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Category: Sales

Lead Forensics Webinar – Delivering in 2021: Setting your team up for ultimate success

Posted on by Tamara Rowley

Lead Forensics brought together four of the brightest minds in business who will be giving you their top tips for success in 2021, including:

This 45 minute webinar covers:

  • What an effective team looks like
  • How to best navigate unexpected change
  • How to plan yet also pivot effectively
  • Where to focus and what to measure
  • How to motivate and empower your team in a remote working environment

10 Key Ways to Optimise your Outbound Sales Engine

Posted on by Doug Roots

Outbound sales remain a vital component of a company’s sales strategy. Or at least it should be. Research conducted in 2019 highlighted that 41.2% of respondents found the humble telephone to be the most effective sales tool at their disposal. Outbound sales drove 55% of leads compared with 27% generated by inbound. That’s a pretty compelling statistic!

But can you supercharge your results further by changing some aspects of your approach, to close any gaps in your outbound sales strategy and delivery plan. With all elements working harmoniously you will see a surge in the quality and quantity of leads in your pipeline.

We’re experienced in helping our clients maximise their outbound sales strategy. In our experience, it takes an initial time-investment, expertise and consistent approach to get your outbound sales engine firing on all cylinders.

Here’s our rundown of the 10 key ways you can optimise outbound and how to bridge the gaps:

  1. Get your CRM working – Tough questions require honest answers: Is your CRM fit for purpose when it comes to being an outbound sales engine? Can your sales team work quickly but effectively with it? Does it lack the capability to deliver the data insights you need? This is a vital component in your outbound sales process, if your team find your CRM clunky and the UX poor they simply won’t use it. Without proper database management, it’s difficult to optimise campaigns and impossible to build a validated pipeline of valuable leads. This is why you need to get your CRM working for you, it’s the foundation of your campaign’s success.

    Many of our clients utilise our custom built CRM which has been specifically developed to optimise our outbound sales engine. We do also work within our clients CRMs when relevant, providing we can see that the platform will give clients a clear view of their data, their prospects and the entire journey throughout the life of a campaign.

  2. Reporting – Do you have access to the reports and insights you need to optimise outbound sales? Reporting should give you as close to a real-time view of a campaign as possible. It should help you quickly pinpoint what’s working and what needs to change. If you’re not in a position to do that, how do you know if your campaign is going well? When using our bespoke CRM, we provide detailed reporting to our clients through our client portal so they can get a speedy pulse-check and a transparent view of progress. Our ongoing reporting uses those insights to adapt and evolve our approach to achieve success.

  3. Call recordings – These provide a vital insight into how customer conversations are progressing, whether messaging is working or needs review. Do you have access to recordings? If you have, do you have the time to listen to them and do you know what to listen for? Listening back to calls is vital in any campaign, it helps you get a sense of a typical conversations, how prospects are engaging with your messaging and whether or not you need to change your script or approach. We have a thorough review and feedback process to ensure consistent improvement. You’ll never get a lead that the call hasn’t been listened to by one of our team first.

  4. Call backs – Having an agreed process for how calls are handled and logged ensures that you are efficient with opportunities and your prospect is getting a smooth experience. You need complete visibility of the most recent point of contact to create a seamless journey to sale. It’s worth the time investment of mapping this process out thoroughly and sharing with your team. This comes back to your CRM, does this have the functionality to seamlessly manage this?

  5. Data tells a story – We use it to find patterns that we can leverage for success, the best of time of day to call, the most successful approach to take with gatekeepers to reach the decision maker expediently plus many more trends can be found from the data. We work with our clients to build that picture and use it to best effect. Again, this is a worthy time investment that will really pay off in the long-term. Ideally, you will have an individual within your team who is able to analyse, process and make recommendations based on the data presented. We know that not every in-house team can have an individual focused on data but making it a priority for your campaign means somebody needs to understand and own this. We have a Data Analyst within our team who is solely focused on optimising client campaigns by utilising data.

  6. Learning and Development – Continual training and support helps sales teams realise their potential and is proven to enhance performance. Do you have a training plan for your sales team? Do you have the tools or partners who will really add value to this training? Research shows that learning and development can really boost sales team performance, with sales training improving win-rate by 15.4%. This is a huge focus for our team, we invest in our sales teams, championing their professional development and supporting them to learn and grow and deliver stellar work across all client accounts.

