Why are you considering outsourcing sales and marketing?  

Continuation of How to choose a sales outsourcing partner - Part 1

Here are 7 questions and tips when considering and choosing a sales and marketing outsourced partner for new business development and lead generation activities...

1) What credibility and experience does the outsourcing company have in your sector and both context and content?

Do you need generalist or specialist skills to help grow your business through sales and marketing with lead generation?

Recently we have come across more specialist engagements such as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) with services as an independent consultant. Typically this engagement is to help shape a strategy or develop a new marketing offering or direction in planning.

If you could engage a senior experienced sales and marketing team what would that mean for your business? You would be leveraging significant skillsets and experience, boosting your performance and outcomes with a lower cost base than headcount full time employee (FTE) hire, but how do you find the right partnership? 

We consistently hear that good sales and marketing resources are hard to find, so in a growing business where budget is limited, it may be wise to trial an arrangement for say six months. Traditionally any FTE hire will have a similar probation period without guarantee of success, plus you will have to pay a one-off recruitment fee unless it’s via a trusted referral source.

What if you could reduce or eliminate the time and effort of an internal recruitment process to find the “ideal” candidate, to focus your energies on immediately working alongside experienced sales and marketing professionals with a great network to immediately engage as an outcome based and shared risk outsourcing team based approach. 

Are you gaining one consultant or access to a multi-functional experienced team for a similar cost? Let’s explore and imagine that for the same cost as having access to a team of industry experienced senior marketing managers and sales directors for a similar cost as a single FTE hire, what would that arrangement really be worth to your business? To create competitive advantage, partnerships with cross-functional skills can greatly enhance your positioning to win new business and also reduce internal costs.

Does the organization you are choosing to work with have local experience and depth?

In the world of professional services, time based charging can get very costly for a longer engagement. Hence a key factor in selecting a suitable sales and marketing outsourcing arrangement can be to see how flexible they are to customize to your commercial needs, including working towards measured milestone deliverables. 

Can they develop both sales and marketing strategies and connect the two in strategic planning to align with business goals?

If you simply engage a traditional full service marketing agency on a retainer basis, are they sufficiently commercially oriented and have experience with sales engagement to align your marketing and sales together to deliver true business value?

2) What is the cost/benefit of outsourcing and ROI, other than lowest price selection?

Over years of personal experience, outsourcing shouldn’t be treated as just a lower cost benefit or price exercise. If it streamlines and quickens your go-to-market and works to deliver outcomes via a shared risk model, that can be well worth the costs and access to more value.

Other benefits of outsourcing include accessing a diversity of skills, experience and culture, as well as leveraging competitive advantage for your business. To that point, proven experience and track record as well the compatibility and fit remain important to consider, hence we suggest a short-term project trial of say three to six months are a good way to dip your toes into the outsourced sales and marketing experience.

A leading Australian electrical services company was seeking to expand its relationship and leverage off their investment in valuable vendor certifications with electrical automation and energy solutions skills with Schneider Electric solutions. They have access to one of only three certified industry senior assessors who has extensive consulting experience in the field as part of the team. 

They have had limited sales and marketing resources to reach out and grow the business with a go to market plan in this line of business for reaching larger businesses without the support of the Schneider Electric partnership and channel engagement.

Part 2:  From Lead Generation to Deeper Lead Qualifying and Nurturing – How to progress the sales cycle

Introduction  

This is the second part in extending our previous lead generation discussion Part 1: There are leads and leads. effective lead generation approaches.

Before we dive into a discussion about what effective lead generation and lead nurturing is, how to effectively qualify your leads better and what our definition of MQL (marketing qualified lead) and SQL (sales qualified lead) is, let’s ensure we’re on the same page with a quick checklist based on the new marketing and sales funnel way of thinking ( if your organisation alignment has acknowledged the purchasing and decision making process of the modern buyer )

Quick checklist

1. Has your organization defined what a lead is?
2. Is everyone in the organisation involved in the marketing and sales cycle able to articulate what a MQL is, and what a SQL is?
3. Is there a clear ‘point’ at which marketing hands over leads to sales?
4. Has marketing and sales reached agreement in terms of what a lead is?

If you can answer those questions, or at least go some way towards it in in functional maturity, let’s move forward to discussing lead nurturing!