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What to look for when thinking about outsourcing your lead generation

Posted on April 25, 2008
Filed Under Marketing, change management, agile, Sales productivity |

What to look for when thinking about outsourcing your lead generation

Cold calling, appointment setting and lead generation is unpleasant and difficult.

It takes a tough soul to call 100 people per day (100 people who know nothing about you) with a canned sales pitch while expecting a return call, appointment or a sale.

It’s no wonder so many people want to outsource lead generation. But, before you even think about outsourcing this business critical process, there are several cautions and considerations to keep top of mind.

The voice on the phone is your brand

Make sure you personally speak to everyone that will be making calls on your behalf. The person on the phone represents your brand and partnering with the lowest bidder can be a recipe for disaster.

Keep it clean

The data, that is. The call list is a valuable asset. As an asset, make sure your call list is fresh and up-to-date. To start, evaluate your existing data: How much of it is accurate? How much can be discarded? There are many statistics out there but the United State Postal Service states that 35% of all bulk mail mailed every year ends up in the garbage due to inaccurate addressing.

Gartner, Inc., estimates that over the next two years, more than 25 percent of critical data in Fortune 1000 companies will continue to be flawed, that is, the information will be inaccurate, incomplete or duplicated (http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=501733). Another Gartner report cited major reasons CRM projects fail. At the top of the list: “Data is ignored.”

Who is going to oversee the updating and maintenance of the data? Will your lead generation partner update or delete outdated records? Will they take the time to research outdated leads? Or clean email addresses? Is the firm committed to updating the system, and how will that be accomplished?

Before you or anyone else can think about picking up a phone, you need answers to these questions.

Appoint a CRM administrator

The easiest way to keep your database clean and up-to-date is by appointing a CRM administrator. This person should possess excellent technical and research skills and understand your unique selling process. The administrator must be able to set up campaigns, import leads, purge leads, develop lead assignment rules and manage all unworkable addresses and contacts. The administrator should be compensated in a way that rewards data accuracy.

Keep it together

Avoid data silos. Some lead generation vendors steer customers toward proprietary CRM systems. Avoid this at all costs. What you need is a single database that contains a complete record of every interaction your company has with a prospect.

If you use Salesforce.com (or any other CRM system), set-up your outsourced partner as a remote user in your system. When everyone uses the same system, from a security and a measurement standpoint, you have an audit trail of all activities performed. You can assign the outsourced vendor specific accounts and restrict access to other accounts. You have oversight and real time reporting. Plus, you have the assurance of knowing your vendor is cleaning and scrubbing your data for your sales people.

Put some marketing in your telemarketing

Once you have CRM under control, you can begin to map out the marketing support for your telemarketing campaign. When we say marketing, we’re not talking about expensive SuperBowl advertising, we’re talking about sales letters, coordinated direct mail, email templates and PDFs that can be sent to interested prospects.

Crafting a personalized sales letters to prospects that are accompanied by emails, PDFs and phone calls reinforce your brand identity in the mind of the prospect. Utilizing these tools in coordinated waves increases the likelihood of success. A voice mail, followed by an email followed by a mailed letter has a far greater chance of a return phone call than just a voice mail. Combining tactics also increases the likelihood that your message and/or pitch will get through to the prospect. Multi-pronged campaigns yield the best results simply because they up the odds.

Get automated

What happens after the call? Do you give up on the prospect or do you find way to cultivate that prospect over time with automated follow-up routines? A good CRM tool can automate many of the follow-up tasks and put prospects into a regular series of follow-up activities By thinking about the prospect long-term, you will find yourself communicating with clients more and also specifically targeting messages for those communications. You will find that your marketing improves. Considering your outsourced lead generation vendor as part of a larger communications and marketing strategy will be a step in the right direction.

Almost ready to start dialing…

Ask if your vendor equips their call center employees with online research tools such as JigSaw, Hoovers, Plaxo and LinkedIn. These tools are invaluable for researching companies, understanding the buyer’s sphere of influence and adding new prospects to the database.

Have something interesting to say and offer

The biggest challenge for any VP of Sales is giving his or her lead generation team access to the right information sources so they never go in cold. And, the challenge for any VP of Marketing is to make sure that appointment setters have something new and interesting to put in front of prospects every 30 days.

If you are cold calling, you are already at a disadvantage. Cold calling is difficult and inefficient. Invest in the research to find out who you should be talking to. Define a sphere of influence within your target companies. Determine which positions you want to target and build a list. Names and addresses are easy to purchase from sources such as Hoovers and Jigsaw. Emails can pose a bit more of a challenge, but dedicating the effort to researching and populating your list will pay off in spades.

The next step is to determine what to say to these prospects. Spend time researching the companies you want to touch. Show that you’ve been paying attention and offer something useful based on their needs, not on your looming sales quota. No one wants to read an email blast that isn’t relevant to their business. A unique letter that includes something that is of direct interest to the prospect will be more warmly received.

It is okay to leave a voice mail

Even a simple voice mail can be a branding opportunity. A voicemail, properly researched, can do more than a canned conversation to increase your credibility and differentiate you from what others are saying. The beauty of the voicemail is that you’re not attempting to make a sale straight off the bat. Rather, your goal is to really get through to someone and convince them to pick up the phone and call you. It’s a warm-up technique.

With a scripted voicemail, you have complete control over how you want to portray your company and your services without having to worry about questions, challenges or ‘no’s. Take the opportunity. Design a message that grabs the prospects and leaves them curious for more information. Keep it short and simple.

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