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Thinking about outsourcing your lead generation? |
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Cold calling, appointment setting and related lead generation work 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 should be a valuable asset. As an asset, make sure the contacts in your call list are current. To start, evaluate your existing data: How much of it is accurate? How much can be discarded? Consider that the United State Postal Service reports that 35 percent 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Will your lead generation partner update or delete outdated records? Will they take the time to research outdated leads?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. You may even consider compensating the CRM administrator in a way that recognizes and rewards data accuracy.
Keep it together
Avoid data silos. Some lead generation vendors steer customers toward proprietary CRM systems. Try to avoid this. A better solution, which will meet both short and long-term needs, is a single database that contains a complete record of every interaction your company has with a prospect. No matter what CRM system you use, 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 then 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 the CRM managed, you can begin to map out the marketing support for your telemarketing campaign. This does not mean expensive SuperBowl-style advertising either. It refers to the meat-and-potatoes, including: sales letters, coordinated direct mail, email templates and PDFs that can be sent to interested prospects.
Crafting personalized sales letter 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 better 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 ways 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 marketing activities. By thinking about the prospect long-term, you will find yourself delivering messages to your prospects that contain value. 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 its call center employees with online research tools such as JigSaw, Hoovers, Plaxo and/or 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 into a project 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.
It is okay to leave a voice mail
Even a simple voice mail can be a branding opportunity. A voicemail message, when properly researched, can do more than a canned conversation to increase your credibility and differentiate you from what others are saying. After all, the voicemail is not attempting to make a sale straight off the bat. Rather, it is really designed to get a message 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.
In conclusion, when you outsource lead generation, it can be an effective way of leveraging internal resources to close more sales, and a cost-effective supplement to your existing sales force. If you can successfully navigate these issues, you will find that outsourcing this business critical process can enhance your sales pipeline.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Bradley is managing director of The Bradley Wiltjer Marketing Group, Inc., a marketing, PR and lead generation agency in Aurora, IL. He can be reached at bbradley@bradleywiltjer.com. |
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