When a company has a product ready to go to market the next step is taking it to market. While there is no right or wrong answer, there are multiple ways you can kick off a sales and marketing effort and for some companies an outsource sales effort may make sense. This article presents some food for thought for startup companies wrestling with that decision.
Building a Team on Your Own
Facing reality, if you can afford it, building your own in-house sales team can be a great way to go to market for a startup and to scale. You can hand pick, recruit and train your team; you can control the pace of their work from your own office and micro manage what they are working on.
However this can be an idealized vision. Most startup executives are being pulled multiple directions and it’s unusual for the founder of a startup to have the bandwidth to build and then manage what is required for success. And many entrepreneurs that have not been through several startups often struggle building the right initial team. And this error can cost the company valuable time and capital.
Outsource Sales and Marketing Services
For a time-crunched or first time entrepreneur, the attractiveness of outsourcing multiple functions and aspects of their business carries at least some appeal. This include engaging consultants to help with sales strategy, HR firms to help with recruiting, outsourced payroll companies and accountants, technology development firms to build their product, or outsource sales and marketing agencies to assist with inbound and outbound sales efforts.
When it comes to outsource sales and marketing we often find that most startup companies lose a great deal of the data, and direct feedback from customer that the sales effort provides. So while it may seem counter intuitive we often recommend that a startup company leverages an outsource sales and marketing company to address the heavy lifting of short terms tasks to build infrastructure. We also recommend that a startup uses outsource sales and marketing to deal with the grinding tasks of filling the funnel. And that the startup company staffs closer on their team to close the pipeline the outsource sales and marketing company is developing.
The Hybrid Outsource Sales and Marketing Model
In this model a startup company would outsource the following tasks:
- The initial research to target the market and acquire the initial databases
- The initial push to create enough content to support lead generation, lead nurturing and initial buyer development content
- The initial CRM and marketing automation systems implementation
- The initial lead generation campaigns
- The initial sales qualifying and appointment setting
This allows the entrepreneur to hire a seasoned high caliber closer to manage the deal flow or in some cases if high volume sales are not required, to manage the initial close themselves. With all the blocking and tackling of building modern sales and marketing operations off their plate they can focus on more mission-critical tasks like core product development, scaling accounts to higher revenue and building the overall operations, support and customer service teams to retain customers.
There is not one approach that is right for every startup. Every startup has a founding team with different skillsets. But if your team lacks the experience and/or bandwidth to get a sales effort off the ground a hybrid model may be right for you.
To learn more about the areas Gabriel Sale can help you launch a go to market sales effort we invite you to learn more about us on our outsource sales and marketing services page.
