August 29, 2024

Selective outsourcing can increase new customer acquisition

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No matter how well your company serves its current clients there is a limit to how much growth you can realize from them. And then there is churn. Few clients are forever. Adding new clients is essential to growth.

Wait, isn’t it easier to sell to an existing customer than finding a new customer?

Well, yes, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean, never go find a new customer. Far from it. Acquiring new customers and expanding business with existing customers are equally essential to growth. We will look at Customer expansion in our next blog post.

For now, it’s important to consider the two ways that acquiring new customers is so essential to growth.

How does new customer acquisition contribute to business growth?

In two important ways.

#1. Increase in Lifetime Value.

Acquiring a new customer is worth much more than the value of the initial contract. Factor in the repeat, upsell and cross-sell opportunities you will have over the years to expand the business you do with each new customer you acquire. That increases the Lifetime Value of your customer base and is an important driver of growth.

#2. Sell ahead of your churn rate. 

Your customer base is ever in flux, including the downward pressure exerted by customer who leave or reduce their investment in your products and services. If your new customer acquisition isn’t outpacing your churn rate, you won’t grow. In fact, your business will contract.

What it takes to find new customers

Unfortunately, new clients don’t come easily. Think of some of your best customers now. Remember what it took to earn that first deal? Finding the right prospects and nurturing them into customers takes time and money, which are both in short supply.

Customer acquisition requires investment in tools, processes, and time for your people to consistently source, reach out to, connect with, and qualify prospects.

For small and mid-market businesses this investment can be a real challenge. If you don’t make the investment, you hamstring your marketing and sales effort. If you do make the effort, you need to be prepared to go all in.

Selectively outsourcing portions of your new customer acquisition function can have many advantages.

The key is to figure out which parts of the customer acquisition process you are good at, and which parts are a challenge for you. Outsource the challenges.

Outsourcing Can Simplify and Optimize Your New Customer Acquisition

Bringing on new clients is never easy. Managing the effort takes key staff away from other important tasks. You need a trusted partner.

A Front Office Sales Support partner will simplify the acquisition of new customers. They do the heavy lifting around the prospecting, qualifying, and communications needed to win new customers.

They handle all the moving parts; you do the selling.

Benefits of Sales Support outsourcing

  • Get better known among your target market
  • Spend less time prospecting and more time selling
  • Improve new customer acquisition performance

What does a Sales Support partner do?

Simply put, a Sales Support partner handles all the super detailed work that goes into acquiring a new customer.

They support you across the three stages of the new customer acquisition process: Awareness, Consideration, and Buying Decision. You likely know the detail involved in each of those stages. A good front office sales support partner can help your team with at least 6 steps in the process.

AWARENESS

It starts with Market Awareness. A new prospect is significantly more likely to accept an introductory meeting with your sales team if they are familiar with your business. For your growing business, this means working with a professional to develop a compelling message and getting that in front of your target audience consistently.

Your prospects need to see you in the market multiple times. That builds up trust.

Next, for Prospecting, your sales support partner is staffed with professional Sales Development Representatives. SDRs are well trained about your company and your prospects to work effectively on the front line of establishing initial contact with your future customers.

CONSIDERATION

Pre-sales Engagement: for prospects who are interested but not quite ready to talk with sales, a sales support partner’s SDRs can field inquiries from prospects, give demos, and begin qualifying the prospect. This often leads to a first appointment with your sale team. 

Solution Discovery is make or break time for any deal. Some sales support partners have professional sales coaches who work with salespeople 1:1 to make a solid impression in Discovery and deliver a winning proposal.

DECISION

As many as 60% of B2B opportunities are lost to no decision, according to multiple sources. The sales support partner who coached you through Discovery can work with you to get past no decision. A coach will help you navigate the buying committee to position your solution as superior approach to the issues that plague your prospect’s status quo.

Finally, it’s time to get a signature. A coach can help you maintain the price to value integrity that you worked hard to establish in your proposal. It’s this point in an opportunity that significant profit is too often lost to the eagerness of closing the sale.

3 Keys to Success in The New Customer Acquisition Support Model

  1. Marketing Cover. It’s like air cover. Marketing support that warms up the market with messaging and keeps the messaging flowing during the sales process.
  2. Connect with Prospects. Professional SDRs who live to spark interest and get that first meeting.
  3. Deal Support. One to one sales coaching during the Discovery and Decision-Making stages from business development professionals.

It’s important to consider that a new customer acquisition sales support partner has the people, process and technology to do all this work consistently, every day. Consistency in sales support is where many small and mid-size businesses run into challenges. There is significant upside putting this in the hands of a team that specializes in this type of work.

New Clients Move You Forward

It is easy to forget that every client your company has was once new. It’s also helpful to remember that new clients often help move your company forward into products and services that might benefit all your customers. If you see your clients as partners, the way we do at QCSS, you will welcome the growth new customers can bring.

Reach out to QCSS for more information about new customer acquisition and other sales support services for businesses.  

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Customer Acquisition?

Customer Acquisition encompasses all the marketing and sales activities you invest in to promote your business and win new customers.

Why is customer acquisition important?

Customer Acquisition is important for two reasons. First, financially speaking, every new customer is worth more to your business than the size of the initial sale. Every new customer should be viewed in terms of the Customer Lifetime Value they represent. If you are in business for long-term relationships, then every new customer is a pipeline of growth for your business, as you work with your customer to grow their business.

The second reason customer acquisition is important has to do with churn. No business will keep 100% of its customers forever. Customer Acquisition should not only replace your lost customer. Your Customer Acquisition Rate should exceed your Customer Churn Rate.

Why are strong customer acquisition and retention strategies essential to our business?

There is a lot of writing about the higher performance numbers associated with Customer Retention. Much of that writing is correct. But putting all your eggs in the Customer Retention basket is a long slow path to going out of business. Both Customer Acquisition and Customer Retention are necessary for different reasons.

Customer Acquisition brings new blood into your business. I know a consultant with a healthy 6 figure business. Yet he is highly disciplined about the work needed to find 1 new customer every quarter. That same model is scalable and should be followed by any business. Every business needs new customer to sustain long term growth.

Customer Retention is about retaining and expanding the book of business you do with any customer. It involves all the activities you do to drive customer satisfaction that will lead to renewal, upsell, and cross-sell opportunities. Customer Retention is the process of harvesting the pipeline of Customer Lifetime Value that was acquired when you brought that new customer into your business.