Many businesses today are choosing to outsource portions of their everyday operations to reduce head count so they can save money and decrease the risk of employee turnover. Additionally, outsourced service providers are experts in their field, ensuring companies have departments that know what they’re doing and how to do it effectively. And lead generation outsourcing is no different.
With all the outsourced lead generation companies out there to choose from, it can be difficult to pick one that’s best for your business. When attending multiple sales meetings with various lead generation service providers, it can be difficult to think of questions on the spot. Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of questions that you should ask lead generation companies before hiring them.
Here are some questions to ask lead generation companies before signing a contract:
What kind of lead generation services do you provide?
Lead generation falls into two categories: outbound and inbound. Depending on what kind of lead generation services you want, it’s important to ask lead generation companies this question so you have a thorough understanding of what they have to offer you.
Outbound lead generation (also known as push marketing) takes a proactive approach to lead generation because it involves actively reaching out to unsolicited prospects that have been added to a sales pipeline. They’re often added to a sales pipeline because they’ve been identified as decision-makers in a sales prospecting database.
On the other hand, inbound lead generation is more of a reactive approach because decision-makers are going out of their way to learn about your product or service offerings, meaning they’re more ready to buy. Inbound lead generation is often referred to as pull marketing because the content you’ve presented to them has encouraged them to reach out to your business and learn more about what your company has to offer.
Choosing between outbound and inbound lead generation depends on your business goals, target audience, and available resources. However, many growing businesses choose to combine both approaches to create a well-rounded lead generation strategy that maximizes the number of leads they have integrated into their sales pipelines.
What are your main lead generation methods?
Once you decide if you want to use an outbound or inbound approach to lead generation (or both), it’s important to consider how the lead generation company approaches these strategies.
Here are some techniques that outbound lead generation companies use to connect with prospects:
- Cold calling
- Cold emailing
- Social media outreach
- Direct mail
Here are some techniques that inbound lead generation companies use to get in front of more decision-makers:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Landing pages and forms
- Content marketing (blog posts, social media posts, paid advertising, marketing collateral)
- Opt-in email marketing campaigns (promotional limited-time offers, newsletters, etc.)
- Public relations (PR)
Not every business is going to want to practice the same lead generation methods. This may be due to hesitancy to one technique over another or knowing that one approach doesn’t work for buyers in your target market, so you don’t want to put forth the effort in it. Therefore, it’s important to ask lead generation companies what their lead generation methods are to ensure they align with your market and short- and long-term goals.
How do you move prospects and leads through the sales pipeline?
The way that lead generation companies move prospects and leads through the sales pipeline is often the same no matter which company you choose to go with. However, it’s still and important question to ensure you understand the process in and out so you know what to expect going into it.
Asking lead generation companies this question also gives you the chance to explore if there are different parts of the sales process that they have added their own unique touch to. Additionally, it allows you to see if they’ve taken away a step of the traditional sales pipeline flow. And if there’s a part of the sales pipeline that they’ve removed from their process, they’re more than likely not going to give you the results you’re looking for.
These are the steps that most lead generation companies use to effectively move prospects and leads through the sales pipeline:
Step 1: Sales Prospecting – This step is specifically when it comes to prospects. Lead generation operational teams build a list of prospects for BDRs and SDRs to reach out to.
Step 2: First Contact – This is when BDRs and SDRs actively reach out to prospects through cold calling, cold email, social selling, and more. The goal here is to introduce the company and make them aware of your business and what it has to offer.
Step 3: Lead Qualification – SDRs take the time to qualify prospects to ensure they have the ideal customer profile (ICP) of what your business is looking for. When it comes to inbound marketing leads generated, while they’ve shown interest in your product or service, SDRs must also reach out to ensure they meet your company’s sales qualifiers.
Step 4: Lead Nurturing – Once prospects and leads are confirmed to be qualified, it’s time for SDRs to nurture them until they’re ready to buy. Prospects often take more lead nurturing than leads, so it’s important to have patience here since some sales cycles take longer than others.
