by Glen Springer | Dec 9, 2016
Sales Outsourcing and Marketing is unique when compared to other types of outsourcing. With the recent tools that are now at a company’s disposal, successful lead generation and real opportunity development and sales success is now a blend of:
- Content marketing
- A buyer centric approach to calling
- Both sales process and marketing process expertise
- Systems implementation expertise
- Best Practice experience
Even three years ago it was our position that successful business and marketing was in-line with Pareto’s principal that sales was 80% science and 20% the art of the close. We now believe that successful sales now requires 90% science and 10% closing skills and can be achieved with:
- Strong thought leadership and authentic content marketing support
- And the right lead scoring technology
That being stated, we typically start every engagement with a conversation centered on hard targets and strategic success criteria. Below are a handful of questions that you should expect a sales outsourcing company to be curious about during your initial dialogue.
What revenue results do I want to transform with sales outsourcing partner?
With the exception of startup companies, no one comes to an outsourcing partner because they are already thriving. If that were the case, you would be able to build a team at your own at a lower cost. More closed deals and more revenue are obviously the top goal and a requirement of any sales outsourcing relationship. But we also encourage buyers to share additional information. Do you need expertise taking a new product to market? Do you want better margins from customers that are a better fit? Do you want customers that can scale? Is this about pipe velocity – more deals faster, better, more profitable?
Are you looking for sales and marketing management experience?
Many SMBs are grown through the passion and grit of their founders. Then at some point there is a plateau because the rolodex runs dry or teams capacity is exhausted? At that point we find that many companies then hit a decision point:
- Do I hire a sales rep and manage them myself and commit to becoming a sales manager?
- Do I hire a sales executive to build an in house team?
Or does it make sense to delegate that management to a partner that is accountable for hitting targets with their team?
We find that many companies would love the control and stability of an in-house team, but need to short-term building and advantages of an executive.
One of the unique advantages of Gabriel Sales is that we can actually help a company accomplish any of these three goals. With the advent of marketing automation technologies, it is now possible to build a repeatable system that automates specific areas of your sales process, makes it easy for the buyer to buy digitally, and then scores their digital footprint. By its very nature this process is highly data driven and process oriented. Once built and in motion, it gives your company the flexibility to both fully outsource on transition some or parts of the engine in house for greater control and flexibility long term.
Are you outsourcing sales and marketing to manage risk?
Sales outsourcing organizations are bound contractually to targets, reporting requirements, and feedback requirements that you never get from employees. So these companies will have the tools required to do this. Building on the point above in the short term this type of outsourcing company will give you better metrics and a cleaner line of sight than you may experience building on your own. This will also get rid of fixed costs and move them to a variable expense on your P&Ls. It will also get rid of your need for hard infrastructure investments in technologies and marketing platforms. With sales outsourcing, you will get a sales engine ran by a blended team of marketing professionals often at the cost of one senior enterprise rep. So in the short term, you may lose a little of the comfort of onsite control, but with the right level of visibility and the other items mentioned above outsourcing can be a solid way to manage risk.
Gabriel Sales help you to transform sales and marketing with custom sales outsourcing and marketing solutions. One of the things that makes us unique is that we build repeatable sales systems and once they are producing revenue you have the option to bring all or parts of that engine in house. To learn more about our approach we invite you to visit our pages or learn more about our philosophy and sales outsourcing philosophy and approach here.
by Glen Springer | Jul 23, 2016
Magic bullet for sales outsourcing
There is no grey area for Gabriel Sales that sales outsourcing for new product launches is ultimately about closing business. However as a sales consulting firm that has driven millions in closed deals and over 200M in exits with successful new product and service launches over the past 10 years we also understand that we can drive wealth for the entrepreneurs, executives and investors that we serve by empowering the entire organization. This is done with the right feedback loops and insights so our clients can make the right strategic decisions for their business. Below are ten business intelligence and strategic areas that the right sales outsourcing partner for new product launches can and should execute against as sales consultants drive the entire enterprise. For additional resource for new products launches and go to market strategies please visit our Sales Strategies for New Product Launches Resource Page.
Sales Strategies for New Products
Rapid Communication – It’s critical that direct feedback loops are created from the sales team directly back to product development, the marketing team, and the CFO. These feedback loops need to be available all the time. Speed directly from the market back to the team is critical. One of the advantages of a sales outsourcing firm that specializes is new product launches is that we have designed our internal systems to provide these feedback loops and are contractually accountable for them. The right internal feedback loops will improve the product and align sales and marketing for shared success.
Commit to Digital Content…especially Blogging – We are a sales outsourcing firm making 1000s of outbound calls a day. Customers are not waiting for us to call. If we get them on the phone being able to share a quick piece of content (video, landing page, short demo) goes a long way to getting them to spend more time with us on call two and the same content can also be leveraged to disqualify prospects. The average customer leveraged 10.7 pieces of content in their buying decision in 2011 and this is projected to increase in 2012. If you have a limited budget we have strategies and tactics we leverage for our customers that allow them to take advantage of our sales outsourcing for new product launch tactics that turn your blog into a virtual sales rep.
