In the Face of Difficulty, Focus on What You Do Best
With so many manufacturers seeking to preserve capital and reduce expenses, it may sound surprising that outsourced business development services are one of the best ways to accelerate revenue growth — but it’s true. The reason for this aligns with many of the challenges manufacturers across multiple industries are facing today:
- Persistent pandemic-era supply chain disruptions
- Ongoing labor and talent shortages
- Growing need and demand for automation
- Increased demand for sustainable solutions
- An aging workforce that’s not open to change
- Increased raw material costs and excess inventory
- Tighter regulatory and compliance requirements
That’s just a sampling of what manufacturers continue to struggle with. While outsourced business development can’t offset all of these challenges, it can help you adjust existing resources — including your sales team — to ensure they’re focused on the right kind of work, free up resources for other strategic efforts, and maximize new customer revenue. Here we’ll explore the value that outsourced business development services provide.
3 Advantages of Outsourced Business Development Services
1. Sales Team Accountability and Productivity
A common challenge in manufacturing environments today is that sales teams have more to do than ever — but less time to do it. Sales teams are often responsible for non-sales tasks that might include account management, customer service, and even production work. The impact of this is obvious: a sales team that spends less time on sales sells less. Not only that, but prospects currently in the funnel receive less attention — extending the amount of time needed to bring those deals across the finish line. Clearly, this is a problem.
Outsourced business development services allow your team to focus on what it does best. While account management responsibilities may be unavoidable, outsourcing key parts of the sales process reduces the amount of low-value work that your talented sales team has to perform (prospecting, nurturing, follow-up, etc.). This allows them to focus only on deals that are ready to move forward and to dedicate their time to closing them. The result is a more productive and accountable sales team that’s doing the right kind of work.
2. Expanded Marketing Expertise
Finding the right talent for your manufacturing business has likely been a challenge for a long time, perhaps even before the shortages that arose in 2021 after the pandemic. This isn’t limited to just production personnel, either. Often, finding and retaining people that bring the right marketing skill sets to the table can be extremely competitive — and time-consuming. Even if you do find them, you’ll spend a significant amount of time on boarding and training them on your organization and its competitive advantages.
With the right partner, outsourced business development services not only include front-end sales support but also a full team of marketing experts to support the sales strategy. The disciplines your business benefits from include web development, search engine optimization, content marketing, social media, paid search, and more. Hiring for these roles internally will take significantly longer and result in more overhead expenses for your business. By outsourcing, you benefit from a single program cost while gaining access to a wide range of talented professionals.
3. Complete Insight for Decision-Making
While you may have an ERP system or some other management software in place, what solutions are you using to manage prospects as they move through the sales cycle? Do you have marketing automation that can track prospects’ activity and give the sales team insight into what’s driving their interest? Above all, are you able to view the results of marketing and sales work and make informed decisions based on that data?
Unfortunately, many manufacturers today can’t say “yes” to the above questions. Even if they do have technology in place, they either lack the time or personnel to use it sufficiently. By leaning on outsourced business development services, this technology is put in place as part of your program — allowing your team and those supporting you to measure progress, identify opportunities for improvement, and pivot when necessary.
Work with the Experts for Your Business Development Needs
Athena SWC partners with manufacturers in multiple industries nationwide to help them make a critical shift from traditional methods of new business development to a more structured, front-end model. This solution offsets many of the challenges that sales teams face today while providing them with a complete, holistic marketing approach. The result is a stronger business development strategy that produces more qualified leads, faster, and repeatedly — enabling your business to achieve its revenue growth goals.
Ready to experience what Athena can do for you? Connect with us today for a private overview of our process model.