Step 5: Conversion – After qualified prospects and leads are ready to take the next step, it’s time to convert. This can either be immediately securing a sale or scheduling a sales meeting where sales reps can present the potential buyer with a targeted pitch.
How do you define a “qualified lead”?
Defining qualified leads is a crucial step for lead generation companies to ensure that they provide your business with leads that have a strong likelihood of conversion. Therefore, lead generation companies must have a pre-determined guideline of what a qualified looks like for them and your business. A few of the most common “qualified lead” credentials for B2B companies are:
- Number of full-time employees
- Square footage of commercial space
- Amount of annual revenue generated
Many lead generation companies have an approach to identifying what a qualified lead looks like and how they go about qualifying leads. Here are some ways they do it.
Ask for Client Input
First thing’s first, lead generation companies should put their clients at the forefront of the conversation. They should work closely with your business to understand your ICP and specific criteria for sales qualified leads (SQLs). This includes demographic information, industry, company size, budget, pain points, and other relevant factors that align with your business model.
Score Leads Based on Readiness to Buy
Lead generation companies often use lead scoring models to assign a numerical value to each lead based on various criteria. This lead qualifying criteria can include:
- Demographics: Does the lead fit the client’s target audience?
- Engagement: Has the lead shown interest in the client’s offerings through interactions like website visits, content downloads, or email opens?
- Behavior: Has the lead taken specific actions that indicate readiness to purchase, such as requesting a demo or pricing information?
- Budget: Does the lead have the financial capacity to make a purchase?
When integrated with a lead management system or CRM, lead scoring can be done automatically, prioritizing leads based on their ready-to-buy score.
Profile Leads to Ensure Decision-Making Power
Lead generation companies may create detailed profiles of leads, including their job titles, roles within the organization, and responsibilities. This helps determine if the lead is in a position to make purchasing decisions. If not, it’s important to ask them who is ultimately in charge of making purchasing decisions regarding your product or service offering. If they’re responsible for setting up sales meetings, they’d be an influencer in the decision-making process. So while SDRs can set up a sales meeting with them, they must ensure that the ultimate decision-maker is also included in the sales meeting.
Set Up Behavioral Triggers
Tracking specific actions and behaviors of leads can play a significant factor in qualification. For example, a lead who visits the pricing page multiple times or clicks on a “request a quote” button may be considered highly qualified, scoring higher in the lead scoring model and pushing them up as a priority lead for SDRs to contact.
Identify Lead Source
The source of the lead can also impact qualification. As we touched on earlier, prospects often have longer sales cycles than marketing generated leads because leads generated through marketing are showing readiness to buy. Therefore, if a lead is generated through your website or social media marketing efforts, they’re more likely to convert quicker than a prospect who’s actively being reached out to by SDRs.
Develop Custom Criteria
As always, depending on your industry and goals, lead generation companies may use custom criteria to help define qualified leads. This can include factors like specific technology usage, geographic location, or industry-specific needs.
Lead generation companies regularly refine their qualification criteria based on data and performance metrics. This iterative process helps improve lead quality over time.
By combining client input, lead scoring models, behavioral triggers, and ongoing refinement, lead generation companies can effectively define qualified leads that match your needs and increase the likelihood of conversion.
What tools and technologies do you use to enhance your process?
Sales tools and technologies are essential for having a successful lead generation strategy. Without them, companies risk wasting time, money, and other valuable resources that could be going to everyday business functions. Therefore, lead generation companies should also acquire the necessary lead generation tools to ensure clients have a reliable growth program that yields results.
Here is a list of lead generation tools and technologies that you should ask lead generation companies about, and how they plan on using them to provide your business with an ROI:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software: CRM tools like Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, or Pipedrive help lead generation companies organize and manage leads, track interactions, and nurture relationships. They provide valuable insights into lead behavior and engagement.
- Lead Database and Contact Discovery Tools: Tools like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Clearbit assist in finding and verifying contact information for potential leads, ensuring data accuracy.
