Category: Sales

High-growth businesses have a few key common denominators. They’re usually born out of a great idea their core team really believe in and rally behind. Their growth often outpaces their recruitment and resources, so every team member could find themselves playing outside their comfort zone in those whirlwind early months. The ultimate ambition is simply exponential growth; the sky is the limit. And speaking of limitations, there comes the point in every startup’s growth trajectory where the curve begins to level off. So, what do you when this happens?

It’s at this point that businesses start to look at their sales and marketing machine. What worked when they were starting out, won’t be the secret to levelling up. An ad hoc and reactive approach to building brand and acquiring new business isn’t a solid strategy for success. Most companies seeking to grow do accept this to be true. But what’s the value of an outsourced sales agency over building an in-house team? Why not bring in a Head of Sales and let them handle it? In our blog, Outsourced vs Hiring In-House – The Debate Continues, we take an in-depth look at both sides of the debate and the practical considerations that most businesses will face when making this decision.

In our experience, it comes down to this; your most valuable commodity is time. Time to focus on your business strategy; time to focus on your product roadmap and value propositions and time to focus on the future and your vision. The overarching benefit of outsourcing sales to an expert partner is what you gain back, along with the reassurance that your sales strategy and delivery is in experienced hands with a track record of delivering results.

We’ve looked at the common constraining factors that limit growth and how outsourced sales can help.

Limited in-house resource and skills

Sales are vital to every organisation’s future, but it also takes dedication, consistency and experience to see results. This is where an outsourced sales partner can help you step up your game overnight. Building an in-house sales function is fraught with challenges from developing your onboarding process to retaining your best talent. The time investment required to create and cultivate a high-performance sales culture is significant, and that’s alongside day-to-day management and process development. An outsourced sales partner has already built that high-performing sales professional function, with experts motivated and able to start delivering value to your business almost immediately.

No time to dedicate to new business

Building a pipeline is essential to future sales success, but it’s challenging to generate leads without dedicated sales resource. If your existing team focuses on high-value immediate opportunities, they may be overlooking valuable opportunities that are yet to buy and require nurturing through the sales funnel. And without any sales expertise, even those precious opportunities may be challenging to get over the line. An outsourced sales expert can help you design a strategy that takes in the complete sales cycle and aligns with your growth strategy, helping you build pipeline, capitalise on the low-hanging fruit and free up headspace to concentrate on the exceptional opportunities.

Limited brand recognition

Breaking into new markets and building awareness in your target audience can be challenging for new brands. An outsourced partner can help. They can work with you to develop messaging that will resonate with your audience. Their sales experts will be skilled in communicating the key aspects of a business’s service and benefits, building rapport with your desired key decision-makers and nurturing relationships from cold prospect to engaged customer. This consistent activity will help establish your brand.

Lack of market insight

Research and insight are invaluable to any new organisation, but it’s tough to justify a research budget if you’re at the investment stage. A sales campaign can be a valuable accelerator to gather live feedback from your target audience, especially if you’re a disruptor in the market. It allows you to get closer to your prospects’ challenges, enabling you to refine your offer to better suit their needs. An outsourced sales partner will give you access to call recordings and valuable data insights that will provide you with greater visibility of your market.

Why Air?

We deliver a unique experience for every client who works with us, regardless of their size, product or industry. We get to know our client’s business, their goals, their market and especially their nuances! From here, we build a bespoke strategy that reflects all the above, considering their product value and sales cycle. We then create a plan that includes campaign content and messaging aligned to their brand, we train and immerse our team in the campaign’s goals and work with the client to clearly define the target market.

Could you benefit from using an experienced outsourced sales team? Whether you require a completely outsourced service or additional sales support for your existing team, get in touch, call 0345 241 3038 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Awareness around Account Based Marketing (ABM) has boomed in recent years, but it’s been around since the early 2000s. For results–driven marketers, ABM is a dream opportunity to drive enviable ROI, with research showing it easily outstrips other approaches: 97% of marketers surveyed agreed ABM had higher ROI than other marketing activities. 

