As a growing business, you need all the resources you can get to keep up with day-to-day operations. Using an outsourced sales and marketing firm gives you the opportunity to prioritize what you do best—run a successful business. While outsourced sales and marketing firms tend to be looked down upon, they offer many benefits to your business.
In this blog, we’ll cover:
What Does Outsourced Sales and Marketing Mean?
An outsourced sales and marketing firm helps businesses generate leads and build relationships with prospects in a sales pipeline. Leads can be generated using inbound and outbound sales efforts, depending on your business’s preferred approach. However, many companies like to take advantage of both lead generation strategies to maximize their ROI.
When Should You Consider Hiring an Outsourced Sales Team?
Many businesses decide to outsource their B2B sales efforts for various reasons, including lack of resources, expertise, and workforce to expand their sales functions. Hiring an outsourced sales and marketing firm allows your internal sales or account executives (AEs) to focus more on closing deals and producing alternative sales tactics to generate more business.
While sales outsourcing may not be for all businesses, here are some reasons than many businesses consider outsourcing sales:
- Having a small team: When you have a small sales team, they may not be able to handle the high number of leads generated. By outsourcing, your team can focus on selling to potential customers rather than generating leads.
- Growing in new markets: If you want to grow in new regions and markets or pitch new services, an outsourced sales and marketing firm can help you test out new tactics without wasting your internal team’s time if they don’t work or resonate with prospects.
- Company budget constraints: Money plays a significant factor when deciding how to approach your sales and marketing efforts. Many companies don’t have the financial resources to hire top-performing sales experts which is why they consider outsourcing.
- Not obtaining the resources: Similar to budget restraints, many B2B companies also don’t have the resources to have a successful sales and marketing program. By outsourcing, you have access to all the latest sales tools and technologies to optimize your sales process.
- Task overload: When your internal sales team is caught up selling, they have a tough time focusing on generating new business opportunities. When you outsource, the only thing your internal team needs to prioritize is closing business deals.
Not sure if sales outsourcing is the best approach to your business growth efforts? Read our blog here for questions to consider before investing in an outsourced sales development company.
What Do Outsourced Sales and Marketing Teams Do?
Outsourced sales and marketing teams take all of your sales and marketing-related tasks and complete them on behalf of your business. Traditionally, there are two approaches you can take with your lead generation efforts: outbound sales and inbound marketing.
Outbound Sales
Outbound sales is the process of a sales management team actively prospecting new business opportunities. When practicing outbound sales, outsourced business development representatives (BDRs) and sales development representatives (SDRs) reach out to prospective businesses that meet your ideal customer criteria to pitch your company’s product or service. With an outsourced partner for lead generation, BDRs and SDRs:
Make Cold Calls
BDRs and SDRs make cold calls to prospective businesses to introduce your company’s product or service and schedule them an appointment with your internal team. While not every prospect says “yes” after the first dial, it’s essential to keep them in the sales pipeline so you can follow up with them every three to six months to see where they’re at with their current B2B service provider.
For example, if you’re a commercial cleaning company and the prospect says the contract with the current provider ends in six months, BDRs and SDRs call them back in five months to get their foot in the door before it’s time to reevaluate contracts. In the meantime, include them in a lead nurturing email marketing campaign so they receive relevant information about your company. In these emails, you can direct them to your website or send marketing collateral that resonates with them and their needs.
Distribute Email Marketing Campaigns
Another way that BDRs and SDRs prospect and nurture leads is by distributing email marketing campaigns. When paired with cold calling efforts, your outbound sales efforts are maximized. As mentioned previously, email marketing drip campaigns are great for nurturing relationships with leads and providing top-of-mind awareness.
Email marketing efforts are also great for sharing relevant marketing collateral. For example, complex industries like software development could benefit from sales enablement material, such as explainer videos. Many software sales teams—internal and external—struggle to explain complex software over the phone. However, with email marketing, you can send a prospect a short and easy-to-follow video that effectively showcases your software.
Send LinkedIn Connections to Prospects
While social media is a powerful tool for distributing content, platforms like LinkedIn are beneficial for building relationships with prospects. Sending LinkedIn connections to prospects is one of the newest practices in outbound lead generation. This is a beneficial way to discover and nurture new leads because it’s another platform to engage with them on.
By connecting with prospects on LinkedIn, you can message them relevant content and share industry-specific thought leadership articles. This also provides more familiarity between the SDR and the prospect, making them appear as less of a cold caller and more of a business acquaintance.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is the marketing and sales strategy that companies use to generate leads digitally. With inbound marketing, a team of marketing specialists uses cutting-edge solutions to enhance your brand’s presence on the internet. Outsourced inbound marketing specialists:
Design and Develop Websites
A website is typically the first digital impression prospects have of your company. When developing a website, you need to have the user’s intent and experience in mind. An outsourced sales and marketing firm makes sure that your company’s website is easily navigable and piques the viewer’s interest. By having a well-designed and developed website, you increase the likelihood of converting leads into customers.