- Data Enrichment and Cleansing Tools: Data enrichment services like FullContact or Clearbit help improve lead data quality by providing additional information about leads.
- Sales Enablement Software: Sales enablement platforms like Seismic or Highspot provide sales teams with content, training materials, and analytics to improve their effectiveness in converting leads.
- Call Tracking and Recording Software: Tools like CallRail or CallTrackingMetrics assist in monitoring and analyzing the effectiveness of phone-based lead generation efforts.
- Marketing Automation Platforms: Tools like HubSpot Marketing Hub, Marketo, or Mailchimp Automation enable automated email campaigns, lead nurturing, and personalized content delivery based on lead behavior.
- Lead Scoring Software: Lead scoring tools such as Leadfeeder or MadKudu help prioritize leads based on their behavior, engagement, and fit with ideal customer profiles.
- AI and Predictive Analytics: AI-powered tools like predictive analytics models help identify potential leads and their likelihood to convert based on historical data and trends.
- Email Marketing Software: Email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or SendinBlue facilitate email campaigns, segmentation, A/B testing, and analytics.
- Content Management Systems (CMS): CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal are essential for creating and managing content, including blog posts, landing pages, and downloadable resources.
- Analytics and Reporting Tools: Analytics tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Mixpanel provide insights into website traffic, conversions, and user behavior, helping optimize lead generation strategies.
- SEO and Keyword Research Tools: SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz help optimize website content and discover keywords that resonate with target audiences.
- Lead Capture and Form Builders: Tools like Formstack or Wufoo simplify the creation of web forms and landing pages for lead capture.
- Lead Attribution and Marketing Attribution Tools: These tools help track and attribute leads to specific marketing campaigns or touchpoints, allowing for better ROI analysis.
- A/B Testing and Conversion Optimization Tools: Tools like Optimizely or VWO allow lead generation companies to test and optimize landing pages, forms, and calls-to-action to improve conversion rates.
- Social Media Management Tools: Tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social help schedule social media posts, monitor social activity, and engage with leads on various social platforms.
- Live Chat and Chatbot Solutions: Live chat and chatbot tools, such as Intercom or Drift, enable real-time engagement with website visitors and the capture of lead information.
If a lead generation company doesn’t acquire most (if not all) of these lead generation tools and technologies, you’re more than likely not going to see the results you want. Not every tool may be a must-have, but the more they have and know how to use, the more impact you’ll get from lead generation outsourcing.
Can my CRM integrate with your lead generation services?
CRM integration with lead generation efforts is crucial for everyday business growth, making it an important question to ask lead generation companies when you’re looking to hire. When lead generation companies have the ability to integrate their services with your CRM, you have a greater opportunity to streamline operations, enhance communication, and provide valuable insights that can benefit, lead generation, marketing, and sales teams.
A few of the most significant benefits to integrating their lead generation services with your CRM include:
- A centralized data management hub
- Improved lead tracking capabilities
- More effective lead scoring models
- Enhanced collaboration between lead gen, marketing, and sales teams
- Access to real-time data analytics and reporting
- Greater opportunity to scale up as needed
CRM integration with lead generation efforts empowers businesses to efficiently manage, nurture, and convert leads into customers. It fosters personalized communication, automation, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making, all of which are essential for sustainable business growth in today’s competitive landscape.
Salesforce is a great CRM system to help streamline sales, marketing, and lead generation efforts. Read our blog here to explore the benefits of using Salesforce for lead generation.
What experience do you have working with companies in my industry?
When businesses hire growth teams internally, they often hire a single lead generation specialist who’s responsible for wearing all the hats that come with lead generation. However, when you outsource your sales development efforts, lead generation companies often give you a team of lead generation experts that are specialized in specific roles within the growth strategy.
Asking lead generation companies how many team members you’ll get on your outsourced team is essential for knowing what kind of specialists you get on your account, and how that may factor into the cost of their services. The more specialized team members they have on your account, the higher the cost of their lead generation services will be.