  7. QA (Quality Assurance) matters – A quality prospect experience, smooths the path to conversions. By optimising your QA processes you’re ensuring a better experience for every future prospect, protecting your brand and building insights to optimise future conversations and future campaigns. We work closely with clients to assure quality of all sales conversation and follow-up process. We ensure their brand is represented in line with their tone and values and their outbound campaigns actively build brand and reputation in new markets.

  8. Scripts that help conversation flow – In our experience, scripts need to rigid enough to effectively communicate the brand and pitch but not so rigid that they stem the flow conversation. Try to be professional but conversational in tone, if you wouldn’t naturally talk a certain way, don’t put it in your script. Prospects are people and will respond far better to a thought-provoking and engaging chat than a list of quick-fire discovery questions. We create scripts for our clients that communicate their brand and service and build the relationships that lead to future opportunities.

  9. Objection handling – How you handle objections is a valuable brand building activity. Doing it well takes training and experience. If you’ve never tackled it before, try to map out some common challenges and listen to calls to find specific ones; then work on your responses and agree your approach so everyone in your sales team is on the same page. For us, it’s woven into our FAQs and provides another opportunity to progress a conversation towards a sale.

  10. Competitor analysis – We’re keen advocates of competitor analysis because by looking at what your competitors do well, helps you contextualize your own value proposition, strengths and weaknesses. When refining and honing your messages to the market, this information is absolute gold. Getting started doesn’t have to be onerous, take a couple of hours to start putting together your insights, even something high-level can prove a useful document, but make sure you use it to inform your campaign strategy. If you’re not sure where to take it next, we can help. We use our clients’ insights from competitor analysis to develop a strategy that accelerates their success and helps them differentiate themselves in a crowded market.

Developing and honing your outbound sales approach is no easy feat and when you’re busy with the daily running of your business. It can be tough to find the time, headspace and the right group of people in-house to make sure your efforts are coordinated, consistent and optimised for results. This is where we can help you bridge the gap. We’re experts in outsourced sales, helping startups to household names to achieve their sales goals and reach new markets.

If you want to supercharge your outbound strategy and accelerate your sales success going into 2021, get in touch today and we’ll guide you through the process: call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Unlocking the power of Account Based Marketing (ABM). Could it be right for your business?

Posted on by dukadmin

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.

The Power of Multichannel and How to Use it For Success

Posted on by Doug Roots

Imagine if you could only rely on one method to communicate the benefits of your product or service. Think of how you would need to simultaneously build brand recognition, demonstrate the benefits of your product, and consistently engage with the customer using that same method of communication whether they were ready to buy or not. Think about your preferred brands – imagine if everything you had learned about them had been as a result of a one-off radio awareness campaign aired over two weeks. Would they still be your preferred option? Would you feel the same investment in that brand if you hadn’t been furnished with tailored product knowledge to influence your buying decisions? Or received an email with an irresistible offer, followed by a social post that made you smile? The answer is, probably not. Multichannel campaigns are arguably your prospect’s preferred choice. Research shows 67% of B2B buyers tend to research content before making a purchase and 64% of B2B buyers will read two to five content pieces before making a decision to purchase.

Creating awareness and maximizing exposure

Multichannel selling is the second approach. It’s promoting and selling your products on more than one sales channel, taking an integrated approach that allows you to increase your prospective customer’s exposure to your product through telemarketing campaigns, digital campaigns, social selling, video prospecting and content sharing. It’s more than reaching out to prospects through traditional methods of communication – it’s generating awareness in the online communities they already use and meeting them where they already are. It’s a smart way to build brand and reputation, communicate a product or service’s benefits and drive interest and enquiries.

A blended and personalised approach

Our team are experienced in designing sales and marketing campaigns that carefully consider all the variables at play. When working with senior c-suite decision makers, or targeting large enterprises with complex organisational structures, our team know that a transactional approach isn’t the most effective. Instead, they create selling sequences of personalised activity that deliver valuable messaging designed to subtly influence and place the service benefits at the front of the prospect’s mind. When our sales specialists follow up with a phone call, they know some of the valuable product benefits and brand credibility have already been seeded. This is particularly valuable for our clients with high value products, which may have longer than usual sales cycles, meaning a longer-term nurture approach is required to keep their prospects engaged – and this has to extend beyond a single campaign.

