Outsourcing Sales and Lead Generation Case Study

Outsourcing Sales and Lead Generation Case Study

by | Jul 13, 2017

Online Technology Publisher

The Challenge

Sales were flat with core offering static or in decline as target decision makers were being flooded with a wave of new products and solutions. Sales Team had slipped into complacency as account managers focused on servicing existing accounts reselling same products and services. Through attrition existing team did not know how to generate new business (no entrepreneurial spirit).

Selling To: VPs, Product Managers and Directors of Marketing in Mid-Market

The Solution

  • Sales Process Consulting – GS identified gaps in the business operations, human resources and training necessary to produce individual and organizational SWOT analysis.
  • Sales Consulting – Gabriel Sales crafted an Ideal Customer Profile and conducted existing client interviews to discover and recommended areas for 3 new service and product offerings.
  • New Product Launch and Outsourcing Lead Generation  – Gabriel Sales targeted 1200 new companies hitting Ideal Customer Profile
  • Outsourcing New Business Acquisition – Staffed Inside Sales Rep to close package deals and to sale qualify and set appointment for larger opportunities.

The Results

  • 2 of 3 new product offerings gained traction producing one business unit generating 300K in revenue annually at a 50% margin and a second unit generating 500K annually at a profit margin of 21%.
  • Priced, scripted and created marketing material for new products offers. Once methodology and offers built set quotas, forecast and trained existing sales force in new solutions without disrupting their workload.
  • Re-invigorated – 6 existing clients once re-engaged with a customer centric and solutions based sales approach increased annual revenue engage 2X

How B2B Sales Outsourcing Lead Generation Works in 2017

How B2B Sales Outsourcing Lead Generation Works in 2017

by | Jun 21, 2017

2017 has gotten off to a solid start for most B2B companies, and the economy is continuing to gain momentum quarter after quarter. So, what company wouldn’t want to have more qualified sales opportunities every month? Even with the economy headed the right direction, almost every sales executive and sales rep we speak with can still handle more quality lead generation and sales appointments. In fact, when surveyed at the end of 2016, my Marketing Profs concluded that lead generation and setting appointments with qualified opportunities continues to be the number one focus of most small businesses trying to scale. It’s also become one of the most challenging parts of the sales process for similar reasons at most small businesses:

  • Buyers have so many lead generation reps approaching them daily, it’s harder and harder for a sales person to break through and connect.
  • Sales reps don’t have the time required for lead generation on a daily basis
  • Prospects require sales reps to share quality content once they do connect
  • More and more buyers are educating themselves online, trying to avoid talking to a sales rep until they are well educated – prospects are doing so much of the fact-finding on their own. They are looking for ideas, suggestions, and resources online, and not even involving a sales person at that stage of their journey.

What would happen to your revenue growth if you had a consistent flow of leads coming into your organization on a monthly and weekly and basis? And what if these leads were prioritized, so if your closers or Sales Development Reps had limited bandwidth, they could call the buyers most likely to be interested first.

This is now possible by integrating sales and marketing functions to run sales and marketing campaigns. It is not a magic bullet; it takes hard work, but the idea is simple. A B2B sales outsourcing can help you do the hard work.  A B2B sales outsourcing and marketing company can help you take the information that used to be exclusively be  shared by a sales rep and a sales engineer early in the sales process and create digital content that in effect clones that sales process. You then need to share the content with your buyers in multiple ways. In doing this, buyers can find your information online, or you can share it in email campaigns, or your sales development reps can share with the buyers early in the sales conversation.

Granted the concept is not a new one. You use marketing to attract buyers, but the way you now have to put all the pieces together is more important than ever. Here are six steps you need to take to generate more leads on your own or with a B2B sales outsourcing partner.

Lead Generation Success starts with

Map Your Sales Process and Your Buyers Journey – Document every step in your sales process. Document each step in your Buyer’s Journey. Create a content map of the questions and information you share at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Create Content to Share Your Expertise. Commit to creating digital content that replicates the information needed for the buyer journey. Use a combination of head shot videos, screencast videos, short webcasts, blogs and checklists.  A B2B Sales outsourcing company like Gabriel Sales can run a content production workshop to help you create enough content for three to six months of your initial effort over a quick several day period. Long-term (after you get through your first wave of content), you will need to be prepared to continue to create two to four additional pieces of content per quarter.

