Outsourcing led generation services offers a variety of potential benefits to your company.  Generally, your company’s profile and immediate needs will likely determine what will be most relevant and important to you.

1 – Increases Sales Efficiency

Your in-house sales staff should focus on talking with those that matter, potential clients.  However, they spend much of their time cold calling, prospecting for them.

By outsourcing lead generation services, you increase the time your in-house sales staff spend in face-to-face or telephone meetings.  Basically, they will be more efficient selling, resulting in more sales conversions.

Lead generation usually starts with a prospect calling list and cold calling.  Generally, this takes lots of time, produces high sales rejection, and increases stress.  Consequently, your in-house sales team is less efficient since they are not focused on their ABC activities.

When using an outsourcing provider, your in-side sales staff deals with pre-qualified decision-makers who are genuinely interested in your products and services.  Consequently, your sales personnel will be more motivated and likely close more sales.

2 – Improves Sales Productivity

Your company’s sales pipeline identifies the actions taken by your sales personnel to convert a prospect into a customer. Basically, it identifies where things really are, in terms of sales, and what’s being done at each stage.  Simply put, it is about getting sales leads, qualifying them, and eventually closing the deal.

So, how does your sales team consistently do that? Well, when they focus on lead generation, they are not closing deals. When they are closing deals they are not focusing on lead generation.  Also, both sales activities need to be done on a balanced, consistent basis.

Compound this with the knowledge that not all salespeople are built the same. Whereas some excel on the telephone, others dance when meeting prospects, and some, REALLY do enjoy the challenge of cold calling.

Lead generation requires gathering data, repetitive dialing, persistence, talking with the gatekeeper, and other skills that most sales personnel dislike doing.   So, for your sales team that doesn’t like or is not good at lead generation, you SHOULD NOT make them do it. Because this is a very poor use of an expensive company resource and reduces your company’s sales productivity.

Outsourcing lead generation services helps achieve better results than an in-house solution. Because they employ professional telemarketers who daily cold call, skirt the gatekeeper, pre-qualify the decision-maker, and know the techniques to set appointments.  In brief, they have the training, experience, and mindset to consistently produce sales lead appointments.

Your in-house sales team then takes over to close deals.  Basically, each sales group works together to leverage their specialized skill sets.

3 – Lowers Sales Costs

Outsourcing lead generation services leverages the outsourcer’s resources and experience to increase efficiency of operations.   Consequently, there is a reduction in costs and increased quality versus an in-house sales team.

Why is this?  Because the outsourcing provider’s investments in technology, training, and staffing cannot be justified by most companies.

Hiring, training, managing, and supporting a cold-calling, lead generation team is a large capital investment.  Also, it requires specialized technologies to support hundreds of calls per day as part of a lead generation process.

A dedicated lead generation team, generating a steady stream of qualified appointments, is more cost-effective than using  your in-house sales team.   Consequently they focus on converting qualified sales prospects to customers rather than searching and filtering.  As a result, your in-house sales team produces more sales conversions, and lowers the total cost of new customer acquisition.

4 – Increases Business Flexibility

Your business lives in an era of risk and instability. Whether it is globalization, new technologies, information transparency, COVID, regulatory changes, etc., the business environment is shifting and should give a business owner a sense of unease.

Outsourcing lead generation services allows your company to rapidly respond to the changing business environment. Specifically, the more flexible your business can adapt to change, the more likely future business success.

Accordingly, using an outsourcing partner for your sales lead generation services results in:

5 – Outsourcing Lead Generation Services Is Scalable

Outsourcing lead generation services offers scalability for companies with limited experience and sales/marketing resources.  For example, lead generation activities may be initially small, such as a pilot-project, due to a small budget, limited resources, and risk tolerance.

The start-up time for lead generation services is substantially less than building and training an in-house staff.  Especially when you consider the recruitment, training, facilities, and technology investment.   As a result, rapid scaling and completion of a pilot-project will help you determine whether outsourcing lead generation services achieve your desired business goals.

An outsourcing provider can scale their services according to the demands of your business and budget.  For instance, let’s say you want to start with a small pool of sales prospects and test the lead generation process. Then, if producing positive results, you can simply scale up the provider’s services and expand your potential market of sales prospects.  Since cash flow is the biggest killer of small businesses, this flexibility to scale up (or down) is crucial for many start-ups.

DISCLOSURE: Nexus Teleservices is a nearshore outsourcing lead generation services business provider.

6 – Outsourcing Lead Generation Services Provides Measurable Results

For many companies it is rare to even have in-house data for comparison.

