This blog was created in order to help companies that are considering outsourcing to determine when sales consulting is necessary to improve long-term results and effectiveness.
Gabriel Sales is an outsourced sales company in the truest sense of the word. Outsourced sales is not always cheaper (at least in the short term). It’s about guaranteeing your investment works harder and smarter. Outsourcing sales should make you more effective, provide access to shared tools, sales and marketing expertise, sales management expertise and processes required for success.
Organizations typically don’t come to us because they are wildly successful on their own, but because they want to close more business faster. In many cases, this requires consulting upfront. This blog is designed to help you be as honest as possible about the potential need for consulting prior to starting a sales outsourcing relationship.
There are many options for companies to drive sales other than simply building on their internal team. Wikipedia has great overviews of your options – from channel sales, to resellers, to manufacturer reps, to outsourced sales companies. When discussing outsourcing sales, where we like to start the conversation is with the word “outsourcing” itself:
Outsourcing involves the contracting of a business process – previously performed in-house – to an external provider.
Outsourcing = Process previously performed transitioned
With this definition in mind, very few companies are looking for pure sales outsourcing, which is why we define Gabriel Sales as a sales execution, sales consulting and sales content marketing company. We execute alongside consultation.
During our initial conversation with potential clients looking for “outsourced sales,” what we discover is that some of what they are currently doing works well, and some of it does not. We look at these issues separately, and discover what they really need. This typically presents itself in a combination of 2 to 5 of the areas below:
- Sales Scripting
- Outsourcing Lead Generation
- Outsourcing Lead Nurturing
- Outsourcing Sales Qualifying
- Outsourcing Sales Closing
- Sales Consulting
- Commission Only Reps
- Contracted Sales Reps
When a prospect is looking for a contracted rep or commission only, they are really not interested in developing a repeatable sales process, which by our definition, is not outsourcing.
When we talk to most companies we work through a formal process to identify how much consulting is needed, so that we can figure out how fast execution can start filling their pipe. Generally, we can start executing and consulting concurrently. We have a formal process called the Gabriel System™ that makes this simple and easy for clients. We can generally get through the discovery process within the first week of launch and be on the phone, filling the pipe within two weeks. What follows below is an abridged overview of what information we extract during the Gabriel System™ discovery process. Unless you are a pure start up launching from scratch, you must have found some successful process. It’s our aim to figure out what is working, so we can improve on that for exponential growth.
Our first set of questions surrounds how mature your sales function and process really is:
- What is the historical sales cycle?
- How accurate was last year’s forecast?
- How many meetings does a typical sale take?
- What is the material presented in each one of those meetings?
- What digital content is being consumed are part of the sale?
- How many cold calls does it take to put a prospect into the pipe?
- How many prospects are currently in their nurture pipe?
- What are their typical conversion metrics?
- Do they have cold call scripts? First call scripts?
- Is the pricing model fixed? When was it last changed?
- Who are the top three direct competitors? Indirect?
- Why do you win? Why do you lose?
- What markets have you targeted?
- What decision makers do you sell to?
- What technology platforms are you utilizing?
- Do you work with a creative agency?
Our second set of questions (really just one question):
- How much of your current process is documented?
- Fully documented? Ready to outsource
- Needs work? Some sales consulting may be required
Our third set of questions is specifically about each stage of the discrete part of the sales process, and whether or not they need improvement:
- Lead Sourcing and Targeting?
- Lead Generation?
- Sales Qualifying?
- Sales and Marketing Alignment?
- Sales Engagement and Sales Pipe Velocity?
- Sales Metrics?
- Sales Closing and Sales Upsell?
Our final set of questions relate to message and content readiness and effectiveness:
- Do you have a positioning document?
- Do you have a messaging document?
- How much collateral do they have and of what type?
What does this all distill down to? The more honest you are upfront with an outsourcing sales partner, the faster increased efficiency and production can be achieved. We encourage you to be honest and clear about what is broken and needs fixing.
The value Gabriel Sales creates for our clients as a sales outsourcing partner is that we don’t hesitate to begin execution. We lead with execution, support, and consulting. Our efforts shorten sales cycles while simultaneously improving your strategy. Doing both in conjunction gives everyone access to the hard data, metrics, and qualitative insights required to create a winning, repeatable, competitive sales engine. We consult and execute in order to double sales growth.
If you are interested in getting to the market with speed and would like to learn more about how we can help, please CONTACT US for a free pipe velocity review.
