Revenue growth is top of mind for every B2B sales leader. And in a marketplace defined by persistent supply chain issues, record inflation, and soaring customer expectations, determining the most efficient and effective way to grow revenue is particularly challenging.
As a revenue leader, you have a lot to juggle no matter the environment. And, there are as many paths to achieving your revenue goals as there are moving parts that appear to stand in the way of realizing them. You could focus on retaining revenue from current customers, expanding relationships with existing customers to grow revenue, gaining revenue from new customers, or, if you have channel partners, helping them drive additional revenue for their products.
Perhaps your corporate-level strategy needs a major tweak, such as new territory expansion or a product-mix changeup. But maybe the solution lies within. Maybe you have many of the assets you need already. You just need the right partner to help you unlock them. Someone who can assess and fill your people, process, and strategy gaps so you can invest your energy and focus elsewhere.
Finding the right solution can seem complicated, but sometimes, breaking your search down to “reasons why” can help you discover some simple underpinnings to your strategy that may require attention but could also present exciting opportunities for growth. And this discovery can lead to a definitive need for a sales outsourcing partner to help you generate revenue.
When to Consider a Revenue Gen Partner
You’re Rolling Out a New Product or Entering a New Market. Sometimes, an existing sales team simply doesn’t have the right skill set when you’re selling a new service program or entering a new market. They may be good at maintaining and even growing revenue with existing accounts, but they are not ideal “hunters.” Thus, the acquisition of net new logos falters. It could be that an expansion of your product line requires an exceptional, specialized aptitude. Rather than trying to dig up the right talent or take reps offline for additional training, it makes sense to seek a managed sales partner.
You’re Leaving Money on the Table. It’s entirely possible that your sales team is focusing its effort on the 20% of accounts from which they derive 80% of their business, a not uncommon practice. Realize they are leaving money on the table with their tail accounts. These accounts might be comparatively small—especially in terms of the revenue your company derives from them—hence they tend to be ignored. However, you may be missing out on a hidden opportunity to tap these accounts for their huge potential to grow share of wallet for your company. Otherwise, that share of wallet is going to your competitors. A professional sales team provided by a managed sales provider can explore that potential for you, without missing a beat.
You’re Facing Limited Resources. If you’re short on sales reps, or you require a full-time team to supplement your current sales staff to manage a special project, you may not be willing to commit full-time resources to the efforts. It does take time and money to recruit, hire, onboard, and train new sales reps. In addition, you would need to invest in more technology and physical resources. Particularly if your project is temporary or a pilot test, there’s no reason to budget for these extra expenses and then terminate the new team at project completion.
A managed sales provider makes sense in this situation because they can scale up or down or sever their relationship entirely as circumstances demand.
Faced with any of these scenarios, it’s not surprising that many B2B organizations look to professional B2B sales outsourcing agencies for guidance and, in many cases, turnkey strategic implementation. A B2B managed sales company provides B2B organizations greater capacity to operationalize the right go-to-market strategies, increase speed-to-market, and provides the ability to flexibly scale up or down to meet market conditions.
Of course, B2B rev gen companies differ in their capabilities. If your organization is looking to collaborate with an expert revenue generation partner, the following demonstrated capabilities and deliverables are a must:
1 | Relevant Sales Channel and Vertical Expertise
Give priority to assessing the potential partner’s experience in your vertical industry. Do they understand the industry, its dynamics, and its nuances? Make sure they know who and what influences the sale and how your targeted personas and accounts select and buy products in your category. With this knowledge, your revenue growth partner can make program recommendations that are more thoughtful, more targeted, and have a significantly higher probability of success.
2 | Sales Enablement Strategy
Look for documented and proven methodologies, with rigorous processes and technology behind them, that deliver superior performance against mutually agreed-upon metrics and goals. While some organizations rely on industry best practices, without providing further definition, others employ teams of business process engineers, instructional designers, and certified sales technology and enablement experts to design and improve upon their strategies. Managed sales providers that possess this depth of knowledge and experience on their staff go beyond best practices and lead the way in defining new and better practices for their customers.
3 | Continuous Improvement and Innovation
Continuous improvement should be built in to the organization’s way of doing business. Whenever processes, skills, and technology are implemented, they should be monitored for their degree of effectiveness so that incremental improvements are ongoing. Every step of the way, your managed sales partner should aim to create more value for you and your customers. Streamlining a process, upgrading a salesperson’s performance, identifying ways to reduce administrative time and increase selling time: These kinds of improvements should be baked into the fabric of how the organization does business. By leveraging disciplined engineering approaches based on strong and fundamental practices that yield continuous improvement, revenue generation partners demonstrate their commitment to their craft and to selling more, faster.
4 | Robust Tech Stack
There are high-performing sales teams, and there are outperforming sales teams. The difference lies in the tech stack and how the team uses it.
A robust sales tech stack enables an outperforming team. It is the foundation on which a B2B rev gen partner can select and align the very best technologies for each client’s particular needs. Your partner should recognize this and also realize that it takes more than just having the latest, greatest technological tools; it’s about placing the right technology in the right places in the sales process to make every sales rep as productive and efficient as possible.
How is this done? Ideally, your partner should be evaluating new technologies each year, conducting pilots, and adopting those that are proven to improve performance. Upon a thorough analysis of what you want to achieve, they will identify all the areas where your sales team needs to be proficient and implement a tech stack that matches your needs and aspirations.
Minimally, the tech stack that a sales outsourcer recommends and implements for you should accomplish one or more of these four things:
- Increase skills or acumen
- Eliminate wasteful steps
- Automate a process
- Provide sellers with useful information
5 | Database Development and Health
The demonstrated ability to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and targeted personas are table stakes for any outsourced revenue growth partner. They should be able to identify, source, verify, and append your current and new prospect contacts. This, combined with providing targeted buyer intent data, is a formula that stimulates demand and builds a qualified pipeline of winnable opportunities.
6 | Speed to Market and Scalable Delivery
Each market, region, and vertical is different. Choose a partner that has mastered the ability to scale rapidly and pivot based on the dynamics of your target market, products, programs, and sales channels. Look for an organization that puts an intense focus on specific sales tasks. And, similar to their ability to scale swiftly, choose a partner that has the flexibility to adapt swiftly when market dynamics demand a modification to sales focus, territory, product, and/or structure of the team.
7 | Timely Business Intelligence (BI)
The data you receive is only as valuable as it is relevant. Your revenue growth partner should specialize in helping their clients enhance decision-making and drive better outcomes by continuously analyzing data and delivering actionable reporting solutions supported by large-scale analytics and data warehouse solutions.
Ready to talk?
Choose your sales acceleration partner from these seven criteria, and you will have made the right decision.
Author: Karen Salamone
Karen is Head of Marketing for MarketSource. She is a transformational B2B and B2B2C leader with a history of building marketing organizations, content teams, and demand generation centers of excellence from the ground up. She is recognized for delivering meaningful insights and fresh approaches and for earning best-in-class content, design, and multi-media awards.