Why we’re different

Here at Air, we have the in-house skills, technology and processes to execute multi-channel campaigns. As a specialist end-to-end sales agency, we don’t believe in a templated, cookie-cutter approach. For us, no two campaigns are the same. That’s why we’ll work closely with you to understand your sales goals, your target market’s challenges and their customer’s pain points so you can tailor your campaigns and messaging to cut through the noise and strongly resonate with key decision makers in your desired market.

With Air, you can be assured that we’ll design and deliver a multi-channel approach that helps you deepen your brand recognition and increase your customer touch points, in a meaningful way, so that your combined sales and marketing efforts have the maximum impact and reach without creating arduous processes or unnecessary workload for your internal team.

If you would like to know more about how we can help you discover new markets, land high value accounts and improve brand recognition through a multi-channel approach, get in touch here or call us on 0345 241 3038.

Ask The MD: What Are Your Top 3 Priorities In Business?

Posted on by Doug Roots

 

In the 10th instalment of our ‘Ask The MD’ series we ask the question ‘what are your top 3 priorities in business?’. Find out the answer in this video featuring our Managing Director, Owen Richards, and sister company Forrest Marketing Group’s Managing Director, Richard Forrest.

 

 

 

 

From Start-ups to Enterprises: Why Outsourced Sales can work for businesses of all sizes

Posted on by Doug Roots

One of the questions we get asked a lot is, ‘is outsourced sales right for my business, we’re just starting out?’ On the flip side, we field similar questions from enterprises with established sales team, ‘should I invest in an outsourced sales team, will I see more value than the team we currently have in place?’

The reality is that outsourced sales can work for businesses of all sizes. We’ve had success working with micro businesses and large enterprise clients, it all comes down to tailoring the approach to make it successful for that individual business. Provided the approach is executed well and based on close analysis of an organisation’s desired objectives, their target market and existing sales strategy (if they have one), we’re confident that all businesses can derive genuine value from outsourced sales.

The benefits of outsourced sales for Start-ups

The single biggest benefit of outsourced sales for Start-ups is having a dedicated expert focused on bringing in new business, especially at a time when everyone’s primary focus is getting the business up and running. In most new businesses, the founder is already wearing many different hats, from Finance Director to Head of Sales, and has little opportunity to focus solely on building the pipeline their business will need to succeed and survive.

What we can do especially well for a start-up business, is quickly ramp up their sales expertise and start building pipeline. This gives them back time to focus on the operational elements of their business, growing and retaining their existing client base or even securing investment; safe in the knowledge they are building their brand and reputation whilst generating leads that could convert into valuable sales over the coming months. This is especially pertinent in the current climate, research shows 74% of start-ups have experienced decline in revenue since the start of the pandemic, with the same number (74%) being forced to lay off full-time employees, making them even more resource constrained.

The benefits for established businesses

But the benefits of outsourced sales is not just for start-up’s, enterprise clients can equally benefit from this model. Onboarding new sales talent is often costly and time-consuming and it takes time for new starters to reach optimum productivity.  Compared to outsourcing to an expert, where you can immediately access proven sales resource that can be easily scaled as and when required. Another benefit often found for enterprise businesses is being able to assign a sales specialists to specific campaigns that you have running.  This allows your internal team to stay focused on their pipeline and prospects whilst your outsourced team manage the specific campaign activity – allowing you to keep on top of all sales activity.

Another benefit of your internal team working alongside an outsourced sales team is the opportunity it presents to benchmark your sales team and review sales processes to make improved efficiencies. Many enterprise businesses will have had established sales teams and sales processes for a long time and whilst some are still working perfectly, others could be improved. In these scenarios clients are looking for benchmarks to understand what an external experienced team can achieve vs their internal team and to understand what processes they could change to become more successful.

The Air approach

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 strategy, 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. Our process has been carefully designed to reassure our clients that we’re listening to their needs and committed to delivering a campaign that exceeds their expectations.

