Being primarily an inside sales organization built to help marketing and sales professionals achieve their goals of driving more revenue through qualified pipeline development, I can’t help but be totally confused on how B2B marketing service providers present themselves still even in this economic downturn. Many firms that we talk to, run into, or review continue to promote themselves as creative and process geniuses or flat out as organizations that can execute tactics that marketers don’t have the skill or time to do themselves internally. What are they doing if they aren’t helping drive revenue? That is another post all together.
We’ll be honest the last time we looked on Guru.com there were 32,000 graphic designers listed as gurus. Think that space is crowded in 2011? Last time we checked marketing executives were getting even more pressure to deliver even more sales support and revenue opportunities so slinging email to 100,000 people a week or some creative piece that the mail room uses to play hockey with in the basement may not be a viable strategy anymore. Flat out we have seen pricing double to triple our costs to set face to face executive appointments with no guarantees or impact from marketing agencies. So how do you as a sales or marketing executive choose a vendor or a strategy over another vendor or strategy? Our suggestion: pick the one that really brings in revenue and ups profitability and focus on that as your first prerogative. Secondly focus on combing these services through one vendor and make sure they understand your services, brand and value propositions. Not that gimmicks still don’t work but in the B2B world less money means less gimmicks and less opportunities to focus on efforts that really deliver. This our two cents from the front line of the teleprospecting and appointment setting world.
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