Part-Time Outsourcing Sales and Marketing

What Parts of Sales and Marketing Can Be Outsourced?

Outsourcing your sales and marketing is a cost effective way to scale and grow without being burdened by the cost of salaries, benefits and government burdens. There are also a number of ways to make it work for your business.

Consider this scenario. You are a startup or small company that needs to keep overhead low. You’re now ready to grow your sales and marketing channels. What should you do? Is it possible to outsource some of your sales and marketing efforts, keeping costs low?

The answer is yes: outsourcing a portion of your efforts is an excellent option for a small business. You do not need to have all work done in-house, nor hire a full-time team to complete it for you. Outsourcing requires some work and investment on your end in order to be successful, but is a great option for small businesses and startups.

Here are some the core tasks that you can successfully outsource:

B2B Sales Representative

Outsourcing a sales rep makes sense in many business cases. It’ll give your business the sales horsepower that you may be lacking with your current time and budget.

A part-time B2B sales representative is a great solution if you aren’t looking for a full-time resource. Scale your sales efforts using this kind of resource that can scale with you, be responsive to inquiries, lend consistency to your outbound efforts, and seamlessly use a sales CRM to keep track of Accounts, Contacts, activities and deals.

Work with a team that knows how to put sales messaging together and then successfully execute an online and targeted calling campaign to drive leads. You will still need to help early on with more technical questions and closing but the heavy work of lead generation and qualification will be complete.

Your B2B sales representative can then quarterback the lead through the various stages of closing, ensuring you don’t lose contact with that prospect. Too often we hear the story that the owner got busy and didn’t follow up for months at which point in time the lead is cold again.

Sales Leadership

Strategic direction is at the core of any sales engagement. Your Part-Time VP of Sales could be employed on an as needed or ongoing basis depending on your level of need. Typically at the beginning of any sales engagement there is a planning process that will utilize the sales leadership function to ensure targets are identified, messaging is nailed down, an outbound strategy is articulated and goals ranging from activities to meetings and closes are set.

Your Part-Time VP of Sales can help with a wider range of tasks, including managing the sales funnel, manage other part-time sales resources, and keep track of marketing assets in play. The benefit of outsourcing your sales VP is that you have a seasoned resource without having to commit to the big compensation of a full-time employee.

Marketing Manager

In today’s game, selling is simply not enough. Your sales efforts need to supported by an ongoing marketing effort.

The first place buyers look to vet you is your website. It has to be updated and current. The second place they will look is your social accounts and blogs. These need to be current and show thought leadership and product knowledge.

These activities, in addition to creating marketing collateral for trade shows and other sales related purposes are necessities in today’s market. Each of these tasks can be successfully outsourced to a marketing manager.

The goal in today’s market is to be found and drive inbound leads from your website. If done right, the cost to acquire these leads should be far less than traditional outbound methods. It will take time, investment and continuous work, but marketing efforts like this can be quantified by leads being generated and leads being converted into new customers.

An outsourced resource can be an effective tool given the breadth of services that can be provided or drawn from. This can range from content writing for blogs, to managing an e-newsletter, to streamlining your lead generation process and pushing it into your sales CRM to creating marketing materials to doing targeted LinkedIn and Google AdWords campaigns.

Marketing Leadership

Similar to a Part-Time VP of Sales, your Part-Time VP of Marketing would help set the course for your marketing initiatives over the course of time. They can assist your initiatives by working on marketing messaging, marketing plans to drive leads from your website, maximize events, looks for partnership opportunities, and support resellers in their sales efforts, among other tasks.

This sort of service for smaller companies is not something you need daily. Rather it could be a once a year thing or done more frequently at certain check in points. The Part-Time Marketing Manager would be the one doing the heavy lifting.

If you’re looking for outsourced sales and marketing assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us. For great insight into startup sales and marketing, feel free to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter.

What Parts of Sales and Marketing Can Be Outsourced?