Share the Content through a Marketing Automation Platform – Start sending content on a regular basis with a marketing automation platform.

Score the Leads –  Use the marketing automation to score lead engagement with the content you send and any other content they find on their own on your website.

Share Content as Part of Your Calling Efforts –  Have a piece of content to share when you cold call. Sharing is caring and you will generate more early stage leads this way.

Share it in social media – You can publish directly on LinkedIn, and push through Twitter, as well as host videos on your website and in your YouTube channel. And don’t forget about Google+.

When your prospects see you as an expert who can add real value, they will be happy to take your call and meet with you. And with scored leads, you can prioritize the buyers most likely to buy.

About Gabriel  Sales B2B Sales Outsourcing

Gabriel Sales helps companies transform their sales and marketing with:

  • Sales Consulting
  • Outsourced Sales and Marketing
  • Sales Automation Systems Implementation

To learn more about our philosophy and how we may be able to help we invite you to visit our About Us page.  Or you can check out our outsourced sales and marketing services here

Soft vs. Hard Lead Generation for B2B Sales

by | Jan 16, 2013

lead generationMany B2B companies try so hard to generate more leads that they do not come up with a clear strategy for how to do so most efficiently and effectively. What these companies do not understand is that a successful campaign requires clearly defined goals and a well-articulated strategy.

This blog is meant to educate those with less experience in B2B sales and marketing about the fundamentals of lead generation. Specifically, we will address the difference between soft vs. hard lead generation for B2B sales and when each is most appropriate to use.

The first step in creating a strategy for lead generation is to formulate your overall goals. You should ask the following questions:

• Who are you trying to target?
• What is the number of leads you want to generate?
• What do you want to achieve in terms of sales?
• Are you willing to pay for a lead? How much?
• Where do you want your leads to be in the sales cycle?

The answers to these questions become essential in determining which lead generation technique will be most effective for your business. Depending on what your goals are, you will usually choose either a soft or a hard lead generation strategy. Hard techniques usually generate a higher quality lead, while soft strategies tend to produce large numbers.

The soft offer:

Using an incentive with an apparently low risk factor, soft strategies will give you huge numbers of leads. For example, if you offer free tickets to the World Series, you are likely to get a massive number of responses. The downside of the soft lead, however, is that most of these respondents are more excited about baseball than learning about your business. So, while the soft lead may give you the numbers you want, most leads generated in this way do not progress any further in the sales cycle.

However, in our experience as an outsourced sales and marketing company, we have found that offering an iPad or a gift card can be quite effective, especially in terms of generating a quick opt-in database. We have also seen that the soft lead generation strategy is most effective for businesses trying to target leads early in their sales cycle. This method will take much more time because of having to sift through large numbers and so should be used primarily when attempting to generate activity or jump-start your sales.

The hard offer:

In a hard lead generation strategy, you offer something that is relatively higher risk than free tickets or an iPad. When you make this type of offer, which may require some type of commitment from your prospect, the leads you generate are usually going to be much further along in their sales cycle. Some things you can use as hard offer incentives are free consultations, preliminary audits, invites to webinars, etc.

When engaging with these types of leads, you should be aware they have a much greater chance of becoming closed deals. We have found that a hard lead generation method is most effective for businesses that have little time to weed through huge numbers of leads and are therefore looking to talk to leads much closer to making a purchase.

If you are still having trouble deciding between soft vs. hard lead generation for B2B sales, a good place to start is deciding who you are trying to target. If your goal is to reach marketing teams, a soft offer may be the most appropriate. On the other hand, if you are looking to speak to buying executives, you may want to go with the hard offer. Once you decide the kind of lead you desire and determine what will be of value to them, you will be able to come up with a successful strategy for generating leads.

Gabriel Sales has over 12 years of experience as an outsourced lead generation company. For more sales basics, please feel free to visit our Blogs on Sales and Content Basics.

B2B Lead Generation Best Practices: Measure All Tactics

by | Sep 29, 2012

This blog will discuss a competitive advantage and a Best Practice for B2B Lead Generation for 2013. As a qualified sales lead generation company, we were surprised how many B2B marketers still had a black box correlating b2b lead generation to sales return on investment. We will let the graphics below demonstrate how easy it could be for your business to gain a leg up on your competition by simply implementing a tool like Pardot, as a best practice for B2B lead Generation.

