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outsourcing Archives - Aido Consulting

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Marketing, Partnering Out, Sales

The age old debate. Is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool nice-to have, or need-to-have? What is it about a spreadsheet that seems so bad when it comes to managing your opportunities? And are we asking ourselves the right questions about how to achieve maximum effectiveness?

Small businesses everywhere can struggle with managing costs while looking for the tools that can help them bring in those extra leads, close opportunities, and GROW. Here we take a look at how maybe it’s not just about the right tool for managing opportunities, but WHO is doing it as well.

CRM vs. Spreadsheets

If you haven’t looked at some of the newest CRMs out there, do yourself a favor and take a gander. There are lots of companies that have platforms that can be easy and effective to use, based on what you need. And the costs can be lower than you expected too. A CRM tool is a great investment if it meets your needs and you don’t spend weeks trying to figure out how to use it. 

BUT – if you don’t have the luxury of spending more money (and you’ve got some spare data entry time on your hands), spreadsheets can be a “good enough” temporary option. 

We feel your pain. When AIDO first started, we perfected our own  “sales funnel spreadsheet” and it met our needs – up to a point. 

Define Your Needs

What was that point, you ask?

It
 came when we really thought about what were the key pieces of information we needed to hit our growth goals. In other words, what were the blind spots in our lead and opportunity management that were causing us to mismanage that portion of our business?

To test our blind spots and assumptions, we began to ask ourselves a few questions:

– What was our “true” ROI when it came to our individual marketing activities – and which provided the highest return?
– What were the highest time-consuming opportunities in our funnel that yielded the lowest revenue potential? 
– What key new markets and trends should we devote more resources to based on our leads?
– How could we coach our sales team to help them, and the business, improve?

That was just the first 10 minutes. The list grew and grew – and our blind spots soon became much more apparent.

Define Your Methodology

After putting our list together, we had to sit down and determine what our “methodology” was going to be – not only with how we captured data, but what set of rules did we want to apply to it that turned reams of data into insights that really helped us manage our business. 

This was a much longer and very interesting discussion. It touched on what we defined as “good” and “bad” metrics – and everyone had different ideas on both.

But by constantly measuring it against where we needed the business to be in one, three, or five years and beyond, this discussion helped guide us to an agreement about what our methodology was going to be.

What are some of your potential blind spots and methodology? Ask yourself the following basic questions:

– What’s your ROI on each of your marketing activities? Is it good or bad – and why?
– What’s your philosophy on applying levels of risk to opportunities in your sales funnel – and what are your rules governing that?
– Whats are the key new market segments for your business indicated by your leads and opportunities this year – and why are they drawn to you?

The Missing Ingredient

Let’s assume you’ve figured out your blind spots – and you know what methodology and software (CRM or otherwise) you’re going to use to fix it. But who on your team is going to manage this thing and give you the key insights you need to grow? All the software in the world isn’t going to help if you’re not giving this the attention it deserves.

Do you have a dedicated CRM headcount on your team that’s responsible for administering,  analyzing, and reporting the status of all your leads and opportunities?

Yes? Congratulations – you’re ahead of the game. By the way, hoping your sales team is entering in their data correctly and updating it promptly doesn’t count.

If you answered “No”, welcome to the club. Like many small businesses, everyone wears lots of hats and workloads are heavy.

So now you’re stuck with the traditional options – hire someone else full-time to do it or try and do it yourself, on a part-time basis, and hope that’s enough (spoiler alert: it’s probably not).

Thankfully, there’s a third option.

High Talent & Low Commitment – BPO

Some companies are recognizing this predicament and provide solutions to bridge the gap between full-time expertise and part-time costing.

Rather than being temp agencies or head hunters, these companies maintain a full-time staff with expert qualifications that work with small to medium size businesses to “lend” you out their Directors, Managers, or Analysts on a part-time basis based on your needs.

This is known as “business process outsourcing” or BPO.

Ideally, you want a partner that is local to you, and has the expert resources to help you conduct high-level goal and strategy discussions – while also being able to help in the day-to-day tactical execution of that strategy. 

“What’s the catch?” you may be asking. Usually the limitation is time – in other words you get these resources for a fixed amount of hours per month with a set of deliverables agreed-upon beforehand. So instead of a variable cost every month – you know exactly what you’re getting, and for how much.

Done correctly, you’re getting high-quality “full headcount” results at part-time cost. 

