Asking an outsourced sales and marketing company the right questions could benefit YOU
As a startup company or small business ready to grow, you have spent a year or more developing a product or solution to solve a problem for buyers. After estimating how much time it would take for you to recruit, hire, train, and manage a small sales team, you’ve decided to use an outsourced sales and marketing company, which means you are looking to work with an organization that will help you both strategically and tactically.
Initially you’d like to work with a company like this to determine what specific target markets you should go after, and help you tell a compelling sales story. Here are some questions we recommend that you ask when you are working with an outsourced sales and marketing company to decide if they are the right fit to take your product into the market for you:
Gather general background on the company
You should ask how long has your company been operating and you should also find out how long they have been providing sales outsourcing services and outsourced marketing services.
If the company is offering cold calling reps and buyer development reps you should ask where they are located. Are they making sales calls from the company headquarters? Are they working remote or is the outsourcing company company partnering with another company for these services?
Ask for case studies
Most sales and marketing outsourcing companies will have references that you can speak with deeper into your sales process. But when you first engage in conversations with a particular company, you should ask to see certain companies that are selling similar solutions at a similar stage and to similar markets.
You should understand who will be responsible for building target lists.
If you are working with an outsourced sales and marketing company, it’s important to understand who will be responsible for building target lists.
If you will be cold calling, you should find out what databases they have access to. If they will be running email campaigns, you should make sure they have access to rented opt in lists so you do not run up against CAN-Spam compliance issues.
If the company will be using marketing tools you should understand what kind of access you get to those tools
Most outsourced sales and marketing companies will need to have a social media management tool, a CRM, and a marketing automation platform to execute email campaigns. You should understand if you will have access to these tools or if the company will simply be providing your reports.
Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting & outsource sales and marketing services to companies to help them build modern sales and marketing operation that reputably produce results. To learn a little more about our approach and how we can help you build a sales and marketing revenue engine from start to finish, please visit our outsourced sales and marketing services page.