Write SEO-Focused Content
While having a well-designed and developed website is vital to gain and maintain users’ interest, so is the content you provide on your website. When outsourced marketing specialists write content for the website, they make sure everything is optimized for search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for leads to find your website online. With relevant keywords and internal and external links, you have the opportunity to boost your website to the top of search results. This makes your website more viewable by leads seeking your company’s product or service.
Create and Schedule Social Media Posts
Social media is great for connecting with friends and family, so why wouldn’t it be ideal for engaging with leads? Social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter are great for getting your content in front of the eyes of your target market.
Outsourced marketing specialists take advantage of social media to share posts organically with followers. However, for an additional cost, social posts can also be optimized to appear on the social feeds of your target market. This increases the opportunity to promote your company to individuals who may not be aware of your company yet but is actively looking to learn more about the product or service you provide.
Produce High-Quality Marketing Collateral
Many B2B businesses lack the expertise and resources of copywriters, graphic designers, and video producers to develop effective sales enablement material. By partnering with an outsourced sales and marketing firm, you have the opportunity to access high-quality marketing collateral.
Marketing collateral is a significant component of your inbound lead generation strategy because it can explain processes that BDRs and SDRs may not be able to effectively. Sales enablement assets include brochures, sell sheets, infographics, and videos that support your company and the products and services you have to offer. These are significant assets to include in your email marketing and social media efforts because they catch the eye of prospects. They can also be embedded into your website for easy accessibility and optimized for SEO value.
What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing Sales Operations?
Outsourcing sales operations tends to get a bad rap, but it provides significant benefits that many B2B businesses overlook. By outsourcing sales operations, your company can:
Save Time
You’ll save a lot of valuable company time by outsourcing your sales operations. When a business has an internal sales and marketing team, they spend a lot of time focusing on their efforts rather than their regular day-to-day tasks. While you focus on what you do best, an outsourced sales and marketing firm can prioritize generating new opportunities for your business.
Save Money
When you outsource your sales operations, you save significant money on salaries, benefits, and sales tools and technologies. For the price of a single internal sales rep, you gain access to a team of highly skilled sales experts and various sales platforms to help you optimize your sales and marketing efforts.
Access Advanced Sales Tools and Technologies
Outsourced sales and marketing firms have access to a variety of advanced sales tools and technologies. These sales platforms can be costly and take a significant amount of time to master. When partnering with an outsourced sales company, you save time and money from purchasing these assets and learning how to use them.
Acquire a Team of Sales Experts
When you internalize your sales and marketing efforts, you typically need to hire a variety of specialists to complete all of your tasks effectively. However, when you outsource, you acquire a team of sales and marketing experts who can handle it all with ease.
For more insight into the benefits of outsourcing lead generation efforts, read our blog here.
How Involved Should You Be With Your B2B Sales Outsourcing Company?
While you can find an outsourced sales and marketing firm to hand off your efforts to, you need to understand your expectations from the company. If you’re more hands-off with your lead generation provider, you may not see the results you want. However, the more involved you are with your provider, the more success you’ll see in your lead generation program. As you become more involved with your sales and marketing team, they will become more familiar with your services and products and better represent your company to prospects.
When you integrate an outsourced sales and marketing firm into your lead generation strategy, it should not be recognizable by your clients. A well-equipped outsourcing company should work with your internal team as if they are a part of your team. By engaging on a consistent basis, you have the opportunity to make tweaks to an SDR’s messaging and their approach to the prospect. This ensures that your brand voice is represented well and accurately.
As you partner with a B2B sales outsourcing company, you need to make sure they fit seamlessly into your company operations. Before the outsourced team starts making calls, make an email on the company account for them so it’s more integrated. This also gives you more oversight into the conversations they’re having with prospects.
While working alongside your B2B sales outsourcing provider is crucial for a successful program, it doesn’t always have to be that way. The longer you partner with your lead generation provider, the more hands-off the process will become. When you work with your provider for a significant amount of time, your sales executives know how to pitch your company effectively to bring in more high-quality leads and secure more business deals in the long term.
Key Takeaways
Although many companies prefer to internalize their operations, hiring an outsourced sales and marketing firm provides many benefits to growing businesses. From saving money to obtaining all the sales and marketing expertise you need, they can help you every step of the way in your outbound and inbound lead generation journey.
If you’re ready to optimize the way you generate leads for your business, contact Abstrakt Marketing Group today!
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