BPO In Action

Based on our discussion above, here’s an example of how the right BPO partner could plug into your business:

Needs/Blind Spot Discussion: BPO Partner helps you identify your goals and outline your growth strategies – then uses this to determine blind spots.

Methodology: BPO Partner helps you define your methodology based on how your business works and your growth targets.

Software Solution: BPO Partner helps you review software solutions based on your Needs and Methodology – and then help you select one and customize it to meet all your needs from Day 1.

Execution: BPO Partner acts as your dedicated Solution Administrator – they run the data to make sure it’s correct, they report to you on it frequently and provide you conclusions and key insights on your business while you’re freed up to manage all the other movings parts of your business.

Conclusions

So there you have it. There are solutions to help your small business access the very latest in Sales and Marketing strategy, using the latest tools, to grow your business – all while freeing up both your time and resources. 

Business Process Outsourcing can be the ace in the hole for businesses of all sizes – but especially so for small size businesses looking to achieve significant growth quickly.

Sound interesting? Reach out to us if you’d like to know more.



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Traditional Outsourcing Pitfalls
Offshore outsourcing is the practice of hiring teams overseas that can manage your business needs at rock bottom pricing. While this seems tempting to startups and businesses looking to grow rapidly while watching their bottom line, here are a few reasons you should avoid offshore outsourcing and instead look into Partnering Out, here in the USA.

Abroad work appears to be substantially less costly… at first.

While these solutions draw you in with unbelievably low prices, it turns out, it is regularly significantly more costly for in the end. This is particularly true of tasks like design, comprehensive sales and marketing strategies and content production. Time differences mean that you may be sleeping while your offshore team is working, making management slow. Think about designing a complex and important website or sales funnel but barely being able to communicate with the team doing it! What a nightmare (literally). This is further complicated by the language barrier many companies experience when choosing to partner offshore.


The language barrier

Another issue that can slow or even potentially halt work is the inevitable language barrier. Many offshore companies are in countries like India. If you don’t have a great ear for accents, well, you could be in a tough spot. The other thing that goes along with language is a differing understanding in culture. There are expressions and slang that apply to great sales and marketing here in the US that are not understood in other cultures, necessarily.

Tax issues

Those small fees can turn into large expenses when it comes to supervising overseas operations and managing complex foreign tax problems.

Profitable and scalable US companies are understanding these pitfalls of traditional offshore outsourcing and are slowly returning to finding partners here at home. Our solution called Partnering Out, offers a full service sales and marketing team for less than you may think.

Instead of offshoring, consider Partnering Out. Our team is your team. Get started today.
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Sales
As your business starts to gain traction, it’s important to have a solid sales strategy outlined to ensure its ongoing success. But the question presents itself, what sales method is right for you? In this article, we will examine the differences between Inbound (digital) and Outbound (traditional) sales methodology so you can best shape your sales strategy to your company’s needs.

Outbound or Traditional Sales

Traditional sales tactics are what we refer to as “outbound”, meaning that the flow of information comes from your company’s sales representatives out to your prospects. Traditional sales methods are heavily reliant on a team of sales reps that are offered a base salary or are incentivized through commission (or a combination of the two).

In today’s digital environment, this is the less convenient of the two options we are presenting in this article. However, just because traditional sales is an old tradition, doesn’t mean its not for you. Depending on your industry, traditional sales can still be the way to go. That being said, in almost every industry today, your traditional sales methodology can benefit from marrying with modern sales tactics like inbound marketing.

Inbound, digital sales methodology

A more modern approach to sales is to be digitally driven. Modern sales differs from traditional sales in that the flow of information isn’t limited to outbound reach. Inbound marketing and sales tactics involve creating solutions that are flexible and tailored to your target’s unique needs.

Leads are also more often than not more qualified by the time they get to your sales funnel because they have been brought in by a solid digital marketing strategy (also known as Inbound marketing). Inbound marketing strategies position you as an expert in your field through valuable, entertaining or actionable content that benefits your target market.


Some inbound methods that combine sales & marketing are:

  • Social Media 
  • Blogging
  • Email marketing
  • Google Adwords & Remarketing


What’s right for you?

Every company must build up its own particular sales process depending on its market, vertical, offerings, and industry position. What works for one organization will undoubtedly fail for another. Take time and think about who your target is and truly care about solving their needs. This will push you towards a unique sales process that benefits your company and its clients.


Looking for sales methodology advice? Get in touch with our team of pros for a discovery call and start your journey to a proven sales strategy today!
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