Could you benefit from using an experienced outsourced sales team? Whether you’re just starting out or need additional sales support for your existing team, get in touch, call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk

How SaaS companies are reaping the benefits of outsourcing their Sales Development Representative (SDR) roles – now’s the time to take the leap

Posted on by Doug Roots

In the SaaS market, outbound sales are crucial to scale and grow at the rate needed to remain competitive and deliver that initial return on investment necessary not only to validate their product but to ensure their company’s future.

While an annual growth rate of 20% is a healthy benchmark for businesses in other industries, software companies growing at that rate have a 92% chance of failure in just a few years according to McKinsey & Company. Further cementing the pressure to succeed for tech businesses in those crucial early months.

For most, their product has spent many months in development, they’re confident in their value proposition, their market research and their messaging. With this level of pressure to make it succeed, there is no doubt going to be a level of nervousness in handing over the reins to an outsourced partner to support taking that product to market.

But there are clear and well-documented benefits to outsourcing sales, especially for a high growth model like SaaS. Developing a high-performance sales process takes time and expertise. For companies looking to fast track growth and build pipeline, they may not have months to build a sales culture primed for success. In fact, building an SDR function in-house comes with many challenges; you need to recruit the right people, retain the best performers and spend time training and managing those who don’t come up to the mark.

Fast growth means high churn

Research shows the turnover rates average at 39% for players in the high growth SaaS market, with contributing factors including burnout, poaching from more recognised brands with established career pathways and simply the nature of working in a fast-paced environment. If you consider average ramp-up time is just over 3 months for most SDRs, it becomes clear why it makes sense to work with a partner who specialises in recruiting and retaining talented SDRs. A related benefit of outsourcing is protecting the in-house sales talent tech businesses need to retain, by allowing them to focus on closing deals rather than spreading themselves thinly across prospecting and short-term promotions.

Building a sales culture for success takes time

A successful sales culture is reliant on great team relationships, a comprehensive onboarding and training programme and the right mix of employee benefits and incentives. At Air, we’re proud of our culture and the journey our SDRs have taken from new recruits to experienced individuals with enviable track records. But it didn’t happen overnight, our people have honed their experience through working on diverse and complex campaigns and growing in confidence and experience with each client collaboration. This means they can hit the ground running with new campaigns and are already familiar with the challenges across a range of SaaS clients, so can leverage their experience and insight into industry challenges to build rapport with key decision makers. For more insight on this topic, watch our vlog where we explore the challenges of Growing a team of Sales Development Representatives.

Air’s outsourced model

We help our SaaS clients fast track to success with Air’s outsourced SDR model, removing the burden of developing their in-house sales specialism and giving them back time to focus on their operations, service and product development. If you are a SaaS business looking for support, we can help.

Scale your outreach

We believe that there’s nothing more effective in a sales process than a good, human to human conversation. Our expert team of SDRs will scale your reach, increasing your brand awareness and potential sales opportunities.

Build your pipeline

A healthy sales pipeline of qualified leads that will convert is vital to your plans to scale. Our team of highly skilled SDRs effectively engage with your ideal target audience, to give you the best chance of making a sale.

Convert prospects

We’ll work with you to increase revenue from new sales. Our talented Sales Development team will not only create pipeline but cover the full sales cycle.

To discover more about how we work with SaaS businesses and the results we achieve check out our case studies. If you’d like to start a conversation about how we could work together to help your business grow, call 0333 250 3217 or email contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Leading your sales team like a human – why authenticity really matters

Posted on by Doug Roots

I can honestly say that making the conscious decision to lead my team as a human and aiming to be the most authentic version of myself, has had a huge impact on shaping our culture as we’ve grown. Shortly after founding the business, I decided that in an otherwise complex world, one thing could be straightforward, my role. Yes, I am a boss, a leader, a manager and a salesperson, but first and foremost, I’m me.

The idea of being confined and limited by the narrow parameters associated with a title, a bulleted list of things I should be, seems counterintuitive to connecting with people and aiming to inspire them. Simon Sinek said, ‘a boss has the title, a leader has the people’ and that to me, epitomises the mindset that makes the most sense.

Humans are highly complex and capable. We work best when we’re given the freedom to be creative and innovate. The average UK worker spends 1,676 hours at work every single year – that figure is perhaps even higher in the sales industry. The idea that your input, in all that time, can be reduced to a 500 word job description seems absurd; it doesn’t reflect the role we each play.

