With larger work loads, tighter budgets, and the increased pressure to stay relevant, many businesses turn to outsourcing sales and marketing. However, others aren’t quite convinced yet. This can lead to a number of misconceptions surrounding outsourcing. In this blog post, I will address one of the biggest myths of outsourcing: outsourced teams are difficult to manage.

Here’s how to create a simple communication and management plan with your outsourced team to guarantee a successful engagement.

1. Set Clear Goals

The number one thing that clients and customers need to determine is your goals for the engagement. There are a number of factors that go into creating great goals including setting a time frame, allocating resources and considering the probability of goal completion. You may enter in knowing what goals you need to accomplish, but leave room for your outsourced team to add their input. Set achievable expectation and perimeters before beginning the engagement.

2. Determine Important Metrics

A secondary area to keep in mind is to figure out which metrics are the most important. You may want to accomplish a number of different goals, so it doesn’t hurt to prioritize which ones are the most important. This will help avoid confusion surrounding where more or less effort needs to be allocated. This will also help your meeting run smoothly; knowing exactly what you’ve agreed to track as success metrics.

3. Outline Roles

Next, you’ll want to be thorough on who is responsible for what, both on your team as well as the outsourced consultants. Questions you need to ask, include who your primary contact will be and if there are specialized team members also working on your projects. This will help you create specific communication messages, and avoid those long email threads.

4. Decide on Communications Practices

When it comes down to laying out communication practices between you and the outsourced company, there are a few things to consider. I’ve categorized them into two big areas:

1. Ad Hoc Interactions

   As situations rise, have a plan of action to make sure you get the information you need, when you need it. Go back to who is responsible for tasks to determine who will be most helpful. Additionally, outline which modes of communication work best for those individuals. Are you most responsive speaking over the phone, or on an internal chat application like Slack? Especially in emergency situations, these guidelines will help create clear communication lines.

2. Formalized Meetings

   In addition to ad hoc communications, formalized meetings are essential for successful communication. You can determine how frequent and through what medium these meetings occur beforehand. Just make sure you stick to your schedule. This will help you plan other activities around this meeting, and catch-up on the team’s progress. Formalized meetings are great for keeping team members accountable, and sharing ideas. Remember to keep your goals and metrics in mind when developing your meeting agendas.

5. Promote Transparency

One of the keys for great communication with your outsourced team is to promote transparency. First, this goes for accessibility to tools and software that the team is using. For example, if you’re working to build sales make sure all stakeholders have access to the CRM. The same goes for marketing and social media accounts. Beyond that, be transparent about internal insights. Fill your outsourced team in on your biggest successes and failures.

6. Share Knowledge

One of the best things that come out of working with an outsourced team is gathering shared knowledge. Be open and willing to learn from each other. In order to have a positive engagement, it’s important to ask questions, share suggestions, and review feedback.

7. Understand the Process

Although it would be great to see huge sales and marketing results within a short period of time, understand the role time plays in the engagement. This goes for seeing results as well as building trust with your outsourced team. Creating a plan is only the beginning, so take some time to get to know your established process.

Outsourcing your sales and marketing efforts is not designed to be an extra burden on your company. It should help you reach your sales and marketing goals while allowing you to focus on your business operations.

If you’re considering outsourced sales and marketing, check out our whitepaper: Is Outsourced Sales and Marketing Right for your Business?

On the other hand, if you’re ready to discuss how outsourcing can fit into your business, feel free to contact us.