How do you know if outsourced lead generation is right for you?
Outsourcing your lead generation could give your sales campaigns the boost they need. You free up time for your sales team to focus on converting high quality leads, maintain a healthy pipeline and build brand awareness in new markets. But how do you know if outsourcing lead generation activities is right for your business? Here’s a quick overview we’ve put together to help you decide.
Will you get a good return on investment?
Every campaign is different and there are a lot of factors that play into whether a campaign will deliver a good ROI, but a good rule of thumb is that if your average sales value is at least $15-20,000, you are likely to see a good return on investment and achieve a successful campaign. Your average sales value could be a single sale, but if you work on a recurring monthly fee or sell a number of subscriptions or licenses on a monthly or annual basis, if your customers are investing at least $15-20,000 over the course of a year, that’s also a good indication that your ROI is likely to be good.
How can you improve ROI?
What if your sales value is less than this? For some of our clients, we have to look at ways to increase their sales value in order to deliver a strong ROI. The easiest way to do this is to sell a higher priced product or item, or to sell more. For example, if you sell subscriptions and the subscription for your basic product is $25 a month per user but you also sell a premium or enterprise license for $125 per user, change your approach to target the (possibly larger) businesses who would need the additional features that your enterprise service provides. If you sell office furniture, target larger companies who will buy more items from you and increase your average sales value.
Are you prepared to cashflow the campaign until you make sales?
This is another question that is often overlooked, but is very important. Lead generation is not a magic bullet and the leads generated will mirror those from your other sales activities. So, if your normal sales cycle takes 5 months from first meeting to closed sale, then it will take 5-6 months for prospects from your outsourced lead generation to buy from you too. This means you need to be prepared to fund outsourced lead generation for at least this period before you start to see sales and revenue coming in, before your ROI starts to kick in. If you are thinking of trying outsourced lead generation you must be able to run it without any revenue coming in from this sales channel for at least the length of your normal sales cycle.
The best thing you can do before you begin outsourced lead generation is to put together a Cashflow Forecast/Budget for the campaign you want to run (we have one that we use for all our clients prior to commencing work). This should project likely activity and results, costs and revenues so you can make sure it will be profitable before you start, and that you can cashflow it until it starts to make money for you.
Do you know your market?
I cannot overstate the importance of market awareness; it will help you shape your offer to your ‘ideal customer’, enabling you to sell more and maximise returns.
If you are going to outsource your lead generation, you need to be able to define which types and sizes of businesses you want to sell to. If, when you ask yourself “who is my ideal target” the answer is “anyone” then you are setting yourself up for failure when you brief your outsourced provider.
Imagine that you are a business that sells surgical face masks and you told the company doing your lead generation that because of COVID, they could contact any company. They would source a list of companies to call and because there are more small companies than large, many of the companies they call will have fewer than 10 staff. They will get lots of leads for you with small companies that are buying very small numbers of your masks. Instead, if you think about which companies would make the “best” clients, you’d probably say companies with 50+ staff. Sales made to these companies would yield much larger sales – and selling to them would be a much better use of your sales team’s time. You might not need to exclude smaller companies entirely, though. You might set up a programme where sales to smaller companies are handled by your outsourced provider, with no need for one of your sales reps to be involved, keeping them free to handle the bigger accounts.
Do you have a sales team?
Another important consideration is whether you have a sales team. If you want to generate leads, you need to have a dedicated sales resource focusing on converting those leads into sales. Once a steady flow of qualified leads is being generated, the workload can increase rapidly. And for you to get the most from outsourced lead generation, it’s vital that you have good sales people, that sales proposals are going out the door on time and that all opportunities are followed up consistently and on time. If you lack the engine room to deliver the follow-up and conversion piece, you will squander valuable sales opportunities and revenue.
Hopefully, this blog has given you some food for thought around whether outsourced lead generation is the right route for your business. If you’d like to know more about Forrest Contact’s outsourced lead generation campaigns and how we could help build a consistent pipeline of sales opportunities for your sales team, please call us today. We can share with you our experience in your industry and use our Cashflow Forecast to show you what the likely returns would be for your business. If you’d like to have a chat, please get in touch by calling 1300 396 888 or drop us an email to enquiries@forrestcontact.com.au.
