There is an old adage that you should focus on what you do best and that all companies’ strengths and weaknesses can be evaluated against the three factors of Product Excellence, Operations Excellence and Sales Excellence. All companies are strongest in one, weakest in one and middling in another. The best companies’ weakest position may be better than all their competitors but the concept still applies. The rule is consider partnering with another company to do the one you are weakest at, aka outsourcing.
Often companies are great operators and produce phenomenal products and services but are weak as sales people. We all know an average product or service brilliantly sold will outperform a great product poorly sold and of course a great product brilliantly sold will win against all (e.g. Apple).
Increasingly we hear Customer Results that companies just launching or entering a new market or launching a new product are nervous that their marketing, sales and ongoing customer development activities are either not as strong as they need to be or they can gain competitive advantage through leveraging existing contact lists or sales abilities.
The returns can be huge especially form a multiyear relationship and especially if your sales partner is committed to transferring the capability back in house at some time in the future. Or it may just be that you want to launch a 6-12 month market trial and want to ensure that you can shut down the activity without all the hassles of employee severance etc.
So if you are thinking about contracting sales this make sure your partner covers all of the key areas from Lead Generation through sale and post sale service and customer development and make sure they bring some kind of unique tools, processes or competencies to the activity.
Following is a description of Customer Results Sales Sourcing service.
Customer Results Sales Strategy
Customer Results grew out of our founder’s experience as sales personnel and sales managers in complex technology and service driven got market companies focused on Marketing, Sales and Service solutions. We believe passionately that sales is a science and a process and that each major step in the sales process should involve excellence. Customer Results focuses our resources on the parts of the process that we excel in and partner with others to perform areas that they specialize in. Our customer centric strategy focuses on four key phases or activities:
– Customer Results Market Development & Lead Generation
– Customer Results Sales Pursuit & Close
– Customer Results Post Sale Customer Relationship Management / Post Sale Support
Customer Results Market Development & Lead Generation
Nothing happens without sales and no sales happen without identifying interested prospects. This is the key to everything else we do for our services and with our partners. Customer Results focuses on 8 key activity streams in our market development and lead generation activities depending on our partner’s preferences and
Customer Results and our partners’ financial resources. As much as possible we outsource:
– Partnering with 3 lead generation companies – perform telephone based prospecting service. Customer Results generally compensates these companies for appointments, focuses on companies with credentials in our market segment and has known the principals of these companies for many years.
– Social media activities – an increasingly important element Customer Results owns, maintains and participates in a number of discussion forums, some under our formal name and other general industry groups. Depending on our partner’s focus, energy and financial resources we consider creating a joint Facebook page for each partner, a Youtube channel and a Facebook and Twitter page / place. We partner with a company which helps us maintain these social media components.
– Email campaigns – we maintain a rolodex of over 15,000 US Industry contacts of which 3000 are usually in our target market and 500 usually form specific prospects. We send quarterly information general emails to these contacts discussing areas and topics of mutual interest and targeted emails when we believe we have something of interest to them specifically targeted emails about our technology partner’s case studies and white papers.
– Webinar’s – we believe in the power of webinar’s and conduct these periodically with our partners.
– Public Relations – we maintain a network of independent public relations professionals who can help with specific elements of PR activities, specifically gaining online and offline press coverage.
– Partner network – We maintain a network of independent consultants and related companies. Customer Results shares the benefits of our partner’s incentive model with these other partners to incent them to deliver leads to us as a part of their day to day activities.
– Marketing Automation tools – Customer Results subscribes to a number of marketing automation tools which allow us to target specific industry demographics and identify targeted buyers based on these
– Client Referrals – One of our most valuable lead sources is our current clients. Customer Results executes a standard process whereby we regularly check with our existing clients for others they know who can use our services. We are proud to make charitable donations on behalf of our clients who refer us successfully to other business opportunities.
Customer Results Sales Pursuit & Close
Sales pursuit is one of our core competencies and something we do not outsource. Customer Results works with our consulting partners when they originate leads when they deliver a lead to us and partners tightly with our technology solution partners for lead generation and sales presentations, solution architecture and definition and contract modification but the final close is our responsibility. Our focus is on client relationships which start with an initial assessment/pilot before moving to full deployment. This is a process for which our founders are recognized experts with over $300m in successful sales
Customer Results Post Sale Customer Relationship Management / Post Sale Support
Profitable relationships are only forged over time. While tremendous effort is required to gain a client for the first time the ultimate financial success of Customer Results is based on us assuming a Trusted Partner and Advisor position with our clients and technology partners. Customer Results considers ourselves the owner of the relationship whether technical support is provided by us or by our technology partner. With each technology partner we will establish a toll-free phone number, support email account and consider other channels such as chat and social media access. For partners of the appropriate stature we will also appoint dedicated support resources and even 24×7 helpdesk where appropriate.
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