outsourcing sales Archives

Successfully Outsourcing Sales

by Glen Springer | May 31, 2017

Successfully Outsourcing Sales for Start Ups and SMBs

Successfully outsourcing sales as a business strategy can provide benefits and cost-savings for your company with process improvements, expanded talent pools, cost containment, improved focus on core business, and reduced time-to-market, to name a few.

However, there are risks in an unsuccessful sales outsourcing engagement that can diminish the benefits. How do you minimize those sales outsourcing risks? First, don’t expect a magic bullet at the beginning of the engagement. Number two: make an informed decision.

If your company is initiating an outsourcing strategy for the first time, the following set of five steps will help you to minimize the risks and maximize the opportunities for outsourcing success.

Define clear objectives. Successfully outsourcing sales strategy starts with clearly defined objectives and measurable goals. Objectives state the reasons for a sales outsourcing program, define its business value, and provide a functioning framework for making decisions about which outsourcing company to work with, which model to use, what stage of the funnel development to outsource, and what levels of risk to assume. Measurable goals are the events and functional metrics by which management can monitor progress, take corrective action, and project future performance.

Count the true costs. Just as important as setting realistic expectations is, your expectations reflect all related costs if you both build and internal sales and marketing organization, or go with an outsourcing marketing and sales firm. These hidden costs and savings need to be evaluated:

Selecting an outsourcing partner vs. building one on your own: Selecting a vendor could take 5 to 40 hours depending on how long it takes to find the right fit – but this pales in comparison to recruiting a team of sales reps and marketers.
Transitioning work and sales processes: Knowledge transfer can take time. Make sure your outsourcing sales company has a process well defined to transition sales from your team and/or organization to theirs.
Technology costs: A CRM and marketing automation platform are now critical for success. Understand who will implement, integrate, and manage those technologies.
Managing: How will the engagement be managed on both sides? Does your outsourcing sales partner make reporting and managing the engagement easy? The costs of maintaining a finished contract can be surprisingly high.

Manage Risk. Another critical factor in executing a sales outsourcing program is deciding how much of your sales process you want to immediately shift to your outsourcing sales process. For companies with mature products and a mature sales process, it may make more sense to outsource your sale from lead generation to closed deals. The sales process and the marketing process will already be well defined with a script, technologies, and content to support it. But for many small businesses and start-ups, it may make more sense to focus on filling the pipe and developing qualified leads before staffing a team of closers, because closers are the most expensive resource to staff both internally, or with an outsourcing sales partner.

Lead Generation and Content Marketing Outsourcing: this function is often the most effective way to manage risk for a small business, as it can be executed with a fixed start date and will include hard and measurable results. It will also include a hard and tangible process, as well as the construction of modern sales and marketing operations that will be a valuable asset for years to come. Most importantly you will have hard data and success metrics to measure on a monthly and weekly basis to track progress.

About Us

Gabriel Sales builds modern sales and marketing operations including, sales outsourcing of your lead generation and lead development. We have been successfully outsourcing for SMBs and Start Ups for 20 years. We provide both full service solutions and point solutions. To learn more visit our approach to successfully outsourcing sales page.

Outsourcing Sales Helps Your Closers Specialize

by Glen Springer | May 1, 2017

The top goal of modern sales and marketing operations for small business needs to be: build a repeatable sales process that can generate a steady stream of sales opportunities.

One of the critical tenants of modern sales and marketing operations needs to be specialization. For most small businesses, this means that closing and developing opportunities now need to be different functions. Outsourcing sales help your senior sales specialize on closing business by keeping their sales funnel full.

First lets discuss why your senior sales reps should not be focused on prospecting. Then we will discuss how sales outsourcing and marketing can help them to become more productive.

Why Senior Sales Reps Should Not Prospect

They are not effective – Experience sales reps hate to prospect. They love to close. They are also your most expensive resource. Does it make sense for them to cold call?

Sporadic focus – Prospecting is like the grind of training for any sport. There are tasks you need to do on a regular basis like running, stretching and strength training. If you don’t do them on a regular basis results will suffer. If a closer is working on getting a deal done the first thing to get tossed aside is prospecting. They end up with a great quarter and then have no new deals to work on. Closers need to focus on closing not training.

Unclear metrics – Sales reps are compensated by closing business. Not hitting top of funnel metrics. It is difficult to get sustained performance for something as minimal as daily new lead flow from a seasoned sales rep.

Closing is an Art – Closing is expensive because it’s an art. And like any art it takes creativity, attention to detail and complete focus. It takes a great deal of energy. It does both the rep and your business a disservice to deplete this energy.