When you try to neatly box the notion of what sales leadership should be, you close yourself off to possibilities and true connection. Every day you can choose to be human in your approach, when sales leaders neglect to make a conscious decision about it, they leave their leadership style down to luck and forget to be mindful. When you let your team see the real you, you’re showing them someone who cares about them and you lay the foundations for trust to grow. If they can see you have their best interests at heart, they will appreciate and accept your honesty when delivering tough messages and taking difficult decisions.

Self-awareness is critical for any good leader. Leaders who claim to be infallible are not relatable and sometimes unlikeable. Nobody is perfect and those who can show vulnerability, and strength and resiliency in the face of challenges, without hiding their emotions and compartmentalising their feelings, will be far more inspiring to the team around them than somebody who chooses to hide behind a façade.

It’s important to put your team’s development first, even before your own. Investing in people goes far beyond caring about their success and professional development. True leaders care for their team’s mental wellbeing too, and know they will only truly thrive in a trusting and honest environment where people are comfortable with expectations and feel supported to speak their minds.

Whilst you can and actively should show emotions as a leader, you can’t let them dictate how you behave and the decisions that you make. The ability to step away and create space is critical. Be somebody who explains their motivations and thinking because context really does matter. Give your team transparency around data and decisions and explain the thought processes that led you there.

Don’t be a control freak. Let people exceed all of your expectations, with your full support. True leaders give people ownership and encourage their team to fail fast and learn from the experience. Most importantly, try to create that culture where you talk openly about failure. If you can have honest and normal conversations about it, everyone can learn and move on, it’s all you need to motivate and educate your team.

Our new platform, Wellity, is designed specifically for the sales industry and focuses on the mental health and wellbeing of professionals within it. We recently interviewed a gentleman called Chris Brindley MBE, who was formerly on the board at Metrobank and is now the Chair of the Rugby League World Cup 2021. He talked about two principles that always resonate with me. One is mirrors and windows. Imagine a scenario where a CEO pulls you, the sales leader, into his office at the end of the quarter and chastises you for a poor quarterly performance. He asks you, ‘what’s happening?’. A great leader will reflect that back on themselves, like a mirror and assume accountability. Equally, when a quarter goes well, that same leader will open the ‘window’ motion towards their sales team and congratulate them for the success. The second principle I really admire is that all great leaders are like umbrellas, because they protect their team from the storm.

I’ll leave you with one final point relating to that word, authenticity. Being authentic means coming from a real place inside ourselves; it’s when our actions and our words are congruent with our beliefs and our values. It’s about being fully ourselves, not an imitation of ourselves or what we think we should be.

For me, great leadership doesn’t exist without ‘extreme normality’. All you need to do as a sales leader is bring the best version of your normal self and the results will follow.

For more insight, check out my talk on the same subject at SaaSGrowth 2020.

Opinion piece by Owen Richards
CEO, Air Marketing Group

Writing a new playbook, my lessons from lockdown

Posted on by Doug Roots

The start of lockdown seems like a lifetime ago now, but when I cast my mind back over the past few months it’s clear that it not only represented a turning point in all of our lives but marked a big change in the way we do business. As a sales professional, I’m no stranger to the challenges of a fast-changing and unpredictable environment. As many people in the sales community will attest, it’s all part of the deal. But this was very different. As soon as lockdown was announced, there was an immediate shift in mindset. It felt like the market froze overnight, paralysed by the uncertainty of well… everything. Before the lockdown, we had a warm pipeline of opportunities almost coming to fruition that seemed to drop immediately. People’s faith was understandably crumbling in new and uncertain territory, and sales was not immune.

When you have no idea what the future holds, decision making is harder than ever and that was reflected in the numbers. Slowly but surely, we started to see a gradual change in mindset and attitude as lockdown measures were eased and the market recognised that this may be the ‘new normal’.

From an outbound perspective, prospecting was a challenge in the early weeks of lockdown. We experienced a dip in contact rates and getting hold of decision makers became more difficult. We noticed that the quality of the opportunities coming through our inbound channels improved, with people being ready to buy rather than making a general enquiry about services. Another silver lining was this also meant an increase in conversion rates.