That’s great, but what is it? 

Account Based Marketing is a strategic marketing approach where sales and marketing work closely together to target potential high growth and key accounts, either customer or prospect, with tailored messaging focused on their specific challenges. ABM campaigns include targeting individual decision makers within the selected accounts with messaging relevant to their operational challenges. 

With demand generation, the focus is on creating awareness to a larger market and then moving those interested parties through a marketing funnel until they’re ready to make a decision. Whereas ABM efforts focus on a smaller number of key target accounts and operate on the basis of winning high value opportunities, making the initial intensive efforts and investment worthwhile.

There are many clear benefits to developing an ABM programme, including: 

Gives you more focus

Rather than a broad-brush approach, ABM encourages you to focus on those who really need and want your product or service. By tailoring the message directly to key decision makers, you’re effectively bypassing the usual awareness building approach and the reward is far greater. 

A higher hit-rate

This is a real opportunity to use highly personalised creative and messaging that cuts through the noise and directly responds to a specific company or department challenge, rather than a broader industry one. This direct response is engaging and rapidly builds trust and rapport, opening the door for a meaningful conversation, and as we’ve already mentioned yields far stronger ROI. 

True collaboration between sales and marketing

ABM requires sales and marketing to work together as a team, using all resources in a focused and efficient way. This means sales teams feel far more supported in their efforts and marketers feel much more engaged with the sales follow–up process. 

Getting started with ABM 

Now we’re not saying chuck out the marketing mix and put all your eggs in the ABM basket. For some business models, it’s not the right approach (we’ll touch on this later).  But if you’d like to give it a try there are some straightforward ways to get started. 

It’s vital that you set out what you hope to achieve from ABM at the outset of your campaign. Your goals may grow and change over time, but you do need to be clear on what would be a successful result. Remember to be realistic with your goals too, ABM is often a long-term strategy, so don’t expect to see results immediately. 

Do you have the team to execute in-house? It’s vital that you commit the time and the resources to an ABM campaign, if you can’t afford to do this in-house, would you consider outsourcing? 

Run a workshop between marketing and sales where you work out which clients or prospects would be prime for an ABM approach. Decide here if you wish to spread the risk and opt for a one-to-many approach, rather than a one-to-one. 

Now you need to choose your delivery model and start shaping your campaign. Measurement is vital so make sure you have the tools to track your efforts in place. If you’re using a marketing automation tool, ensure your contact data is up to snuff and you’ve mapped your accounts properly. Getting your house in order is crucial before embarking on a detailed and coordinated campaign. 

When ABM might not be right 

While ABM is a tried and tested marketing approach, there are circumstances when it might not be right for you: 

• You don’t have a clearly defined audience and cannot easily isolate high–value potential customers – without this knowledge, it’s difficult to get your ABM programme off the ground. 
• You don’t have the insight to map accounts and create tailored messaging – which is essential for ABM success. 
• Your sales are largely online rather than led by the sales team – so the sales enablement aspects of your campaign and tailored messaging wouldn’t add value. 

• Your deal sizes are smaller, and you’d rather sell volume – ABM works on the idea of going deep with select accounts, if your business model is lower transactional value, high volume sales, there are better ways to market your offer (we can help you with those methods too). 

Using ABM to break into new markets 

We are currently working with a French technology company seeking to break into the UK, Nordic and Canadian markets. Our client can define their target market as large businesses processing big data, so it makes sense to target the C-Suite of large household brands. To capture the attention of their desired decision maker, they need to stand out, differentiate themselves effectively and offer maximum value. Their product and their buyer are perfect for an ABM campaign. 

We are validating our client’s target market data, undertaking additional research to build insights that will enhance their campaign and capture and nurture their target decision–makers. 

Does Account Based Marketing sound like a strategy that could be relevant for your business? If you’d like to find out more about how ABM could work for you, we’d love to help you get started. Get in touch today on 01392 796 702.