Charles never envisioned that sales or marketing could benefit from offshore capabilities. Client-facing roles that depended on native language skills and a good cultural grasp of local regions was seen as essential.

However, sales were challenged to deliver the right level of lead generation and prospect nurturing through traditional channels.

“The complexity of our proposition meant that we needed to generate high quality content to educate our prospect about our value proposition via a range of digital channels such as LinkedIn, email, webinars and events,” explains Charles.

To deliver their ambitious sales objectives, he recognised that he needed a very different team structure and resource base. “We needed to focus senior sales and marketing staff on strategic client engagement, while building a team of specialists that could deliver a powerful lead-generation engine.”

Charles was surprised at the level of talent available in CRM management, lead generation, content management and digital marketing offshore. Furthermore the near-native language skills easily enabled Charles to build a central sales support team covering every major European market. It was far more efficient to have a single team working together than scattered across Europe. The net result was a massive acceleration in leads, new sales and client upselling. This article is part four of a six-part series. Next we will look at cost saving was only the tip of the iceberg, and to navigate the challenges of offshoring to make it succesful.

In case you missed the previous posts, here they are:

How a CEO delivered £21m of value and an exit to Accenture by building offshore teams – Part 1 of 6

Our 1st offshore team delivered a 30 percent productivity improvement in the first month - Part 2 of 6

Building a World-Class Technology Team: The Offshoring vs Outsourcing Dilemma - Part 3 of 6