Sales Outsourcing - The Next Generation in Sales Strategy

Outsourcing has been around for decades. The evolution of the industry actually started as time-sharing on mainframes. Over the past decade IT Outsourcing has become prominent. For the past 5 years, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), which includes Sales Outsourcing, has become the most effective method to provide the greatest Return on Investment. By outsourcing the sales function, you do what you do best and that is not running a Sales Department.

Define Sales Outsourcing

It is the transfer or development of sales resources, including overhead expenses, such as recruiting, payroll, insurance, commissions, equipment, training, coaching etc.; along with management responsibilities to an outside organization. The outside organization, the sourcing provider, has the responsibility to manage the sales team to meet client expeditions which include and are not limited to efficiency, revenue and profit growth.

Benefits from Outsourcing Sales

Most outsourcing decisions begin with cost-cutting - but rarely end there. Once the efficiencies of outsourcing are in place, companies find ways to use them for a broad range of improvements to processes and performance.

Reduced Direct Costs - As mentioned above, the economies of scale experienced by outsourced Sales and Marketing providers allow them to offer equivalent services at lower direct costs than in-house approaches. What's more, outsourcing partners are free to use creative cost-cutting approaches unavailable to companies like yours: locating in more favorable employment markets, assembling full-time coverage from part-time or seasonal employees, and so on.

Reduced Indirect Costs - The costs of in-house Sales and Marketing support are often underestimated. Employees need to be recruited, trained, managed and equipped - and turnover for sales professionals is extremely high.

Reduced Opportunity Costs - Focused outsourced programs improve sales coverage. More leads are qualified, geographic regions or channels are covered in greater depth, and more sales can be wrung from secondary sources. In these and other cases, sales are recovered from previously overlooked sources, improving sales performance at low marginal cost.

Fixed Costs Become Variable - In fast-changing markets or companies, outsourced solutions' variable pricing helps during expansion or contraction. Outsourced programs grow to meet opportunities or mergers, or shrink when the market turns down. And if they outlive their usefulness, they are much easier to cancel.

Business process improvements - Quantifying current performance - necessary for any outsourcing program - reveals gaps in measurement, and points the way to simple but powerful remedies. If you don't already measure lead qualifications, partner turnover, or cost of sales by market and channel, putting metrics in place will improve performance. Focus and Expertise - Sales and Marketing outsourced specialists live in the market-knowing their surroundings is a matter of business survival.

Agility - Outsourced specialists design their technologies and processes to scale up quickly, so they can always say "yes" to new business. Their clients benefit from all this reserve capacity In case of acquisition or change of direction, a manufacturer can scale up or redeploy its efforts faster through a partner than it could operating alone. Their flexibility and agility also make outsourcing ideal for experimental and pilot programs.

Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction - Manufacturers are acutely sensitive to customer complaints about service providers, and service providers know it. They stay in business by outperforming comparable in-house programs, and putting measurements in place to prove it Quote.

The data available on service outsourcing - mostly from surveys - reveal a boom. Gartner, Inc. predicts business process outsourcing (which includes Sales and Marketing) will grow from $110 billion in 2002 to $173 billion in 2007 - an annual compounded rate of 9.5 percent

The bottom-line, if Sales are not your core competency, then seriously consider outsourcing so you can focus your time and resources on your core company values and capabilities. Sales outsourcing OPTIONS include Sales Management of your existing sales force OR an ENTIRE sales force dedicated to your company along with years of management experience, proven processes and industry contacts, at a fixed monthly expense, which allows your company to effectively manage the cost of sales.

Sales Surge LLC http://www.salessurge.com a total sales solutions provider whose flagship offering is sales outsourcing, the next generation in sales strategy for business to business sales. Sales Surge solutions also include sales consulting, coaching, recruitment and assessment

Greg Bautz is the founder of Sales Surge whose overall objective is profitable growth for your business. As a visionary, Greg sees sales outsourcing as a standard, as organizations continue to look to outsourcing models that reduce costs and increase profitability. In addition, outsourcing the sales function allows business owners and executives to focus on their core competency and not on sales.

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Political Campaign Literature Strategy For Your Local Election

If you're running a political campaign for local office, one of the most effective strategies you can use is a good direct mail campaign. Mailing literature to likely voters is a great way to build your name recognition and make it more likely that you will win your campaign on election day.

There are a few simple tips that you can follow that will make your political campaign literature much more effective and memorable for voters. While most local election candidates just try to jam as much information about themselves as they can on their campaign mailers, this is actually exactly the opposite of what you should do.

When it comes to political campaign mailers, literature, postcards, brochures and fliers, there is one simple rule to remember: the more you write, the less the voters will read. The average person will glance at your mailer for about ten seconds before they toss it into the trash, so you want to make sure that only the most important points stand out.

First, make sure that your name and picture are very prominently displayed, since one of your main goals is to build name recognition in the community. If you have political campaign yard signs, try to use the same design, color and font that you use on them, in order to make your "brand" easier to identify.

Secondly, keep your themes on the mailer limited to three points. Each of these three points should be issues that the voters will easily identify with and remember. For instance, you could focus on your family values, your commitment to lower taxes, and your plans to keep your city safe. By focusing on any more than three things, you will only confuse the voters and make your mailer more forgettable.

Visit Killer Campaigning to learn more about political campaign strategy and how to basement waterproofing.

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Debunking the Facebook Hype - How to Use Facebook Pages in Your New Media Strategy

The flood of traffic Facebook enjoys as the number 2 most trafficked site in the world makes them appealing for business for this reason alone. However, the lack of control over your content, non-business reasons people use Facebook, and their obtuse user interface are all cause for concern. Learn how to use and how not to use Facebook Pages so can create a "Pages" strategy that gives you the best market to medium match.