Be Prepared to Educate the Market – Most new products are offering a new solution that is disruptive to the market. Many new product companies are enamored with their technology (since they have passionately developed it) and forget that in many cases before you get to share those technical specs you need to help the customer understand and define the business problem they are trying to solve. You also need to be prepared to educate your customer how to calculate return. Don’t underestimate the value of keeping it simple for the prospect especially in the early stages of the sales cycle. For more info on how to frame your content strategy, please check out our B2B content framework graphic in our blog What is Successful Sales Collateral?
Sell from Scripts – This is one of several areas where a new product launch sales outsourcing firm has some strategic value over hiring individual internal reps or rolodex reps. Outsource sales firms are designed to sell using a repeatable process so selling from scripts is critical. It gives us something to measure and a way to anchor the success of the sale in the message and the story as opposed to the personality.
Commit Focused Energy to your Initial Ideal Customer Profile – If you don’t know what this is we have a short blog series dedicated to this. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE. You need to take your best guess at what verticals and what decision makers will buy and champion your product. And then test those assumptions and measure those results.
Document the Buying Process and the Sales Process – As you take your first customers from MQL or Cold Call through Sales Accepted to Sales Qualified to Closed deal you need to understand the key events in that cycle. As a sales outsourcing firm this is one of the sales consulting functions we offer our clients. We believe it’s critical because when combined with the right sales metrics (see below), mapped to the Ideal Customer Profile (see above) it gives us the ability to start to more accurately forecast dollars in and dollars out investments for the entrepreneurs and boards we serve. It’s also critical to remember that the same digital content we discussed in point 2 at the top of this blog is contributing to the sale. You need to get your sales reps and marketing team to score that as part of the buying process as well. Documenting the buying process allows you to build a sales process that allows the buyer to buy on their terms which means a sales ramp that consistently moves up an to the right and we are all in this entrepreneurial business to build sales machines that turn growth rates into hockey sticks.
Measure the Right Success Metrics – You need to measure the success of your early pipe efforts from day one. A sales outsourcing solution for new product launches has the advantage of having years (at least 10 years in our case) of historical data to benchmark your efforts against similar sales to similar markets and similar decision makers. This is especially critical for new product launches that have no historical data to benchmark against. To learn more about the metrics Gabriel Sales feels are most critical feel free to reach out to us to Learn if you can Build a High Velocity Sales Machine.
Know Why You Win and Why You Lose – If you are measuring the right data you will already be well on the way to knowing why your new product launch is successful. Its also important to understand why you are not winning when you lose. One value-add we provide as a sales outsourcing consulting service for new product launches is that after losing a deal we will call the decision maker if possible and ask “ for own learning, is there anything we could’ve done better?” We will take notes and pass that information on to our clients.
Commit to Marketing Automation and Nurturing Prospects “Not Yet Ready to Buy” – Our clients are investing in more than closed deals when they are choosing to outsource part or all of their sales and marketing operations. We are not going to win every deal the first shot we take especially for new products. Some may not have budget immediately, others may be waiting for our clients to have a couple more customers, others may need to champion into their organization. Data from Forrester states that 70% of Marketing Qualified Leads will buy in a solution area they invest time in exploring within 18 months. If nurtured correctly 25% of your MQLs will hit your pipe within a year according to Aberdeen. If you put 400 MQLs into the pipe in your pipe during your initial launch this means (assuming your product hits the mark) that you will have 100 SALs by year if you invest in nurturing out of the gate. Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting to assist with multiple nurturing from lead scoring, to social media outreach, content testing and marketing automation software implementation.
Lead with Value Proposition but Sell with Differentiators – Selling starts when a customer says “No” and arguments are never made in a vacuum. Value propositions are a great lead but they only take you so far. To close a deal your business case needs to make sense in the context of a category. We take all of our new product launch sales outsourcing clients through a quick and proprietary process that helps us and them to tell that story. This does not mean that you need to sell directly against the competition it simply means that the story will include what the prospect/marketplace has heard from the competition. In many cases we find that that competition is an internal competitor.
To see if our Sales Consulting and/or Sales and Marketing Outsourcing Solution is right for taking your new product to market we invite you to visit our New Product Launch Sales Strategies Resource Page. CLICK HERE
For a custom Go-To-Market Evaluation please feel free to CONTACT US to benchmark the market and see if a High Velocity Sales Machine is a possibility for you.
by gabriel_sales | Jan 30, 2014
As we have written about previously, regardless of what the next hot marketing technology or trend is, content will be the fuel that gets us where we want to go. While many companies choose to produce their marketing content internally, there are several reasons that sales outsourcing might be a more cost-effective and efficient solution.
Here are 3 reasons to consider sales outsourcing content creation:
1. Marketers today are expected to act as publishers.
If you look at Salesforce’s blog, they are posting about 7 articles per day. Pardot, one of the leading marketing automation companies in the US, posts at least one every day. Oracle tweeted over 60 times on January 29th.