In hesitant times, the purse strings tighten. We saw the average sales cycles increase, most likely due to revised budgets. The decision-making process was taking far longer, with more levels of sign-off from decisions makers before making the final commitment, due to sensitivity around spending.

Reaching a turning point

In the past 8 weeks I’ve noticed a significant change in attitude to outsourcing sales and marketing, and the decision-making process has streamlined and accelerated. In my opinion, this can be attributed to decision makers accepting and adapting to the ‘new normal’ and making that leap of faith to reinvigorate their sales and marketing plans.

With internal teams being furloughed, the flexibility and scalability of the outsourced sales and marketing model has an additional appeal to businesses right now and we have seen a growth in our enquiries from prospects looking to outsource.

Ultimately, there was no playbook for surviving sales in a global pandemic and companies have had to keep selling and building the pipeline for a life beyond lockdown. I feel like my perspective has certainly shifted. As a sales team we’ve adapted our approach and it’s been a good thing that we’ve been able to have empathetic conversations with our customers and prospects, as all good partnerships are based on honesty. Now more than ever, it’s important to be human and employ empathy and reassurance in our business and personal lives.

Opinion piece by Marco Alfano-Rogers
Sales Director, Air Marketing

Five reasons you should consider outsourcing sales and lead generation during uncertain times

Posted on by Doug Roots

If there’s one thing we’ve all become a lot more familiar with in 2020, it’s uncertainty. In unprecedented times, only the most creative, agile and willing to innovate will emerge thriving. When the world shifts on its axis you have to be open to change, embrace whatever your ‘new normal’ is shaping up to be and stay focused on your future goals.

Headspace to focus on core operations

Nobody can deny that operational challenges have been the show stealers in recent months; everybody has been rightly focused on ensuring their teams can access the resources they need to perform their day jobs and connect with their colleagues. Social distancing and homeschooling have had a massive impact on how and when people work. The upshot? A different way of working and a greater focus on making things work in the short-term. All of this is undeniably vital work but it does mean that sales and lead generation strategies will not be getting the time and attention required to ensure they’re successful. Outsourcing to a trusted expert, gives you the peace of mind that this is being taken care of while working life resumes to some sort of normality.

Greater flexibility on costs in unpredictable conditions

In what seems like constant change, it pays to be flexible. Maybe you had recently recruited a lead generation team who you planned to nurture and grow, and that’s now been understandably delayed. Maybe you’ve had to deliver serious cost savings to keep your head above water. Through outsourcing sales and lead generation you can scale up and down as you need to, pay for the days and services that are most vital to your strategy at that time. If that changes, you can work collaboratively with an expert to get the mix of services right for your current needs and budget.

Access to expertise

This neatly brings us on to one of the standout benefits of outsourcing: access to proven expertise. The burden of developing and retaining sales talent rests with your supplier, so even if you don’t have the means to invest, you can be sure they have and therefore achieve economies of scale. Experienced sales experts who are used to target driven, fast-paced environments will be able to deliver the quality leads you need to build a healthy pipeline and act as an extension of your in-house teams.

Dedicated resource focused on growing your brand and refining your audience

Refining your target market, finding the correct decision makers and generating high quality leads that convert to sales, require a consistent approach. To get the maximum value out of these activities, substantial time needs to be dedicated to getting them right. Even your top salespeople will struggle to balance converting what’s hot right now, with nurturing those slow burner leads that will pay dividends in the future. Engaging an expert to work with you, ensures this vital but time consuming work is removed from their desks, so they can better focus on converting the big deals that will deliver immediate cash flow.

Reduces risk in an already uncertain time

We touched on this a little earlier. Risk is a big deal for businesses at any time but in the current climate, reducing risk can feel seriously empowering. There’s not much we can control at the moment, so if you can look to someone with a proven track record in delivering successful sales and lead generation campaigns, you can be confident that your investment is protected. At Air Marketing we work with clients to create a tailored, blend of services that will deliver the best conversion rates in their desired market. If you’d like to hear more about how we can help your business grow or show you how we’ve helped businesses from all sectors achieve success. Get in touch today or call us on 0345 241 3038. Or hear more from our existing customers here.

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