Outsourcing doesn’t seem to lose its position, with more than ⅓ of small businesses (37%) currently outsourcing a business process. And the main reason (59%) is the opportunity to reduce business expenses.
Marketing is one of the popular parts of the business to be outsourced, and B2B businesses prefer to sell their products/services via lead generation and appointment setting companies.
Businesses turn to similar services when they notice organizational, performance, and benefit-cost ratio problems in their teams. Examples:
- Prospect data in the CRM is inaccurate and your sales reps are contacting the wrong people,
- Your sales reps spend too much time on educating, nurturing, following up with prospects but conversion rates aren’t increasing,
- You don’t have a strategic lead nurturing process in place and you don’t keep up with changing customer preferences,
- Prospecting tools are expensive and you don’t want to invest in them,
- You want to get rid of administrative tasks such as reviewing a resume, conducting interviews, training new sales reps, dealing with vacations and day-offs, etc.
A B2B lead generation agency can solve multiple problems for you at once. Though some procedures may vary, the main responsibility of a similar agency is to generate sales-ready leads for your business and pass them to your sales team.
Here are 5 things that lead generation services can do for you and that’s what the process usually looks like:
They Get To Know Your Ideal Customers
Any professional B2B lead generation company is interested in “selling” high-quality, sales-ready leads to its partners. And it’s impossible to deliver similar results if the company doesn’t know what a high-quality lead is.
To reach high accuracy, lead generation companies work closely with your sales and marketing teams, explore your buyer persona and buyer’s journey documents. After identifying your ideal buyers, they use various ways and resources and find prospects for your business.
Knowing customers means knowing what alternatives they have and researching competitor services/products as well. Customer, competitor, and industry research as a whole is the first step any lead generation company must take.
They Find Ideal Leads for Your Business
B2B appointment setting services have reliable databases of business contacts, including names of decision-makers, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. The keyword here is “database” but not all of those services work the same way.
Some of those services may grant you access to the whole database and it’s you who is going to do the rest of the work (contact, nurture, etc).
Some of them may limit your access and allow you to export up to X contacts. Some other agencies contact the leads on their own, take them from the Awareness to the Decision stage, and pass them to your sales team to convert.
This is the outbound way of generating leads and is followed by cold calling, cold emailing, LinkedIn prospecting.
Your business might regard cold calling and cold emailing as old, intrusive, and non-working tactics. However, only 4% of department managers think sales calls at work are annoying.
As for the emails, you can ensure a high open-rate first of all by choosing subject lines the recipients can’t resist to open.
Inbound leads are generated through guest posting, social media marketing, etc. B2B lead generation services have their network of partner blogs where they will publish your post or place links back to your website. They may also promote your business on their partner ad networks and generate leads via online advertising.
They Validate Data and Reach Out To Your Ideal Prospects
People move from one company to another, change their email addresses and phone numbers or even switch their career paths. As the public data aren’t always correct, lead generation companies are responsible for double-checking personal details and update them manually.
When they acquire valid details about the lead, the next step is reaching out to them, qualifying, and introducing your products/services. As mentioned, contact methods include but aren’t limited to email, phone calls, etc.
LinkedIn lead generation automation tools have a unique role in the B2B appointment setting process.
They allow you to automate lots of LinkedIn lead generation processes – to auto visit hundreds of LinkedIn profiles daily, auto send personalized connections requests, auto endorse the skills of your connections, etc. After your invitation is accepted, you can message your connection and start building relations.
Similar tools have free versions but if you want advanced features, templates, integrations, you should be ready to pay up to $100-150 monthly. With lead generation services, you won’t be forced to pay extra fees and the agency will cover tool-related costs.
They Nurture Leads and Follow-Up
According to TechnologyAdvice, only 5-15 percent of B2B leads are initially sales-ready. It means that the other 85-95% will never convert, or will convert after having multiple touches with you via email, telephone, text message, video call, or another communication channel.
For example, if you are implementing inbound lead generation, leads will find your website through a guest post, fill out a form on your website, and appear in your CRM. Then your lead generation company may contact the leads via a targeted, personalized email campaign or retargeting ad campaign.
Or if your partner company is using LinkedIn lead generation automation tools, the lead nurturing and follow-up process can be conducted within the tool.
They Fill Your Calendar With Appointments
Sales representatives of your B2B lead generation company will organize appointments between you and the prospects who have reached the bottom of the funnel. Those appointments may come in different formats, from telephone calls to face to face meetings. It’s the last step towards closing the deal and that’s when your team’s sales reps should make it possible.
To Sum up
B2B lead generation and appointment setting service come with multiple benefits and do the following for your business:
- Research your industry, competitors, and customers,
- Use their databases and find relevant prospects for your business,
- Reach out to your ideal prospects via phone calls, email campaigns,
- Feature your website and services on their network of blogs,
- Follow up with leads and further education about your product/service,
- Set appointments between you and sales qualified leads,
- Help you save time and money and pay only for results.
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