hiring more sales people. Instead we encourage you to consider if your closers are getting enough leads into the top of their sales funnel. If not, you may want to consider running a top of funnel lead generation campaign with email marketing and PPC tactics to arm your team with more early stage opportunities.
Sales Function Specialization
Beyond a quality product, your closers are your most valuable asset. Outsourcing sales can allow your closers to specialize on closing and you can leverage an outsourcing sales team to focus on qualifying your top of funnel leads.
Revisit your targeting
When was the last time that you examined if you were targeting the right market or if there are new markets to explore? Have you taken the time to create a buyer persona to understand who your best customers were in 2016 and have you examined why they purchased your solution? As an outsourcing sales company we can run a quick buyer persona workshop and provide quick market segmentation to see if there are markets you could expand to in 2017. We can then help to target those markets will laser focus. To learn more about how to build an ideal customer profile you can check out our blog article here.
Create content that delivers value
If you have not committed to content marketing yet, now may be the time to start. What you consider to be common sense often has tremendous value for potential buyers. Content marketing takes time and effort but in this age when 70% of buyers shortlist vendors with one or fewer conversations with a sales rep, making it easy for your buyers to buy with digital education is now a must have. Once you’ve created your buyer personas and documented their buying process you can create targeted content for each stage of the buyer journey. Make sure you have one or two pieces for each stage of the decision-making process. As an outsourcing sales company, Gabriel Sales can help you get this off the ground with a quick 2 day content production workshop.
Start nurturing and scoring leads
Over the course of 2016 statistics have shown that the majority of leads generated are from prospects not ready to buy right away. The trick to closing those leads is not throwing more budget at phone calls to buyers that aren’t ready to buy. Instead, you can stay top of mind by simply sharing educational content that helps buyers learn more about the challenges they face, how others are overcoming those challenges and how your solution may be able to help to accelerate revenue.
And to send these emails you will need a marketing automation platform that scores those leads so when a buyer is ready to buy you’ll know.
As an outsourcing sales company, Gabriel Sales specializes in helping small business implement and then manage their sales automation processes to accelerate revenue production. We have expertise in managing entry level and more complex software solutions so we can also help you decide on the right solution for your sales targets and budget. To decide if lead scoring is right for your business feel free to download our eBook here.
Be educational, not aggressive
More and more products are first bought through digital education and then sold when the buyer is ready to be closed. Generating great leads is an awesome start but if you don’t convert them into real sales opportunities all those invested resources go to waste. If your close rate is lower than you would like, ask yourself am I being too aggressive with the close?
In this age of digital education, buyers are now in control and hard closing before a buyer is ready to buy no longer works. By focusing instead on being helpful you can stand apart from your competition. An outsourcing sales company can help with your nurturing and we can also staff buyer education reps to monitor the scored leads for timely follow up that keeps the conversation helpful to help give you extra capacity for the middle of your sales funnel. To learn more about how modern business development reps engage buyers you can check out this quick overview here
How We Can Help
Gabriel Sales builds sales automation engines for B2B companies and helps support marketing efforts by also supplying insides sales outsourcing teams that combine both marketers and reps following up with highly scored leads. If you would like to learn about our approach visit our About Us Page or feel free to Contact Us to learn more about how we can help with your insides sales outsourcing and outsourced marketing needs.
