So you have made the decision to take the sales and marketing outsourcing route. Now you’re probably wondering, how do you select the best sales and marketing outsourcing company for you? Great question. Here are a few things to ask your new potential partner to decide if they’re the right fit for you.
Do They Have Experience In Your Industry?
Having some understanding of how your industry is structured, key players, economic environment make it easier to sell and market to. Look for firms that have experience in the industry or related industries and can relate stories and experiences where they have provided value.
Do They Have Experience Working With Your Size/Type of Company?
There is a world of difference between working with a large company and working with a startup. As a startup you are typically tight on funds, have limited resources, and fewer people available to help. If your sales and marketing consultants aren’t used to operating within these constraints, they won’t be able to effectively help you grow your business.
What Is Their Plan to Get Things Started?
To be successful, your outsourced sales and marketing partner needs to have the ability to understand your business and the products/services you sell very quickly. Time is money. Taking a month or longer to ramp up on your firms solutions is unacceptable in my books.
Discuss with them their plan to onboard you, get up and running and ultimately how their Sales & Marketing Plan is going to be built and articulated. One of the biggest challenges we have seen is overly complicated plans that require significant budget that ultimately are hard to execute well. Ensure the plan is attainable, goal and activities oriented and allows for flexibility to evolve over time. In a lot of cases, we like to walk before we run with clients especially if what they are selling or marketing is new. You can easily blow a lot of budget on ineffective strategies and tactics.
Will They Get Their Hands Dirty?
There’s a big difference between consultants that provide advice and consultants that provide advice and do the work. You need to assess the sort of help you need. Many times, consultants will happily provide advice but don’t work to help implement their advised strategies and tactics. Make sure that any sales and marketing consultant is willing to provide the level of support you need.
What Does Their Ongoing Communication Model Look Like?
When undertaking a sales and marketing program it is hard to know at the beginning how it is going to go. In some cases all goes well and to plan. In other cases, changes need to be made. A good consultant works to establish a timely feedback loop that keeps you in the know and enables your sales and marketing strategy and tactics to be tweaked as needed.
Ultimately treat hiring your sales and marketing outsourcing partner as if you were hiring a full time employee, because a good consultant will become an extension of your organization.
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.