While your business may not need to be tweeting at the same rate as Oracle, you do need to publish relevant content, and you need to do it frequently. If your company is on the smaller side, this work can exhaust your resources, especially if you do not already have trained writers on staff. Similar to sales outsourcing, by leveraging an outsourced individual/team to write your blog articles and post them to social media, you can quickly and cost-effectively produce more content—improving both sales engagement and SEO.
2. Outsourced content producers understand how to tailor content to fit different stages of the buying cycle.
Each of your prospects is in a slightly different place in their buying cycle, and in order to move on to the next phase, each is going to need to see something slightly different. Prospects early in their buying cycle need to see very basic, educational content that speaks to their specific pains. Prospects closer to purchasing need to see detailed case studies, comparisons, demo videos, etc.
If you are not yet producing different types of content to match the various stages of your buying cycle, an outsourced content production team can help. By helping to map out each stage of your sales process and then coming up with different pieces of content for each, an outsourced team allows you to be confident that your content is actually working to bring prospects through your pipe and directly contributing to ROI.
3. It allows you to stay focused on serving your customers and looking for new revenue opportunities.
If you are at a tech startup or smaller managed services company, you likely do not have all the time in the world to sit around and come up with new ideas for content all the time. Even if you can come up with some ideas, seeing them through to execution can be difficult when you constantly have more pressing matters to attend to.
By leveraging outsourced content producers, you can stay focused on your company’s highest value activities—leaving content production to the experts.
For more on the value of outsourcing content production or other sales and marketing functions, read Scale Your Business for Sales with Sales Outsourcing. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Dec 4, 2013
Why a sales outsourcing company?
As 2013 nears its end, it is time to start looking to how to make 2014 your best sales year ever. B2B digital sales and marketing gets more and more complex and competitive by the day, and staying ahead of the game in terms of the latest tactics and techniques is a difficult task. We may be biased, but we believe the best way to dramatically increase revenue and decrease your cost of sale is to leverage a B2B sales outsourcing company.
Here are top 5 advantages of hiring a B2B outsourced sales company:
Speed to Success
In the world of B2B sales and marketing, web technologies, search platforms, measurement tools and more have made the landscape increasingly complex. You can no longer simply put up a website and expect to win business. Sales and marketing now involves website development and management in as well as sales pipeline management, digital content marketing, lead nurturing, customer relationship management and more.
If you are still in early stages of development in terms of a fully integrated and digital sales and marketing strategy, a B2B sales outsourcing organization may be a great option. Trying to develop and implement a strategy on your own can be extremely time consuming, and that long of a learning curve is more than many companies can afford. By leveraging a sales outsourcing company to help you develop and execute sales and marketing campaigns, you can reduce your learning curve dramatically and start seeing your revenue increase much faster.
Help You Navigate or Perfect Marketing Automation Software
Regardless of what industry or market you are in, if your competitor is leveraging marketing automation and you aren’t, you are in trouble. Industry reports now show that almost two-thirds of marketers are currently using marketing automation software as a part of their sales and marketing strategy, and 81% plan to fully adopt in 2014 (MarketingProfs).
As marketing automation consultants, we are true proponents of marketing automation and the tremendous value it can bring to a company. However, this value can only be realized if significant time and effort are put into the implementation and ongoing management of the platform. This is where hiring a sales outsourcing team with marketing automation experience can give you an enormous advantage. Instead of spending a year or more trying to learn the functionalities and best practices of a foreign platform, you can hire a team who knows that platform inside and out to help you expedite the entire implementation process and get you set up for ongoing success.
To continue reading click here.
by Glen Springer | Sep 14, 2012
Content Marketing is now required as ground cover for your sales team. If you haven’t started you need to start now. As a sales outsourcing company working to successfully launch sales content marketing efforts for multiple clients we often hear that “it take to much time, or I am not ready to commit.” Our position:
- Content marketing does not need to be complicated for B2B marketers to meet the needs of sales. As a thought leader you have tons of little snippets of value to share on a regular basis.
- You don’t have a choice if you want your sales reps to successfully compete and win.
As a sales outsourcing company we understand that, especially for company’s new to content marketing, it may seem daunting. But it’s easier than you think. We are experts and thought leaders in sales and marketing tactics and strategies. You are experts and thought leaders in your product and solution area. One of the values we bring as a sales and marketing outsourcing company is that we have a methodical system to quickly turn your thought leadership into tools that will empower your sales and marketing efforts.
Below is our framework for content marketing that will help empower your sales team with the tools they need to be successful.
Using our framework we help our clients to quickly determine what specific content is required at specific stages of the sales cycle. We implement Digital Demand Center™ our proprietary Content Management System to accelerate this process. As the survey below indicates the majority of the content required can be initially distributed with blogs. When combined with our expertise in sales storytelling, educational webcasting and sales video content production we can get your sales team (or our sales outsourcing and marketing effort on your behalf) to market with a winning sales content marketing strategy in a fraction of the time you may be able to achieve on your own.
Can Sales Outsourcing Help Your Company?
To check out what your peers are already doing check out this previous blog post. To discover how we can help accelerate your sales integrating multiple tactics and strategies please feel free to reach out for an initial conversation.
