Everything to Know About B2B Lead Generation Outsourcing

B2B sales are often complex, requiring the influence and negotiation of multiple people. 77% of buyers stated that their last purchase was complex or difficult. To succeed, you want to make sure you are targeting the right prospects to get more leads.

The first step is having an inbound and outbound lead generation strategy. You want to find someone working for another business who has a need for, or interest in, your product or service. Sales efforts should be paralleled by marketing efforts, and vice-versa, that build brand awareness and generate leads.

It is a struggle for businesses to generate leads, however: 61% of marketers rank lead generation as their number one challenge. Whether it is due to a resource issue or time constraint, this is a difficult hurdle for a lot of companies. And yet it is vital to their sales process.

As such, outsourcing B2B lead generation has become common practice.

Outsourcing is described as the act of purchasing services from another business in order to fulfill an internal role. By leaving work that you find drains your resources or time to experienced professionals, you can ensure that leads are always coming in, while you focus your attention on more important matters: closing sales and bettering your product or service.

Sounds interesting? Read on!

So what actually happens when you decide to outsource lead generation?

Once you have decided on a suitable partner to outsource to, you need to establish and maintain effective communication channels with them throughout your working relationship.

A professional B2B lead generation company will take the time to understand your business, the product or services you want them to focus on, your unique value proposition to your industry, and the competitive landscape.

Firstly, you will have an initial meeting with the outsourced partner. This is where you are introduced to the team who will be working for you and you can establish the lines of communication going forward. At this stage, it is important to share as much about your current sales process, product, and target audience as possible. This will give the outsourced team the best possible chance of formulating the correct messaging and the power to handle any objections, further down the road.

It is important that the outsourced team is given access to all of your relevant marketing materials, specific wording, previous contacts, and any personnel that can provide them with ongoing support. This will be a help to them as it will inform their messaging and approaches to their outbound prospecting.

After partnering with the service, the next step is to establish your first outsourced B2B lead generation campaign. A lead generation campaign describes what the initial focus of the lead generation company should be and will typically take two or three months to complete.

To get this started you must agree on your target market and channels. There can be many different strategies for B2B lead generation, but they all follow a similar framework.

A good starting point is to look at what industry most of your current customers are in: this will give you plenty of examples and case studies to reference. Finding out why these companies bought from you in the past and identifying buying trends, will give you a good idea of what unique selling points or unique pains your product or solution solves for them. From here, you can build your customer profile.

Defining your target audience for your first campaign is critical to its success. The campaign needs to have a relevant message and be delivered to the right person, at the right time, in order to spark their interest.

The B2B lead generation outsourcing company should have a checklist of target factors they will need to establish, similar to the following:

• Job Titles. What job roles and responsibilities want to hear about the product or service? The B2B lead generation outsourcing company should do in-depth research on industry trends and issues to consider what job titles would be most interested in your solution. How could it relate to the current challenges the industry is facing?

• Seniority. Are they going to be senior enough within the business to make the decision to buy, or will they be senior enough, to influence someone who is? Who are generally decision-makers in the industry?

• Industry. What types of businesses are best suited to benefit from your value proposition? What industries have bought your product the most? Are there common issues within those types of businesses that your product or service helps alleviate?

• Price. This factor is often overlooked in B2B lead generation campaigns, but it is an important factor for your target customers if they respond to efforts by the outsourcing company. Is there a clear indication on your website as to what the price may be? In my experience, it's always best to have at least some indication of this information available, so a prospect knows what to expect before they spend time exploring your product further.

• Company Size. In order to narrow down your target audience and weed out any businesses which may not be able to afford or use your product, it's important to consider the number of employees.

• Revenue. Is there a minimum amount of revenue a business should be making before they would consider your product or service? Similar to company size this factor is important so that you are excluding any businesses that simply would not benefit or be able to afford your product.

• Existing Customers. It can be somewhat self-sabotaging if your lead generation outsourcing company unknowingly reaches out to current customers, causing issues with customer satisfaction. All current customers should be identified and added to an exclusion list.

