The digitisation of customer relationships has had a profound impact on new business development. Businesses need to be more sophisticated, responsive, and tech-savvy to cut through and create new opportunities.

A company's ability to innovate, strategise, and create value for its customers is critical for business growth. But these things take time and resources. As budgets tighten and business development’s remit widens in response to changing customer expectations, those can feel scarce.

Your team might deliver well under pressure, but it is unsustainable to think that they can continue to perform at the highest levels indefinitely without support.

When they are bogged down with routine tasks, or doing work that doesn’t stretch and excite them, people lose their edge. When a business development manager is pulled in all directions trying to keep up with the growing demands of their role, they can’t focus on spotting future challenges and opportunities.

If you want to win the most lucrative, high-profile clients, and do the sort of work that makes you proud to go to work every morning, something needs to change.

Digital technology and automation are a vital part of the solution, but implementation can add to your to do list. The key to accomplishing the transition smoothly, and freeing up your creative and strategic thinkers so they can do things for your business that are distinctive and engaging, could be outsourcing to agencies.

Why Consider Outsourcing?

Are you faced with any of the following scenarios? If so, an external partner might be the route to a faster and more satisfying solution.

Your team is missing its targets. You need to improve your numbers to achieve your business development goals, or make room to address other strategic objectives. 

Use external resource to free up your business development manager and let them focus on their core objectives. Give them the time they need to deliver initiatives that connect your target audience and your proposition.

You want more and better conversations with key decision makers. You need to improve your account handling to make sure you’re targeting the right prospects and speaking their language. 

The right partner can help to improve your intelligence gathering and lead qualification processes. You can make sure you’re developing relationships with the right people, and that your sales team isn’t wasting resources on leads who aren’t genuinely interested.

You want to speed up your sales pipeline and close more high-value opportunities faster. You need to develop self-service content and personalise customer journeys to improve responsiveness and relationship building. 

Outsourcing content creation and automating your customer journey can help you focus on delivering both quality and value. With lead capture and automated lead scoring in place, you can identify your best prospects, focus on what truly matters to each customer, and prioritise resources.

You want to create new business opportunities in new markets, but lack the capacity or expertise to execute on projects designed to get you there. You need additional resources and specialist knowledge.

External support can bridge gaps in resources, skill, or market knowledge. Outsourcing allows you to tap into your supplier’s talent network and range of experience, extending your reach and potential.

Business development is a top priority for your business, but you lack the resources to make it happen consistently. The cost of digital transformation, bridging your skills gap, or a new hire is out of budget, so you’re stuck in a cycle of feast or famine.

Outsourcing provides a flexible and affordable solution. Whether you contract out work on an ongoing or project-by-project basis, you can scale your operations to suit your budget and more easily control your costs.

What Should You Keep In House?

Outsourcing can help your team to unlock operational efficiencies, improve the customer experience, and allow your team to be more outward facing. But some things need to be kept in house.

You need to think through the end-to-end experience carefully, examine each stage of the customer journey, and ask yourself: What aspects of the customer experience can only be yours? What functions can only be fulfilled by members of your internal team?

The tasks that can be handed off to an external partner will be different for each company, and depend on your objectives and priorities. Handing over part of your business will always involve some loss of control, so here are some things we think you need to own:

• Setting your strategic direction and defining your points of difference. Your strategy and positioning need to be internally driven, but can be facilitated by external consulting partners.

• Your best foot forward moments when chemistry can make all the difference to the relationship. For example, think about your initial outreach, scoping conversations, and cornerstone content. Content creation and strategy can be outsourced or a collaboration, but not when someone needs to be the face of your company.

• Screening and prioritising opportunities. You can bring in a partner to help create your lead generation content, lead nurturing sequences, and automated lead scoring systems. However, only you can decide if a client is a good fit, and your insight into your highest value customers should be the foundation of these processes.

Defining Your Needs

Finding an external partner who can help to support your business development plan can be tricky. Entering into a relationship with a new supplier represents a considerable investment of resources, so you need to be certain of the benefits you expect to gain.

Your choice will depend on how you work as an organisation and the type of work you want to win. Being able to define the scope of work, the skills and tools required, and the role you want the supplier to take will help to narrow the field.  

When considering what you need, consider two types of tasks:

Routine Tasks

At each stage of the sales process, identify the routine or boring tasks that are tying your team up. 

What monopolises your team’s week or bogs you down? You can automate or hand many of these things off entirely. Think, for example, about content production management, SEO research, social media scheduling, managing client data and CRM tasks. 

Enhancing Capabilities

Evaluate your capabilities and identify gaps in your expertise and experience. For example:

• Do you have a content strategist, or are you asking your business development manager to fill that role?

• Do you have someone who specialises in paid advertising or keyword research?

• Do you have a team member who excels at content creation or building automated workflows?

Think about where working with an external supplier will give you a new perspective on the market or fresh ideas for campaigns. They might also help to benchmark your performance, keep up with trends and technological developments, or establish best practice. 

An expert will improve the success of your content, advertising, or media campaigns. They will also perform tasks more efficiently, helping you to build profitable relationships with greater ease.

If you’re still unsure what to outsource, try these techniques.

• Go over each business process and assign scores based on its ranking as a core competency. Then consider whether outsourcing would save time or provide additional expertise.

• Consult with your in-house business development team. Talk with people directly affected by the work you’re considering outsourcing. What do they consider to be routine tasks that take up time and sap their creativity? Where do they feel skill gaps exist?

Working Together

Finally, you will need to decide how you want to work with your new partner. Are you going to hand off tasks in their entirety, or have a more collaborative working relationship? Do you anticipate a long-term relationship? Or do you plan to build up your internal capabilities, supported in the short-term by outsourced resources?

Develop processes - Ensure ease of collaboration and reporting so that managing your supplier doesn’t feel like yet another thing you need to do. The right partner will be transparent and accountable, helping to ensure that you can attribute and prove ROI on any activities undertaken together.

Anticipate any issues that might arise around service delivery, confidentiality, and contracts, and put procedures in place to deal with them.

Communicate with your team - Cutting costs by supplementing your team with external suppliers can be beneficial, but only when managed well. You need to address any concerns and manage the change internally. 

Make sure your team understands you’re not cutting costs at their expense. Communicate the opportunities for more satisfying strategic and creative work, and the professional development that will follow.

Is It Time To Make a Change?

While every company’s needs are different, many could benefit from protecting their most valuable asset - the time and attention of their strategic and creative thinkers.

Successful business development strategy is a partnership. Outsourcing can free up your business to focus on what you do best. With the right software and support services in place, you can maximise your exposure to potential clients, ensure a steady stream of leads and opportunities, and improve the customer experience.

At 1827 Marketing is a B2B marketing agency offering the talent, expertise, and technology to help you shine in the moments that matter. Let’s have a conversation.