Outsourcing Sales to Build a Steady Flow of Leads

Conversely here is why you should consider outsourcing sales to build a steady stream of sales qualified opportunities.

Not just calling anymore – The days of throwing bodies on the phone to call are over. Prospecting still requires calling but it also requires creating content and sharing that content with prospective buyers via email. Outsourcing sales will help you gain immediate access to the skills you need for effective prospecting.

Regular tasks on a regular basis – To be repeatable means you have to repeat tasks like emailing, cold calling, follow up calling and creating content on a regular basis. A sales outsourcing company will take over the daily grind required for success.

Tools and team for success – A sales outsourcing company will have the technologies’ and team required for success. This includes marketers, callers and sales automation technology experts.

Prospecting is a Science – Effective sales prospecting requires building a repeatable process. More importantly it requires constant measure and analysis to improve campaigns and results.

About Gabriel Sales Sales Outsourcing

Gabriel Sales helps companies build modern sales and marketing operations to help closers specialize in closing while we fill the top of the funnel utilizing a team of experts in driving leads with integrated sales and marketing campaigns. To learn more about how our team can help you, visit our page on modern sales and marketing operations and sales outsourcing.

Improve Small Business Sales Outsourcing Sales and Marketing

by Glen Springer | Feb 3, 2017

Companies of any size can benefit from outsourcing sales. Outsourcing sales for small businesses can often have the most significant impact because these companies often need it the most – especially if success requires modern sales and marketing operations. Below are just a handful of ways a small business can benefit from outsourcing sales.

Immediate sales and marketing infrastructure

Many small businesses don’t have the most critical infrastructure for modern sales and marketing operations in place. In today’s market success, especially if you are competing against larger companies, they require multiple pieces of infrastructure and technology to compete against larger competitors including:

Access to databases
Marketing automation platforms
A CRM solutio

An outsourcing sales company will have both the tools and the expertise in place to give you access to these tools immediately.

Professional sales recruiting and management

Most small businesses don’t typically have professional sales recruiting and management in house or a process to recruit sales talent. This may lead to hiring the “wrong” sales personnel. Even if a business does hire the “right” sales person, without effective and daily sales management, that individual has a higher propensity to fail.

Using a partner for outsourcing sales will allow you to access sales recruiting, management and culture/environment that most of your larger competitors have. .

Quickly focus on specific gaps to accelerate your sales funnel

Most small business owners are wearing multiple hats, and in many cases the owners are also qualifying leads, creating the marketing material, and closing business. They are doing this on top of delivering the solutions and running day to day business operations. They have the knowledge and skill to run sales and marketing but they simply lack the bandwidth. An outsourcing sales and marketing solution can help the small business owner cover specific gaps at specific stages of the sales process. This includes:

Lead Generation – An outsourcing sales and marketing company can quickly turn on a multiple tactics for lead generation including:

Email marketing
Outbound calls
SEO and SEM
Social Media Marketing

Lead Development – An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to implement a content marketing strategy and marketing automation platform to help you develop leads in your funnel digitally.

Lead Qualification – An outsourcing sales organization will be able to staff an outsourcing sales rep or outsourcing sales team to help you qualify and educate early stage buyers and set appointments for your senior team.

Depending on your sales cycle, an outsourcing sales and marketing company can help improve small business sales in as little as 90 to 180 days. A small business can retain an outsourcing sales company and get access to a pool of talent and tools with less risk and more certainty.

To learn more about the problems we help small businesses solve with sales outsourcing and marketing services and how we approach building modern sales and marketing operations we invite you to visit our Resources page.

Outsourcing Sales Can Accelerate Lead Nurturing

by Glen Springer | Jan 18, 2017

Outsourcing sales can rapidly increase lead generation

Lead nurturing is quickly becoming a staple of modern sales and marketing operations and outsourcing sales and marketing is a solid way for some SMBs to accelerate their volume of qualified sale opportunities. Here are some statistics from the 2016 Lead Nurturing Benchmark Survey of mid-market companies:

Lead nurturing programs are now being tested by over 89% of B2B companies.
The remaining 11% are planning on nurturing in 2017
42% of mid-market organizations are now moving into their third year of nurturing

In this new sales paradigm where content marketing and your sales team now need to work side by side to generate a sustained flow of leads educating buyers digitally, small business without internal resources and expertise can struggle to compete. Once you have made the business decision to commit to a sustained lead nurturing strategy, a sales and marketing outsourcing company could be a great solution to accelerate your organization’s ability to execute this strategy successfully. Below are the advantages an outsourcing sales and marketing company can provide your team to accelerate your lead nurturing program:

Automation platform selection

Marketing automation technologies are a critical tool to successful lead nurturing. Companies now have dozens of marketing automation technologies to choose from. And this choice can quickly become overwhelming with prices ranging from monthly costs of $200 to $2000 for companies just getting started. Add to this that terms can range from quarterly commitments to 2 year commitments and this business decision is a great deal to wade through for most small businesses. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will have a process in place to be able to work with you to make sure you pick the right solution based on your needs, current state of maturity, short term ROI needs and long term business goals.

