5 tips to bring your sales and marketing in-house

Sales and marketing service providers have had it too good for too long. It's no surprise 30% of businesses report they have been working on bringing more sales and marketing activities in-house in 2021.

Let's assume you're a small to medium sized business. You've got a reasonably sized team, a broad set of customers and you know your market well. You don't have a huge amount of dedicated sales or marketing resource, but you're not doing badly. Your current model is a mix of things — your own people do some of the work and you use a mix of agencies and freelancers to make up the rest.

When you are a small to medium sized business, that's quite possibly the right approach to take. Particularly if you are in a niche market that agencies don't understand. But it doesn't mean you can't start to think about building in more capability of your own. Being more self-sufficient with a clear and well resourced strategy.

5 tips to bring your sales and marketing in-house

1. Get some help building out your strategy

The first step is to think about what strategy you want to pursue and why. Should you take your sales effort in-house, your marketing, or both? And should you do this at the same time or in phases? Working with a consultant or a trusted partner to work through your specific business case will help make sure you are making the right decisions at the start.

2. Start with getting a CRM right

Once you've got your strategy clear, the first practical step most businesses should take is to make sure they have a CRM in place and that they're using it well. Gartner predicts that CRM will be the single largest area of enterprise software spending by 2025, so it's unlikely to lose its importance as the backbone of your sales and marketing operation anytime soon.

3. Invest in your people

One of the biggest challenges of taking things in-house is that of resourcing. Whether that's finding and hiring the right people or upskilling existing talent, it is important to invest in the right people to make your in-house strategy work. In addition to having the right people, you need to ensure they have the right tools and processes in place to be productive and effective.

4. Be disciplined about performance measurement

As you build your sales and marketing function in-house, make sure you are measuring performance carefully. In the early days this will be about investment and output, and later it will be about conversion and return.

5. Consider the role of technology

A good in-house sales and marketing operation needs to be supported by good technology. Think carefully about what technology you need to support your strategy and make sure you have a plan for how you will implement and manage it.