Most successful lead generation companies give clients specialists in each of these roles:
- Business Development Representatives (BDRs)
- Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)
- Sales Managers
- Sales Operations Analysts
- Sales Success Managers
- Email Marketing Specialists
Additionally, the more specialized roles a lead generation company has, the more likely they are to present your business with a positive ROI. This is because they acquire lead generation experts who know what they’re doing when it comes to their part of the sales process rather than having an overarching lead generation specialist role that gets caught up in various responsibilities.
How many team members will be involved on my account?
Before hiring a lead generation company, remember to ask them what kind of experience they have working with businesses in your industry. If they’ve worked within businesses similar to yours and the client has seen success from the lead generation company’s services, it’s fair to assume the company with give you the same results for your business.
For example, let’s say that you’re a commercial cleaning company that’s looking to hire a lead generation company, but the company you have a meeting with specializes specifically in commercial HVAC lead generation. HVAC businesses may see a lot of success because of the specialization of the lead generation company, but janitorial companies more than likely won’t see the same impact.
While simply asking the lead generation company about their experience working with your industry is important, you must ask for social proof of impact. This includes asking for them to share case studies, success stories, testimonials, reviews, and more. Seeing social proof of impact both reinforces how successful they are for businesses in your industry and allows you to envision yourself in the shoes of a customer.
How do you measure the impact of your lead generation efforts?
Lead generation companies use various key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure the effectiveness of their services for clients. These measurements help assess the performance, ROI, and overall success of the lead generation campaigns, ensuring clients are achieving the results they’re looking for.
Here’s how lead generation companies typically measure the effectiveness of their lead generation efforts:
- Number of leads generated per month/year
- How qualified the leads are (AKA do they meet your ICP?)
- Sales meeting to closed business conversion rate
- Cost-per-lead (CPL)
- Client acquisition cost (CAC)
- Number of leads generated per channel
- Client feedback and overall satisfaction
Lead generation companies use these metrics to assess campaign performance, make data-driven optimizations, and report results to clients. A comprehensive understanding of these KPIs enables lead generation companies to continually refine strategies and maximize the value delivered to their clients, making it an important question to ask lead generation companies when going through the hiring process.
What does your lead generation service agreement look like?
Contract terms and conditions for outsourced lead generation services vary depending on the company-client agreement. Every lead generation client is different because while one may want qualified sales appointments set, another may just want lead cleansing services to ensure they have the best prospect data for their sales pipelines. However, there is typically a standard that outsourced lead generation companies follow to ensure client satisfaction.
A few of the most common lead generation company contractual agreements are one of the following pre-determined measures:
- Number of qualified sales meetings set
- Number of qualified prospects and leads generated
- Number of leads put in the sales pipeline
- Amount of revenue generated
- Cost-per-lead
Asking lead generation companies this question is vital for ensuring that you get what you want from their services. And if they don’t meet up to their contractual agreements, this can be taken into legal matters.
Key Takeaways
Outsourcing everyday business functions is becoming more and more common as time goes on. While a specialized company focuses on their core responsibilities, they can hire third-party vendors to take operational tasks off their plate so they can provide clients will exceptional customer service.
Lead generation isn’t an easy task. It requires constant action everyday if you want to see positive results. Not to mention, it’s also incredibly time-consuming, costly, and requires a team of high-performing growth experts. Luckily, there are lead generation companies how there that can take the extra weight off your shoulders and provide you with more business opportunities.
Finding the right lead generation company for your business can feel like a headache. By asking lead generation companies these questions, you have a greater chance of getting the results you want rather than wasting time working with a company that doesn’t know how to run a sales pipeline for your business.
Abstrakt Marketing Group works with growing small to medium-sized commercial businesses around the country to help them fill their sales pipeline with potential buyers through B2B appointment setting and digital marketing efforts. To learn how Abstrakt can be your leading partner in business growth, contact the lead generation experts at Abstrakt!
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