As mentioned, a B2B lead generation pilot project can be used to test the benefits of outsourcing portions of your company’s marketing and sales functions.  Accordingly, based on WHY you choose to outsource will determine which benefits are most relevant and important in evaluating the pilot project.

So here are tips related to a B2B lead generation pilot project using the analogy of an airplane flight.

Before Taking Off

1 – Define Goals And Expectations

A pilot project needs to be clear about what it is testing for and how it will be evaluated. Basically, this ensures that both your company and the call center outsourcing provider understand the desired goals and how to best approach the project.  Furthermore, the goals should be aligned with solving a major company business challenge.

Consider the following company marketing and sales goals:

2 – Clarify And Then Clarify Again

Once you have agreed upon the goal(s), ask all the questions and clear up ambiguity with the call center outsourcing provider.  Correspondingly the outsourcing provider will have MANY questions about your company based on their prior experience with other clients.

Topics that will require clarification might include:

3 – Visualize The Journey

While your final destination is to have a successful B2B lead generation pilot project, do not neglect how it will be like working with your company. When preparing for your pilot project make sure that the journey is carefully thought out (i.e., your flight plan).

In brief, this is where your company gets to build a relationship with your outsourcing provider.  Earning their trust is crucial if you decide to move forward with the pilot project. So, take off preparation helps a smooth flight and is as important as landing smoothly.

Your flight plan might take into consideration:

Once Airborne And Cruising

1 – Communicate

You and your call center outsourcing provider may be in the same state, country or different continents. Regardless of distance and timezone shift, a B2B lead generation pilot project requires working “in synch” with discipline and openness of communication. Both parties are responsible for this process and its success.

The technology exists to essentially have immediate, direct access between parties via Internet applications such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp, and Skype. Basically, there is no excuse to not reach out with a quick message, question, or email when there is the need to communicate.

As part of the onboarding process, you and your outsourcing provider should have established the communication channels, responsibilities, and contact points. Nevertheless, avoid the potential bottleneck of just one contact point.  Instead have a backup, since time rarely is an ally of a pilot project. While sharing information can be easy, don’t forget that it is harder to do concisely and effectively, particularly if there are differences in cultures.

2 – Be Transparent And Honest

Your company and the call center outsourcing provider should be aware of its strengths and weaknesses. Accordingly, open discussions between both parties about what skills may be available or otherwise lacking offers potential positive returns in a pilot project. When both parties are given the time to learn the technical skills lacking, it will pay off long term. Specifically, after the pilot project, both parties, acting as a team, will be ready to scale production.

This also means admitting when it turns out that the pilot project is NOT a good fit between the parties. Whenever this occurs, it may not necessarily a sign of weakness, but of awareness of the differences.  Also, better to part ways now, rather than when you scale up production and the risk of failure is higher.

3- Need To Invest More

A B2B lead generation pilot project consists of learning and adjustments between your company and the outsourcing provider.  Accordingly, a frank discussion is needed between parties when there are changes in the goals of the pilot project.

When these changes reflect the real-world experience of the pilot project, normally the outsourcing provider needs to adjust assigned resources.  Consequently, the outsourcing provider needs to invest additional staffing and production hours or slip the pilot project schedule. Alternatively, the outsourcing provider is forced to consider reducing quality or profitability, likely resulting in losing the outsourcing relationship.

4 – Plan To Upscale Production

Your B2B appointment setting pilot project should plan for success, which implies upscaling production. While the pilot project has a modest scale for risk management, it needs to provide the framework for natural growth. Consequently the process, technology, quality, and communications need to reflect a transition to a larger scale.

During the pilot project is when bottlenecks, inefficiencies and problems need to be identified and resolved to allow scaling up.  As a result both your company and the outsourcing provider will need to be flexible, patient and adaptable. Simply put, changes for the better are to be expected during the course of the pilot project.

Fasten Seatbelts For Landing

1 – Presentation Delivery

For all the effort invested in your company’s B2B lead generation pilot project, it requires a formal presentation.  Basically, your audience will be those who sponsored it and those who will decide whether to expand it.  Then to help your cause it will require supporting commentary by your company’s marketing and sales personnel.  Finally, commentary from your outsourcing provider provides an external perspective for your company’s management.

2 – Post-Mortem

When the B2B lead generation pilot project is over and did not result as planned, it is valuable to do a post-mortem.  Basically, it is now the opportunity to step back from “living the process” to learn from the experience.

A post-mortum will help you and your company management determine:

It is important to learn from the pilot project experience to ensure that your team grows moving forward.