According to the 2nd annual Webmarketing123 State of Digital Marketing Survey (of over 500 U.S. marketing professionals) Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are increasing in their level of adoption and spend, where spend is forecasted to continue to increase in 2013. The report when on to state:

“For B2B, lead generation is the top objective, and SEO is twice as effective as PPC or SMM for this purpose.”

“Budgets: 90% of marketers will increase or maintain spending on SEO, PPC, and SMM.”

Still doing SEO in-house? “Marketers using an agency are twice as likely to be highly satisfied with their campaign performance.”

What we found surprising in the study are the statistics below:

Hopefully a couple of pictures do paint a thousand words here. As we close 2015 and move to 2016 you need to ask yourself three questions around your b2b lead generation efforts.

  • How do I improve what I don’t measure?
  • If I do measure will it improve my performance?
  • How much more revenue will I generate once I focus my marketing dollars on what’s producing?

Gabriel Sales provides b2b lead generation services and builds demand generation engines that integrate both sales reps, b2b lead gen, sales engagement and inbound marketing efforts.  To see how we can help accelerate your production in this last quarter of 2012 so you hit the ground running in 2013 please feel free to contact us for a free benchmark review.

For additional info on marketing automation implementations, tips to improve the performance of your telesales team, your b2b lead generation  or how to accelerate your content marketing efforts please feel free to check out our resources page.

Best Practice for B2B Lead Generation – Measure All Tactics

by | Sep 29, 2012

qualified sales lead generation companyBest Practice for B2B Lead Generation – You Can’t Improve What You Don’t Measure

This blog will discuss a competitive advantage and a Best Practice for B2B Lead Generation  for 2013.  As a qualified sales lead generation company we were surprised how many B2B marketers still had a black box correlating b2b lead generation to sales return on investment.  We will let the graphics below demonstrate how easy it could be for your business to gain a leg up on your competition by simply implementing a tool like Pardot in 2013 as a best practice for B2B lead Generation.

According to the 2nd annual Webmarketing123 State of Digital Marketing Survey (of over 500 U.S. marketing professionals) Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), and Social Media Marketing

(SMM) are increasing in their level of adoption and spend.  And spend is forecasted to continue to increase in 2013.    The report when on to state:

  • For B2B, lead generation is the top objective, and SEO is twice as effective as PPC or SMM for this purpose.
  • Budgets: 90% of marketers will increase or maintain spending on SEO, PPC, and SMM.
  • Still doing SEO in-house? Marketers using an agency are twice as likely to be highly satisfied with their campaign performance.

What we found surprising in the study are the statistics below:

 

As an outsourced sales and marketing company  we typically implement campaigns designed to generate leads through integrated email,  SEO, PPC and cold calling campaigns.  We then continue to nurture leads not ready to buy with a marketing automation platform like Pardot.    An ancillary benefit of this approach is the transparency and ability to track leads directly through the pipe, for example specifically what tactics (like SEO) are doing for your revenue.  Below is best practice for B2B lead generation  in the form of two reports we typically leverage for both PPC and SEO on a monthly/weekly/daily basis so we can give your marketing efforts a sales quota tracking directly to the opportunity and then revenue level.

marketing automation keyword report

 

Hopefully a couple of pictures do paint a thousand words here.   As we close 2012 and move to 2013 you need to ask yourself three questions around your b2b lead generation efforts.

  • How do I improve what I don’t measure?
  • If I do measure will it improve my performance?
  • How much more revenue will I generate once I focus my marketing dollars on what’s producing?

Gabriel Sales provides b2b lead generation services and builds demand generation engines that integrate both sales reps, b2b lead gen, sales engagement and inbound marketing efforts.  To see how we can help accelerate your production in this last quarter of 2012 so you hit the ground running in 2013 please feel free to contact us for a free benchmark review.

For additional info on marketing automation implementations, tips to improve the performance of your telesales team, your b2b lead generation  or how to accelerate your content marketing efforts please feel free to check out the links below.

What is a Marketing Automation Platform? –  5 Minute Overview from Pardot

Selling Smarter and Selling Faster White Paper