Are you really getting the most out of your sales team? At a time when every company is looking to ensure they not only survive but thrive in an uncertain, post-pandemic world, it’s a question that has to be asked. Perhaps you have reached a point where, at the end of the pipeline, the best salespeople in your business spend most of their time using their sales abilities to close the deal.
It’s awesome to have your best salespeople in this role and it’s often just where they should be; working with qualified leads and converting them into loyal customers requires true skills. That can leave those at the top of the funnel, however, the ones that make the initial calls or emails to potential prospects, somewhat lacking. Which is losing you money.
Fortunately, before handing them over to the internal sales staff, there is a viable choice that will provide you with high-quality leads generated by salespeople that are committed to making calls and building relationships with prospects. This alternative is an outsourced B2B lead generation team.
There are a range of benefits to recruiting a team of outsourced lead generation experts to find those qualified leads and bring them into the sales funnel:
- A fast-track sales initiative with focused outbound calling and/or cold emailing activities
- More reliable and productive follow-up and management processes
- Superior lead qualification
- Reporting that is transparent and actionable
- An effortlessly flexible solution
The following are signs that it may be the right time for your company to take advantage of these benefits and invest in the services of a skilled outsourced B2B lead generation company:
YOUR COMPETITION IS BEATING YOU TO ALL THE BEST LEADS
You may often find that your competition is getting to your opportunities before you are, and you’re not sure what can be done about it. Again, outsourcing will get you ahead, no matter what niche you operate in.
Outsourcing your lead generation service will ensure your team will be able to spend time making calls and reaching the right people to get those qualified sales leads. Salespeople who are equipped with the expertise and business acumen to engage in smart, industry-specific discussions with prospects are more likely to get through to the main decision-makers of a company, and not get stuck at an organization’s lower levels. Or, if they initially do – which happens – have the time, patience, and polite persistence to get through to the people they need to rather than just give up.
If you are introducing a new product or have an updated version of an existing one, consistent and continuous calling can be particularly valuable. However, this kind of outreach calls for tact and smarts in order to be effective rather than seen as pushy and annoying, skills only the very best salespeople have. Product launches are the perfect time to reach out to your contacts who have in the past expressed interest in your goods or services, who may even have previously converted into customers, and who may be interested in actioning another transaction with your company, and to pursue every one of those leads extra sales staff will be a huge help.
Calling before industry events, and webinars can also help you get a jump on your competition. When you make prospects aware of your services and brand before the event, when they actually attend the function, they will then remember the name of your company and be familiar with your brand.
This can also help boost the attendance rate to your ‘booth’ in general. With most industry conferences and events going virtual this year – and likely staying that way until well into 2021 – potential attendees are already confused about just how these events work, and how they can make the connections they are used to making in person. Outsourcing your B2B lead generation gives your sales team the powerful numbers they need to make all the essential sales calls without sacrificing the conversation quality and potentially make your event presence itself even more successful, killing two birds with one stone!
YOUR LEADS REALLY AREN’T THAT QUALIFIED
Devoting time and money to gathering a long list of leads is a waste of time if they aren’t properly qualified. Your lead generation campaign will go nowhere and a cold calling and lead generation program will not be effective if inexperienced callers reach out to prospects, but fail to connect with them and ask the right qualifying questions. Not all salespeople know how to qualify a lead properly, it’s a sales skill that takes extra time to perfect.
Generating leads, qualifying leads is not just a ‘nice to have’ thing but a must. There are those sales experts who feel – and we tend to agree – that trying to sell to unqualified leads can be worse for your business than not trying to sell at all. Unqualified leads waste your sales team’s time, which costs you money. It’s also frustrating and the last thing you need is for your best closers to quit because they are given leads that, because they were never properly qualified, just can’t be sold to because what’s on offer was never a match for them in the first place.
Jumping into a conversation with contacts in a particular sector and making an immediate connection requires a certain amount of business acumen and knowledge of the industries involved. It takes much more time and a certain amount of delicacy to discover the prospect’s pain points and recognise what sort of approach would work to address the problems. It takes, even more, to recognise when a prospect is simply never going to convert.
Outsourcing B2B lead generation experts ensures that real possibilities are represented by the leads you get. An outsourced team with an established track record for effective lead generation – they are well-trained, well-equipped, able to professionally approach the discussion at hand, and create meaningful connections within the organization with decision-makers. They have great lead generation tactics and will very quickly improve your lead generation strategy.
Because they are especially skilled in these initial conversations they can properly qualify leads and only when they’ve done so hand them to your sales team, ensuring the contacts that are handed off are full of promise and potential, leading to time savings and a lot less frustration at the top of the funnel.
The best-outsourced salespeople also take the time prior to calling and emailing to gain the specific knowledge they need to sell your products or services in the way they deserve. That’s why the best option if you are weighing yours up, is a smaller, dedicated team, rather than randomly assigned salespeople from large ‘bulk selling’ services.
In the current climate, there is another advantage that a great outsourced sales team can offer you. Unlike those who have spent their lives working in offices, these folks are usually used to remote working and making use of technologies like Zoom and Google Meeting, as well as remote calling apps. There’s no learning curve, for example, for the Pearl Lemon Leads team in switching to calling prospects at home vs, the office, or not on a standard 9-5 schedule because they’ve been doing it for years!
YOUR TOP-OF-FUNNEL LEAD NUMBERS ARE WAY TOO LOW
If you have an internal sales team, they may naturally concentrate their efforts on leads that are farther down the funnel, because that’s what they are good at, and where they personally get the best results. Or they may not have enough time between administrative work and meetings to make the consistent top-of-the-funnel calls required for the success of your B2B lead generation efforts.
It is often top-of-funnel assignments that get left behind when things get busy. During the cold calling process, internal salespeople are unable to commit their full attention to actually communicating, decreasing the total amount of top-of-funnel leads that you get. B2B lead generation outsourcing solves this problem immediately. Your salespeople may not have the time to nurture leads in the way they need to be, but an outside sales team will.
SUMMING IT UP
Basically, throughout this post we’ve been emphasizing a single truth that can make or break your sales initiatives; for top-of-funnel and efficient cold calling programs, different abilities are needed, and not every salesperson has them, even if they are good – or great – at making the close at the top of the funnel.
Investing in the right people for cold calling will reliably keep new qualified leads flowing down from the top of your sales funnel, as they have time to communicate with customers, learn their market, discover business pains, create confidence, and provide a possible solution.
These are just a few of the advantages of outsourced B2B lead generation there are lots more, and it’s something highly likely to boost your cold calling efforts if you encounter difficult competitors, unqualified leads and low numbers entering your sales funnel. We have seen innumerable businesses succeed by recruiting an outsourced team. We know that it’s natural to want to make cuts right now, but failing to invest in your sales process is not a good move.
Please feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more about our outsourced B2B lead generation programs and explore how they could fulfill your needs.
