How to Use an Outsourced Lead Generation Company Effectively

One of the most difficult decisions a company has to make is whether to outsource lead generation to a third party company rather than employing their own people.

There are many articles that discuss the merits of outsourcing lead generation so for the purposes of this article we will focus on getting the most out of an outsourced lead generation campaign.

The first thing to ensure is that your chosen company are well briefed on your product/solution – the more they know the better they will be able to articulate the pitch when they are on the phone speaking to prospects. The best way is to prepare a “Cheat Sheet” comprising of the “elevator pitch”, features and benefits and customer testimonials that they can quote when they are on the phone.

An “elevator pitch” is your opportunity to present the best possible reason for the call – generally the caller will only get between 8-10 seconds to put across the reason for the call and why they should be interested to learn more. Try to be as concise and not to put too much waffle in here – you may well have the best thing since sliced bread but in 8-10 seconds this needs to be focused on why you are calling and why they should be interested in hearing more!

Try and give the outsourced lead generation company as much ammunition as you can by providing testimonials from clients in the sector that they will be calling – name of company and what they use the product/service for and key reasons for selecting you.

The second key element to working successfully with the lead generation company is to ensure that you agree what companies are going to be called. Is your data is TPS (telephone Preference Service) compliant? If not then get the lead generation company to quote you for B2B data that meets with your chosen criteria i.e. number of employees, type and size of company and geographic location down to post code.

Once the “Cheat Sheet “and data are sorted now we can move onto the briefing process. Most good lead generation companies will offer not only a dedicated caller(s) for your campaign but also a Project Manager to manage the caller (so you do not have to) and to manage the campaign. A call should be arranged with the team that will be working on the campaign and items for discussions should include positioning of the product/solution, overcoming typical objections, methodology for passing leads – via email/phone/booking directly into shared outlook/google calendar.

You should get a clear idea from the lead generation company how you will be receiving updates from the campaign – daily, weekly, monthly updates and is this via email or preferably using an online portal where you can see the call outcomes and call metrics as they happen 24/7 plus you need to be able to download all the data into a format where you can load the leads directly into your own CRM product like Salesforce.com.

Once the calling gets under way you should expect at least a call with the caller and project manager at the end of the first day’s calling just so you can understand how the day has gone, objections, feedback etc and this is an opportunity to tweak the campaign. In addition Skype or another online messaging tool should be used to link the dedicated caller with you so that real time feedback can be sought and objections overcome whilst the caller is on the phone.

Try and have regular calls with the caller and project manager – always best to try and tweak the campaign as you go along rather than look back and say “if only I had….”

An email address should be set up for the caller so that the sales pipeline can be built and sending emails as confirmations of a conversation is a great way to do this plus also builds a good data base for future marketing even if the time is not right for the prospect.

Make sure that you know how the reporting will work and ensure that you receive these in a timely fashion. The best way for both parties is for you to have access to an online portal where all the calls are documented so you can see for instance how many calls have been made in a day, how many conversations, number of emails sent etc plus a summary of each and every conversation.

Once you get a lead from the lead generation company then please remember to keep them updated with the results of the lead – good, bad or ugly!

If you follow the above methodology then you will get the most of the relationship with the outsourced lead generation company and should mean the start of a beautiful relationship.

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