Improve speed to market

Time is money. And a lead nurturing program takes between 6 months to 18 months to provide a sustained return. Slow speed to market gives the competition an advantage. A sales and marketing outsourcing company can help to minimize that advantage and tilt the playing field in your direction in the following ways:

If you do not have a database of opt in leads to nurture an outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to generate those opt in leads for you quickly and cost effectively
A sales and marketing outsourcing company will be able to implement your technologies in weeks
A company adept in sales outsourcing will be able to create the first wave of sales automation and marketing content to launch your nurturing program
This type of company will be able to staff the calling resources or train your calling resources how to convert early stage leads into sales qualified leads

Set benchmarks and keep you focused on best practices

An outsourcing sales and marketing company that has implemented multiple lead scoring programs will already understand what early success looks like. Automation technologies give you visibility into a buyer’s digital footprint. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will be able to work with your team to help you understand what the early data and trends mean so you can use your customer insights faster to scale your investment in lead nurturing appropriately.

Stay prioritized

Lead nurturing requires a commitment to a process. Once your lead nurturing program has been launched it needs to be sustained. In some cases this means increasing your budget, but for many small businesses we have seen that long term success simply requires:

Building a database of your core target market
Track the content that has been of most value to your early stage buyers
Simply remain focused on the buyers highest educational priority and continue to create that content on a regular basis creating more customer friendly content

The days of simply throwing more money at sales and marketing is not always the right solution. An outsourcing sales and marketing company will help you stay prioritized on the closest to the dollar activities to help you get the best return from your lead nurturing investment.

To learn more about Gabriel Sales’ approach to outsourcing sales and marketing to decide if we can help you to quickly modernize your sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our About Us page.

Outsourcing Sales Financial Benefits

by Glen Springer | Jan 13, 2017

Benefits of Outsourced Sales

While many smalls businesses and startup companies embrace outsourcing for their IT, financial and human resource needs as standard operating procedure sales outsourcing has still not hit similar adoption levels. However over the next two years this trend may be changing. And according to Dun & Bradstreet research, outsourcing sales and outsourced marketing is now the third most considered area for outsourcing after finance and IT. And according to several reports from Forrester and Dun & Bradstreet, sale outsourcing is expected to increase by 3X to 5X over the next several years.

Many outsourcing sales decisions begin with the goal of getting instant accesses to talent, processes and marketing expertise that is not currently accessible within the company. Outsourcing is generally explored primarily to drive smarter, faster and more efficient topline revenue growth. But outsourcing sales can also provide this topline growth while helping to provide some solid financial and business benefits beyond simply driving more sales. These benefits include:

A reduction of direct costs – Outsourcing will provide the economies of scale. Outsourcing sales and marketing companies offer the equivalent sales and marketing functions at lower direct cost than in-house companies. This is not driven by paying sales reps less than you would need to on your own. It is primarily driven by the direct sales management costs you would incur building a team on your own. In additional outsourcing sales companies will typically be located in more economically favorable employment markets than if you need to employ in more competitive locations like the Bay Area, New York City, Boston and Southern California.

A reduction in indirect costs – The expense of in-house Marketing and Sales support are typically underestimated. Sales reps and marketers need to be recruited, trained and given technology, software and hardware to do their jobs. When you combine these costs with employee churn your indirect costs can be doubled or tripled before getting an effective team in place. A outsourcing company has the experience to resolve the issues as part of the daily course of doing business so you don’t need to. This allows you to focus your internal team’s attention on high value activities which leads to more productivity and a significant reduction of indirect costs.

A reduction of opportunity costs – Focused outsourced programs improve sales coverage. More leads are qualified, geographic regions or channels are covered in greater depth, and more sales can be wrung from secondary sources. In these and other cases, sales are recovered from previously overlooked sources, improving sales performance at low marginal cost.

Turn fixed costs to variable costs – Sales growth is rarely a clean and systematic month over month increase. When a company is going through a growth spurt, sale outsourcing can help a company deal with expansion or contraction by turning a fixed cost into a variable cost. Outsourcing sales allow companies to grow a sales organization or launch a new product without the need for investing in the fixed costs of adding and supporting headcount.

To learn more about Gabriel Sales approach to outsourcing sales we invite you to visit our outsourcing services page.