Starting your own business has never been an easy road to travel. There are many things that need to be done in order to ensure that you’re a success. Of these, business development is one of the most important of tasks. There are many aspects that fall under this purview. It can range from setting up your business online and on social media, to finding the right people to fill critical roles in your company. Many people shy away from the thought of business development outsourcing because it used to be very costly.
Business development outsourcing is a better way to go.
Outasourcing itself is nothing new. Several big US companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint—among others—have grown and thrived by outsourcing several key processes to the Philippines. Many of these include key business development processes like recruitment and training. In the years that they have been doing it, they have not encountered any hitches. In fact, they’ve started to throw more critical lines of business to the Philippines.
The “Why” of Outsourcing
The bottom line when it comes to outsourcing, especially with regard to your business development is that it’s far more affordable. The biggest savings comes from the elimination of overhead expenses. On average, US businesss will spend USD 16,000 annually per employee on paying for rent and utilities as well as supplies and consumables. If you pay government mandated benefits, you tack on an additional USD 28,000 annually per employee on average.
The second source of savings is the fact that wages can be much lower in the Philippines without compromising on the quality of the work that you get. The reason behind this is that the cost of living in the Philippines is far lower than it is in a first world country like the United States. This means that you can afford to save up on outsourcing business development without feeling like you’re shortchanging your people on their pay or yourself on dependable results.
The “What” of Outsourcing
When people think of outsourcing, they normal think of customer service representatives, sales agents, and even tech support personnel. That might have been the focus of oursourcing in the early 2000s, but that has changed. The fact is that many business development tasks can be confidently outsourced to the right team with reasonable expectation of success and savings. Here are among the most important business development work that can benefit from an outsourcing standpoint:
Any business today that wants to make a significant mark in wholly digital world has a website. This is representative of your presence in cyberspace and is a potent portal to reach a wider audience. The Philippines is starting to make its presence felt in this particular field. Over the past decade, the major universities in the country have made great strides in building web development programs that are globally competitive.
Couple that with Filipino’s natural knack for creativity and design, and you certainly have a recipe for success. And again, it bears mentioning that the lower cost of living allows you to leverage this creativity and skill to get a website that doesn’t just look great, it also sells. The key to outsourcing this key piece of business development work is to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. Check out portfolios and ensure that the working relationship is strong and, well, workable.
- SEO
When it comes to a strong and successful online presence, just having a website isn’t enough. Without the proper work to ensure that yoru website ranks high on popular search engines like Google, then you aren’t getting your money’s worth. The whole idea of SEO is to setup up your website in such a way that when people search for products or services that are related to you, it’s you that pops up in the search results—and not your competitors.
The tasks required to get this done are a science in and off themselves. It involves choosing the keywords that reflect how people search for products and services like yours. More than that it also means ensuring that yours comes off as being the most relevant versus your competition. There are many different tasks associated with this that takes an expert eye and experience to be able to pull off properly. It’s ultimately a cost-effective business development solution when done right.
It’s also not enough to simply have something in your website, you also need to make sure that it’s well-researched, offers value, and is completely relevant to your target audience. In the earliest days, people could get away with haphazard website content. Nowadays, that factors in significantly with how well you rank as the algorithm used to rank pages has become smarter and more discerning overall. Making sure you have quality content also show cases both your professionalism and skill.
It isn’t just your website, however, that should be filled with quality content. Digital marketing overall has now come to encompass what you put out on social media. Experienced and seasoned business development gurus recognize the necessity of social media to your overall campaign and can craft long-term content plans that effectively push your message to your audience. Ultimately, content is a function of great grammar, appropriate tone, and proper messaging.
Speaking of social media, there’s a reason this has become invaluable when it comes to business development these days—everyone is on some form of social media or the other. In the United States, 79 percent of the population was found to have a social media profile. Translated into raw numbers, that’s over 244 million potential customers, according to Statista. With an expert team at your back, you can best tailor your social media presence and messages to speak to this potential pool.
- Recruitment/Back-End Support
Rounding out the critical investments of any starting company are the people who will fill key and essential roles in your overall business structure. Now, the reasons why outsourcing has become extremely popular of late is the reduction of costs it affords without a reduction in the quality of work done. Much of what is spent on an employee that works in-office are all incidental. For instance, you pay for the space they take up, the equipment and tools they use, and the utilities and perks they enjoy.
When you outsource, you well and truly eliminate these from any and all of your financial considerations. Depending on how good the outsourcing company you get, you essentially only pay for the wages of the people you hire. This too is lowered when you outsource to somewhere like the Philippines where the cost of living is far lower. This is an essential consideration. You don’t want to get low quality work at low prices. The lower cost of living factor allows for high quality work to be produced.
So what roles can you outsource? Well, just about anything that doesn’t require a physical presence. The jobs most commonly associated with outsourcing include customer service, inbound and outbound sales, as well as tech support. Nowadays, virtual assistant who aid you in setting in keeping appointments, conduct important side research, and even managing calendars are also popular. You can even now outsource web design, digital marketing, social media management, and human resources functions.
The “Who” of Outsourcing
The question now is, is this something you should get into. The answer is that anyone who is looking to cut costs, or carefully budget existing finances, should certainly outsource. The savings is there and the viability of outsourcing has been proven time and time again across all industries. It’s certainly a great course to take if you’re just starting out on your business or are looking to expedite your scaling up and growth. There’s a caveat in there, though: you need to choose carefully who to outsource to.
Take time to find the outsourcing team or agency that seeks to build a relationship with you. The reason this is key is because they become invested themselves in seeing you and they mutually succeed. Many are the outsourcing companies that just want to take your money, slap the work together, and be done with you. True gems are those that seek to take things further: understanding who and what you really are about.
At Forward Progression Development, we bring over decades of experience that we can bring to you and your business to help it grow. Give us a call today and we’ll be more than happy to help you figure out what you need and how to get it done.