You understand that outsourcing is a viable option to integrate into your B2B sales program. You’ve heard that bringing in the experts to spearhead a lead generation program can have far-reaching benefits. Yet, you’re still not convinced of the benefits of outsourced lead generation for your company or your bottom line.
An apprehension to outsourcing is understandable, so we’ve put together this comprehensive guide to understanding how outsourcing your lead generation efforts can benefit your entire B2B sales program.
The Benefits of Outsourced Lead Generation
Hiring a team of outsourced business development executives to qualify leads and get them into your sales funnel provides a number of advantages:
- an accelerated sales initiative with concentrated outbound calling effort
- more efficient and effective follow-up and lead management processes
- superior lead qualification
- clear and actionable reporting
- an easily scalable solution
By properly outsourcing the top-of-funnel lead generation efforts to an experienced team, you are free to focus your remaining energy and resources on the other important aspects of your B2B sales cycle, such as those deals that are nearing a close, and ultimately achieve elevated milestones.
1. Accelerated Sales Initiative
With an internal team, there are many costs associated with personnel training in order to ensure sustained and effective B2B cold calling practices. Apart from obvious overhead expenses, one of the most valuable of these associated costs is time.
It takes extensive training to prepare an inside sales team to know how to effectively engage with prospects and to properly qualify leads.
Outsourced teams are primed and ready to begin with minimal onboarding and training. An outsourced team will hit the ground running and is beyond capable of making the skilled cold calls necessary to contact the right prospects, qualify leads, and hand them off to an internal team.
Information and digital marketing materials are easily accessible online, which means that prospects can generally find what they are looking for with a simple internet search. As a result of this easy access, sales has evolved from a simple exchange of information into a more complex conversation with the much higher purpose of cultivating meaningful and lasting relationships.
In order to cultivate meaningful relationships, callers must be confident, personable, and knowledgeable—not to mention extremely practiced.
Unlike building an internal team or training a new hire, an outsourced B2B lead generation team is seasoned, effective, and prepared to begin making calls immediately. That is what they do. They devote their entire attention toward cultivating meaningful conversations with prospects.
This can be particularly helpful when breaking into new markets or introducing a new product or solution. It takes a significant amount of time for an internal team to switch gears. But an outsourced team allows you to scale up for new initiatives, and scale down when those initiatives are no longer needed. They are able to provide a fresh perspective and have the bandwidth to quickly specialize in the specific market you are entering into, providing an edge above what is possible with an internal team.
Outsourcing to seasoned professionals will accelerate your results and ultimately save you time and money. These valuable resources can, in turn, be allocated to other important facets of your business, which will further promote overall company stability and growth.
2. Superior Follow-up & Lead Management
Most businesses recognize their own best practices for solid lead management and follow-up, yet they fail to execute them completely. It’s a familiar story. They understand that lead management requires multiple touches and that phone outreach is preferable. Yet only half of leads are responded to, and only a quarter of those are contacted by phone.
Outsourcing not only ensures that lead management is a top priority, it ensures that effective phone based lead management is achieved and maintained.
Many businesses spend time and money attending trade shows and events in order to network and generate sales leads. But many businesses don’t have the time to thoroughly follow-up with prospects after the event and may lose out on opportunities because of this shortcoming. Outsourcing B2B sales calls after the conclusion of these trade shows and events ensures that all prospects are contacted and given the opportunity to continue the engagement they began at the event.
A study conducted by insidesales.com in conjunction with Ohio State University revealed that it may take up to 12 calls to reach a decision-maker with the authority to begin a sales process.
This same study showed that a mere 9.4% of potential leads received the recommended 12 touches from a qualified sales representative. When you hire a team whose sole purpose is to make consistent calls, and who have the knowledge and expertise to cultivate meaningful conversations with prospects, you will see an increase in qualified leads entering the sales pipeline.
In other words, internal teams tend to leave the top of the sales funnel unattended. By outsourcing this essential part of your B2B sales cycle, you can attend to prospects more fully.
3. Qualified Leads
An experienced outsourced team is going to base success on the quality of qualified leads rather than numbers of appointments set. The goal of an experienced B2B telemarketer is to cultivate a conversation that will uncover opportunities.
It takes experience and business acumen to properly qualify a lead. Many callers may be able to have a conversation, but that does not mean they are asking the right questions—the questions that will uncover business pains and uncover potential leads from nuanced conversations. Outsourced teams are skilled at quickly internalizing the unfamiliar language inherent to a new market, and subsequently approaching prospects with confidence and knowledge.
4. Clear & Actionable Reporting
When you outsource to an experienced lead generation firm, you are segmenting your sales efforts and will be able to more accurately measure your return on investment (ROI).
This insight is important, as accurate ROI is a top priority when determining success and planning ahead. When you know and understand what you are doing well in your B2B sales strategy (and maybe not so well), you can continue to structure your goals and practices in the most advantageous way for your specific company’s needs and results.
A high-quality outsourced lead generation firm should provide regular reporting and must be willing to make adjustments as needed along the way in order to foster continual growth and improve overall results.
Outsourcing means that all relevant information is aggregated and analyzed, where the efforts and reporting will be clear and consistent throughout the entire lead generation process.
Outsourcing your B2B lead generation to skilled and knowledgeable professionals who have the proven experience to engage in meaningful interactions has the potential to uncover qualified leads, accelerate your sales initiatives, streamline your processes, and provide valuable reporting.
Jim