• Geography. Where is best to sell your product? Should you exclude any countries or areas that are not a good fit?

• Keywords. Are there any keywords that target customers use when looking for your product, or are there words they use when expressing the pain that your product or service solves?

• Competition. Who else is out there in the marketplace offering a similar service or product? How does your product differ and what competitors are you able to compete with?

Once the lead generation company has established all of these parameters they will be able to fully understand the scale and relevant channels for your first B2B lead generation campaign.

It serves as a framework for how best to generate quality leads for your business. The outsourcing company will then work this information, alongside the marketing materials and website landing pages, into a compelling email copy. This creates a marketing funnel that the leads will follow.

Data can then be leveraged to continuously improve and adapt throughout the lifecycle of the campaign. This process can be repeated and updated, with adjustments made for different industries, industry events, and new competitors.

There are lots of businesses that specialize in B2B lead generation. And with a lot of cooks in the kitchen, some will always be a better fit for you than others when adding spice to their dish.

So just like you check restaurant reviews and menus before making a reservation, it's important to conduct proper research and ask the right questions when shopping for a B2B lead generation outsourcing company to work with.

Consider what level of investment you are prepared to make when outsourcing your B2B lead generation and take time to reflect on your typical cost per lead. We are referring to the time and cost it takes you to generate one sales-qualified lead for your business.

Researching and selecting the right company for your business to work with can seem like a challenge at first. After all, you are making a significant investment that needs to produce a return: leads for your business to get new customers.

The first thing to consider is how good are they at communicating with you. You've had the first initial meeting and are starting to work together, so you will soon see if they are a good fit for you.

The speed of reply and the level of service that you receive from your outsourced agency is something to keep track of. Remember that they should be acting as a part of your sales team and in order to book meetings and generate leads they need to be online and available to respond.

The speed at which your outsource lead generation company responds has actually been shown to have a significant impact on whether or not that lead converts to a sale. And this goes vice versa on your end: your account executives need to be ready to respond to outsourced SDRs because too much time between emails results in a warm lead going back to cold.

The ability of your outsourced partner to create compelling email copy and messaging is also critical to the success of the partnership. The outsourced partner needs to be able to communicate the unique benefits of your solution and speak directly to the pains that the prospect might be feeling.

You always want to make sure you are seeing a clear and powerful call-to-action that is irresistible to the prospect in the outsourcing companies messaging. Personalization of emails and messaging can result in better outcomes, so they should be making efforts there as well.

Data from all of these campaigns should be constantly reviewed and optimizations made to improve the lead generation process and increase results for you as a client of the outsourced company. You should be going over this during your communications with the outsourced sales team. Data analysis allows for the focus to remain on quality or quantity, as you are constantly refining and adjusting to create the perfect business leads.

And you want to remember that every business and industry is different. They all require a unique approach that takes into consideration all of the factors mentioned above. More importantly, it should involve an outsourced partner that takes the time to really understand the business and what their ideal customer looks like.

Your outsourcing company should be willing to work with you within the constraints of finding clients in your industry but also by being bold and trying new tactics you might not have time for. It is a delicate balancing act, but when done correctly, it works wonders.

At SalesPipe, for example, we specialize in B2B lead generation and are known for the high quality of our sales development representatives, which are remote workers from around the globe with expertise and experience in several areas.

We use multiple channels including email, LinkedIn, calls, and video outreach, to find leads for our customers. Email is our particular specialty, which is great as it is still the preferred channel for B2B lead generation.

But we are not afraid of diversifying, and our SDRs are encouraged to try new prospecting techniques to get you those meetings constantly, and we support their endeavors.

B2B lead generation is critical to the success of your business. And finding the right outsourcing provider can help you realize that success.

If you cannot generate the correct leads for your business, or find the right outsourced partner to work with in order to do so, it can be an uphill struggle to grow revenue.

Finding the right company to outsource this area of your business is a challenge. The difference between many companies that offer these services is often in the nature of their approach and the channels they use.

If you're interested in testing out our compatibility as a match, get in touch with us to see if we're a good fit.