Everywhere you look companies have Facebook Fanpages: No wait; Facebook Pages. Companies are asking you to become Facebook Fans: No, I mean Facebook Likers (we need a new English word for this one!) For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the Facebook Pages musical chairs, Facebook replaced the Facebook Fan button with a Like button. And therein lies the problem: Facebook owns and controls the platform and severely restricts your ability to manage or remove your content. They give no guarantee whatsoever over how you will be able to use their platform and your content in the future. To put this in perspective, I recently retweeted an article from the Wall Street Journal that discussed the results of a survey: Facebook ranked just above the IRS in customer satisfaction. Ouch!

5 Things the Facebook Evangelists Forgot to Tell You

While Facebook is number 2 in global traffic, only 1/6 of the Facebook users have any interest in using it to follow companies or brands. I discuss this in-depth in my Twitter for Business Article. Their change from the Fan to Like button is intended to broaden that appeal. We will have to wait and see how the Like change effects usage but I believe it will broaden the Page appeal.
Maintaining a Company Page is a significant time commitment for a small business. Not every business model will necessarily get a positive ROI unless they can use Facebook in a very specific way. I do suggest you at least create a Facebook Page account and reserve your business name to keep your options open.
Do you have a strategy for how to use a Facebook page that is unique from your website or a blog strategy? If you are just reiterating tweets, blog posts, or videos that are available elsewhere, your Fanpage will add little value to others or your business. You really need a unique strategy to make a Fanpage work. Paul Colligan uses his Facebook page to host his podcast. Since this is the only place you can subscribe to it outside of iTunes, this is great strategy and his Fanpage has regular updates and adds unique value. My company created a Fanpage for one of our clients that will feature their "stars of the month." Since they are a Performing Arts Company, this is an extremely compelling and engaging use of their Fanpage. And only people who have "Liked" their page can be considered for this monthly feature so this also creates a unique value proposition for joining their Page.
Facebook controls all aspects of the content you post on their site. Perhaps you have heard how Blogger, Squidoo, and other blogging platforms can and do delete entire sites (without warning) for violating their terms of service whether it is done intentionally or not. If your business relies largely or solely on these blogging platforms or Facebook Pages you are taking a risk. However, just hosting a podcast provides little risk since your RSS feed can be self-hosted on an Amazon S3, uploaded to iTunes, and if anything happened to your Facebook Page, subscribers to the Podcast would still receive their content and the podcast subscription page could easily be moved to a different website.
Do not feel you have to use Facebook Pages if it does not fit your business model. I do however highly recommend Twitter since it is both easy to learn, use, understand, and 51% of users follow companies and brands versus 16% for all other social networking sites. Twitter also complements a blog perfectly. It can easily be set up to automatically tweet (micro-blog) a 140 character headline and summary of your new post to your Twitter followers.

The Fad-Myth and Reality

When octogenarian Betty White says, "I am on the Facebook," in her latest commercial, it gives you perspective into the depth of the Facebook craze. Everyone, including businesses, are jumping into Facebook and committing significant resources to Pages. But few have any idea how it will benefit their business. Facebook Pages can work amazingly well for some companies. Pepsi demonstrated the power of Facebook Pages with their wildly successful "Refresh Project". However they were successful because they were very focused on a niche project that allowed their Fans (now Likers) to vote on exactly what Pepsi would do with their Refresh Project; a compelling social campaign that gives back to communities.

What Facebook Fanpages Are Not

I am a believer in social media as a marketing and social networking but I have recently read several articles stating that Facebook Pages will replace blogs as the center of the new media business universe. This statement demonstrates a lack of business acumen and demonstrates how fads can overwhelm reason. While Facebook personal pages are clearly the place of choice to connect with your personal friends, I can tell you with absolute certainty that Facebook business pages will never be the center of the new media universe. As long as Facebook has absolute control over how businesses use their own content, Facebook will never be the center of their online strategy. Not to pile on but their obtuse user interface and indifferent attitude toward their users make them less than appealing for a central business strategy.

How to Use Facebook Business Pages Successfully

If you really want to leverage Facebook for what it is best at, you will need to use it to focus on one important social aspect of your business and build a strategy around it. It must be fun and emotionally engaging. Whether it is a podcast or a customer spotlight, it needs to be social and allow your customers and "Likers" to socially engage and participate. Remember how people use the Facebook platform: They go to Facebook to socialize with their friends. If you develop a Facebook strategy that meets this need, you will succeed on Facebook and build a strong Fan base of loyal "Likers".

What is your experience with Facebook Pages? Do you like their user experience, are they intuitive to build and use, and what do you like or not like about Pages?

http://www.increasingleverageblog.com/

Zachary (Zach) Smith writes, blogs, speaks, and consults with entrepreneurs and businesses based on his years of experience planning, marketing, and implementing complex business campaigns and projects. Zach uses a strategic process of improvement he created called Increasing Leverage that combines his 15 years of sales, marketing, and supply chain and total quality management experience and education. Increasing Leverage combines elements of corporate strategy and continuous improvement, with new media and social media marketing. Zach's system introduces businesses to interested audiences by strategically targeting the proper niches, directories, and media of prospects of interested buyers. If you want to create a professional blog, succeed with SEO, create a custom social media strategy for your niche and business, and use the internet to market your business and connect with your audience, then receive the Increasing Leverage RSS feed so can read the latest Increasing Leverage marketing and blogging strategy special reports at your leisure. Download his free RSS feed at the link below:

http://www.increasingleverageblog.com/get-the-feed

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