For many agencies, agility is truly the thing that sets them apart from how brands operate teams in house. It goes without saying that we live in fast paced times. The need for brands to be flexible and adapt to change at pace is really something that separates the winners and losers.
Of course, the thing that is central to this is great people and people management. It’s not just the requirement to have the correct people in the right place at the best time which leads to great sales, but also the ability to have teams that are well informed and flexible enough to respond to market demand.
It means building teams with passionate individuals who are interested in developing their careers, and who are agile enough to change direction and pace when the sector, or strategy, demands it.
When it comes to launching new sales campaigns, new products or even to shake up their current sales teams, the assumption from the brand may be to hire directly into the business.
But do you know that outsourcing this resource has a myriad of benefits? We think this makes it a more attractive proposition to all brands vs recruiting inhouse.
Here are 4 reasons why outsourcing resource to a sales agency can benefit you.
In today’s marketplace, efficiency is all improving ROI. What agencies specialise in is driving efficiencies that don’t just save money, but optimise how and where teams spend time, ensuring that every action is value adding. How do they do this? Well, ultimately it comes back to agility.
Through agencies, brands can get a bird's eye view or productivity and performance and use this to plan resource, including discovering their optimum mix, whether that’s using a data led permanent team that is augmented with on demand capability when required, or seasonal teams to carry out tactical activation, or direct to consumer teams to convert sales - finding this mix is the key unlocking efficiency.
They can also view the marketplace to see what’s trending and decide to try a new approach within the contract term.
Both are possible if your teams are built on agility, and it is exactly this flexibility that also creates efficiency. It cascades into how agencies use smart technology, unlock efficiencies in structure, and make their teams more effective at targeting the right opportunities to add value.
When it comes to outsourcing resource, agencies can leverage expertise from across their entire business to ensure that they are always putting their best foot forward when it comes to fulfilling the client’s needs. This works best if agencies work across a range of clients, channels and industries. Our people are not just experts at their jobs, they’re experts at building relationships and helping retailers sell more too. This is often in achieved by encouraging our people to upskill and learn more about working in different categories and sectors, enhancing their experience in a way that pays dividends when it comes to ROI. It is exactly this kind of expertise that allows agencies to be more effective at listening to both client and consumer needs.
An effective sales team is one that uses continual training to further enhance the expertise of its people. Whilst brands do a great job of sharing product knowledge, it’s the job of the agency to ensure the team are adequately skilled in selling skills, relationship building, and knowing the brand’s customers and know how to operate in their environment, all while having the flexibility to change the training approach to fit the strategy. Should a brand wish to change their approach, an agency needs to be able to pivot on a dime to roll out new training, develop the skills of their staff, and keep them completely up to date with the latest techniques, sales skills and processes at pace and at scale.
Over time, it is inevitable that the need for certain resources are no longer required. It’s the nature of business. Sometimes, in order to maintain efficiency, sales teams need to restructure and occasionally that can lead to the other dreaded R word: redundancy.
When agencies make agreements with brands, agility is built in from the get-go. And since the traditional permanent sales force is rarely the optimum model, when the time comes where changes need to be made, having this kind of agreement built in means that the chances of having to make people redundant is drastically reduced. It means brands are more in control of their teams, where they go and what they do from the outset.
No matter what retail sector you work in, we're here to help. Book some time with our Strategy and Marketing Director, Gordon Neil to see how we can help you sell more post lockdown.
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