Costs

Let’s begin with the most common and general situation that is also the starting point of the discussion: efficiently increase outbound efforts. But let’s be realistic - this strategy will always have costs and necessary resources associated, most commonly related to hiring a team or a top sales position. Here's where our customers found themselves in a dilemma because of one of these two reasons:

1. Critical budget - no margin to expand the team.
2. Risky decision - high investment for an uncertain return.

So, the solution appeared right on their noses: hiring us!

It was the most cost-friendly decision, allowing them to safely evaluate the scenario and build the first step of the company's team extension. The same goes when you want to test new markets, industries, countries, or even a new ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Some clients opted to team up exclusively to analyse new opportunities beyond their current business - working on a different path. Perfect opportunity for the classic cliché “better safe than sorry” - we were testing new approaches to understand if there was room for investment (hiring, events, …). Finally, something that has been a game-changer for our customers is our performance-based model - applying a fee per meeting. They consider it a fair price and something that is not that common with other agencies.

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Time

Hiring, onboarding, coaching, and ramping up a new team (or member) is the most common topic we discuss when our prospects ponder outsourcing their outbound sales. This is time-consuming for various reasons - planning, executing, and even just ‘saying’ the 4 steps is a longer process than outsourcing. In addition, decision-makers want to kick things fast! In our portfolio, the difficulty level is even higher because some organisations we work with are spread through more than one country and have a fully remote model - not simplifying it at all!

Fun story: we had a client who decided to search for a sales agency midway through the hiring process and ended up closing with us much faster - 2 meetings were enough to kick off.

In other cases, sales leaders are more practical and straight to the point. They know what their top-of-the-funnel goals are but don’t want to waste internal hours on it - or, in other terms, are clearly aware that clocks don’t have extra time. So, their wisely-time decision is to quickly and efficiently add a pair of extra hands to the structure. Another occasion that has happened to us (more than once) is the reality that some business partners solely have the idea, product, or service. But before any major decisions (hiring, investments, full-time dedication, …), they want to transform it into a well-oiled sales machine ‘producing’ revenue. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of timing: you have capital to invest; there are a couple of valuable events/conferences incoming; you did your research, and it’s the perfect time to launch your product (Blue Ocean).

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Experience

Experience is a hard and bumpy mountain to climb, but the higher we get, the more beautiful the view is (quite philosophical). Along the way, there is a learning curve in which you can only get more return if you keep trying and testing what works and what doesn’t. That’s exactly what some of our customers look for - to avoid these learning mistakes by someone who already walked down this road and knows which path to follow. Even if they decide to have an internal team for sales development processes, they value our expertise because it can efficiently guide, manage, or lead their strategies (especially in a junior reps team). We have some scenarios where their goal is more ambitious, to go beyond and test other markets, targets, industries, countries, or even a different product. And this is where the ‘experience card’ is a game-changer - instead of starting from scratch, our partners trust us and what we’ve been through to launch these new approaches. Afterwards, internally, implementing it will be way easier and smoother.

Learnings from experience:

• Prospects like to reply and book meetings when you reach out in their native language. 
• Cultural diversity plays a big role in outbound sales.

A final statement that is massive for every company, with no exception: you need to know how to interpret data - analyse it, take insights from it, and define plans. Something we notice as a major gap in the sales teams we worked with is the lack of harshness on metrics. Some clients don’t understand why something is not performing as expected because they don’t know how to ‘find’ the problems in their data, even if it’s right in front of their noses.

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Insights

Here is where an outbound sales brain, or an outbound sales agency combined line of thoughts, is needed.

Let’s start with 3 common cases where our insights were a valuable addition to different organisations:

1. Problems and challenges with email deliverability (spam) - is very technical and demands a ‘master’ of settings on it.
2. Results are not great - here is where we combine our ‘heads’ and expertise into the detailed reports mentioned above.
3. Nowadays, sales tools are definitely a must-have - the real ‘powder’ is to comprehend how to work with and take maximum leverage from them.

In a more general overview, we had quite some stories where prospects faced a bottleneck at the top of the sales funnel. The whole process started to stagnate because of this, stopping them from achieving quota or getting results far from their goals. It was the perfect timing for us to enter the scene and help them unlock the flow. We are no superheroes because there are no fantasies in the sales world, we just believe that adding our insights to your strategies can get you to a higher level and outperform your barriers. From our perspective, the first step is always to incorporate your inputs. It’s at the next stage of brainstorming, a/b testing, and deep diving into the problems that we find the solution!

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