To attract BPO clients, demonstrate expertise in the chosen business process and establish reliability and excellence in service delivery. Relationship building is also crucial, starting with personal contacts and expanding through social networks and industry events.
Attracting business process outsourcing (BPO) clients is a function of developing an expert reputation and building relationships. In practice, nurturing BPO clients requires the same type of traditional relationship prospecting and development as ordinary consulting. What sets the client development process apart for outsourcing is the fundamental requirement that the BPO service provider demonstrate a level of expertise in the chosen business process that instills absolute confidence that they can perform better than the client and can be in the client’s shoes when dealing with customers, employees and suppliers.
Many BPO projects require the third party service provider to act as an arm of the client. When a customer calls an outsourced customer service center, for example, they shouldn’t be able to tell that the people working in the center are employees of a consultant, not the company from which the customer purchased the product. Due to the agency nature of the relationship between the client company and the BPO service provider, the standards used for veterinarians are high, making it more difficult to attract clients from a cold approach than other areas of consultancy.
To attract BPO clients, you must first establish your expertise in the business process you hope to offer. For example, if you wanted to get a business to outsource their accounting department, they would benefit from having all the credentials of a certified public accountant, and any affiliations or endorsements that demonstrate your expert knowledge can only help. This includes leadership positions at commercial organizations, editorial articles, as well as teaching, training and mentoring others.
You also need to establish the reliability and level of excellence of the system used to deliver services to attract BPO clients. It is the nature of the agency that the client will have less tolerance for mistakes made by a paid consultant than he would have for mistakes made internally. The best way to demonstrate excellence is to have previous work to showcase and a list of references. Some of the techniques for establishing an initial baseline are doing some work at cost, applying for government contracts that allow new companies to bid, and partnering with established companies that may need to siphon off work.
The other half of attracting BPO clients is relationship building. Start with people you know and people they know for contacts and introductions. Use social networks to expand your contacts outwards. Connect in person by going to trade association meetings and attending events that cater to the wider business community. The outsourcing industry also has a number of BPO conferences you can attend that allow service providers to engage with companies seeking services.
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