Eleven Ideas on How To Hire a Marketing Outsider

Some companies love to bring in outsiders, consultants, and external agencies. Others never do. What is the cultural difference between these types of business? Often businesses have a vested interested to fully buy-in to their belief system. They don’t want outsiders challenging their firmly held worldview. They see themselves as the experts with little to learn from the outside. Other companies think all the expertise is outside of your four walls, and they swing to the opposite extreme, undermining the internal team.

Clearly a balance is needed between the two worlds, but how can you find the right outsider to help you? 

Who is a Marketing Outsider?

An outsider could be a marketing agency who is hired to help you with an image problem, has expertise in outbound marketing or can help you create a proprietary event for your target. An outsider can be a sales consultant who has an exclusive approach to gaining new business that comes with an ironclad guarantee and challenges some of the “sacred cows” within the sales organization.  A consultant can be a personal coach who can help guide you one on one in your career or with personnel issues within your organization. In this context, I’m writing about outsiders who can assist you with marketing and sales activities.

How to Hire the Right Outsiders (consultants, advisors, coaches)

1. They have experience outside of your industry so they can bring different views.
2. They have some experience within your industry, so they have some knowledge of your challenges.
3. They asked tough questions, including my favorite: “How do you know that”?
4. They push you and your team into an uncomfortable zone, probably challenging the very essence of your business model.
5. They don’t have a playbook. They have robust processes and procedures they follow in their audit and inquiry.
6. The external project lead listens more than she talks.
7. They outline a process and are exceedingly clear about the scope of their work.
8. They offer third-party references that will provide you with confidence and a real world perspective.
9. The outsider doesn’t let you get away with saying, “we are different” than all of your clients. She realizes that everyone believes this yet it is rarely the case.
10. Can you (and your team) learn something new from the outsiders?
11. Do you and the outside agency, agree on a metric for success that is easy to measure over an agreed upon time frame?

In my corporate career, I was fortunate to hire many external agencies partners. I got to hire ad agencies, public relations firms, event agencies, marketing strategists and sales consultants. If at the end of engagement, I felt challenged (not threatened) and through the work, we broke into new territory, then I saw the outsider as a success.

In one instance, a marketing strategist (the outsider) kept challenging me and pushing me on a marketing strategic issue. I had a difficult time letting go of a long-held belief about the issue. Over time, I realized that I was standing in the way of progress because I was too close to the problem to have a fresh perspective.

[Tweet “Sometimes an outsider can be like Windex, providing you with a way to have a clearer view. “]

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Need an outsider’s perspective, let’s connect.

Photo Credit: By Stephen Kelly (Outside Looking In #1) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons