It is undoubtedly true that lead generation is a crucial part of any marketing strategy — in fact, 85% of B2B marketers say it is their most important content marketing aim.

However, lead generation can be a grueling process, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

A whopping 68% of companies said they struggled with lead generation, and another 61% of people in B2B marketing think lead generation is their biggest challenge. – CSO insights

This is where outbound lead generation comes into play, bringing your brand to market, cutting costs, and generating qualified leads. There’s no lack of lead generation agencies out there. 

If you’re a business owner or a marketer, it’s important you know what your capabilities are so you can decide if you should hire and train someone in-house or outsource your marketing and lead generation efforts.

Businesses succeed or fail based on how they generate interest in their products and services, which is why lead generation is so important. Many companies nowadays outsource outbound lead generation because of its direct ROI. 

Inbound leads can take 6 to 12 months before ROI occurs. Often times you can get faster results at a much lower cost if you outsource lead generation services. 

This makes sense since internal sales turnover is very high (around 16%). That’s not to mention the costly hire of the right lead generation experts who can get you a real ROI. 

Outsourcing definitely has its advantages and disadvantages, and the indecision between “I should do it myself” and “I should leave it to someone else” is what many marketers face when trying to improve their lead generation efforts.

This article will help you decide whether you should outsource your lead generation or if you can do it in-house.

But first, what exactly is outsourcing?

What the heck are Outsourced lead generation ideas?

If your business is B2C, you don’t need outside leads.

If you’ve invested a lot in building an in-house marketing and sales team, and have thorough knowledge and expertise of your product, you’ll get more out of it if you don’t outsource.

If you want to be able to make changes on the fly, or if you want to monitor the work and progress of your team, in-house lead generation is the best choice.

Many companies prefer to be in control of their pipeline, so they are hesitant to trust sales outsourcing companies with it. Despite this, some companies find that the benefits of outsourcing lead generation actually exceed the costs.

Keep in mind that if you want to handle lead generation internally, you’ll need to hire, train, and pay one team member. Training can take as much as a year, and overhead costs still apply.

When companies want to save money on the cost of an internal team, they outsource lead generation. If your company’s sales reps have less than a year of sales experience, outsourcing may bring you more leads due to the vendors’ higher skill sets.

When you hire the right sales development reps at a lead generation company and you set specific criteria, you’ll have the same level of control as if they were in-house – so outsourcing might be a smart move in this case. 

Moreover, your in-house marketing team probably knows your product too well. When you assume that your customers know as much about your business as you do, you start making mistakes.

Your business suffers from that way of thinking. In marketing, you should assume your customers don’t know anything about your products and services.

So think about how you’re going to educate your prospective buyers. 63 percent of businesses say traffic and leads are their biggest marketing challenge. Are you targeting people who care about details and data? Are your readers C-suiters who like a good narrative?

To generate leads effectively you have to take the time to get to know your audience and let them know about you. Sometimes a little help from a third party is all you need.

So, here’s the question — when do you outsource?

Outsourced Lead Generation Services

When to outsource? When not to.

When deciding whether to outsource, one of the main things to take into account is your staff. Are your current team members up to the task?

You probably want to look at in-house lead generation when…

• Your sales staff has enough time, tools and experience to source quality leads and close them.
• An experienced, full-time team can be dedicated to it. In order to make lead generation work, you need at least two or three people who can handle targeting, content, domain, and scheduling logistics.
• Your primary source of leads is inbound marketing: people who voluntarily let you know that they want to hear from you by completing a contact form on your website for example.

Outsourced B2B lead generation is the best course of action if you…

• Want to cut down on the time it takes to source quality leads. 
• Can’t staff a full internal department.
• lead generation for your business is all about cold calling and booking appointments.
• Have a rock-solid process for assessing leads, and you’re confident you can translate it into an effective oursourced lead generation process for everyone involved.

Should your needs fall outside of either category …

• Consider a bridge. Email is good at generating leads, especially to certain segments of the market. Over half of U.S. consumers check their personal email lists over 10 times daily. They prefer getting updates from brands by email. If you use email as a main channel of prospecting, make sure you have someone monitoring your inboxes full-time to respond and schedule meetings in a timely manner.

The following are some quick reasons why outsourced lead generation services could be right for you:

1. Broader skill set 

An outbound marketing agency has a lot of different specialists to manage its day-to-day business – e.g. B. web designers, SEO, web analytics, graphic designers, copywriters and more. Outsourcing lets you take advantage of this know-how whenever you want it. This gives you a lot more opportunities to close sales with your internal team.

2.  Lower costs

Let’s face the facts: Marketing costs a lot of money. Even a small marketing team quickly incurs costs of over $100,000 a year. You’ll have to expand your department to do outbound marketing. 

Because email marketing and social media marketing all have to be mastered. If, however, you outsource all this to an outbound marketing firm, they’ll utilize their specialist skill sets better, so you’ll accomplish more with less budget.

3. Follow current marketing trends

When you work with an agency, you get more than just expertise. Also, you’re more up on marketing trends. To be successful in the market, a company must always follow the current developments of the industry. 

As a customer, you can be sure your marketer’s always on top of things. Since agencies work for several clients, they can transfer successful strategies from other companies and don’t have to start from scratch for every client. 

The rule is that agencies must always keep a competition clause in place, i.e. they cannot work for the same competitor at the same time.,

4. Faster ramp-up 

Newcomers to outbound marketing take 3-6 months to adjust to all the tools and approaches. This period can be massively reduced if you work with external experts.

There’s no need to build up the know-how and they already have the tools and know the market very well. This means you can catch up with the competition almost immediately.  

5.  Better collaboration between marketing and sales

A great outbound marketing agency will maintain close contact with your sales department to ensure a smooth transfer of leads and receive feedback on their quality. 

Using an outsider for a middle man makes it easier to get rid of departmental barriers and silos. By doing that, you can promote better marketing and sales cooperation.

6. Learning effects for your team 

Even if you outsource most of your outbound marketing to an agency, you should still have in-house sales staff. In any case, you need to have someone on site to coordinate with the agency and plan the marketing. 

Your staff will work with your outsourcing partner and acquire a lot of know-how over time. You’ll get a well-trained team with high outbound marketing competencies, which can form the core of your own inbound team in the worst-case scenario.

Outsourced Lead Generation Companies

How Do Sales Outsourcing Services Work?

Three of the most common lead generation strategies for B2B are email marketing (78%) (source), event marketing (73%) and content marketing (67%) (source).

Deliverability is the key to actually getting into your prospect’s inbox, and most companies fail when trying to do email marketing on their own. Brightest minds knows how to reach your potential customers with the right tools and know-how.  

For example, at Brightest Minds, we developed processes that let us find email addresses within social networks and branches.

We can pull up contact info relevant to the ideal client profile you provide us. Not to mention, we can get past spam filters and make sure prospective buyers see your offer. This is a big reason for hiring for outsourced b2b lead generation – not to be underestimated.

Brightest Minds, is the lead generation outsourcing company of choice for many SaaS and tech companies, providing you with a list of qualified leads automatically. We integrate with your sales team and allow them to contact those leads. 

Following up with prospects

According to a study, only 46% of marketers with well-planned lead management strategies have sales teams who follow up on more than 75% of leads (source).

It’s just not enough persistence to get good results, which is why businesses fail when they do their own lead generation. They just don’t have the systems and processes in place to conduct proper lead generation.

Leveraging Social media for generating leads 

Lead generation from LinkedIn was successful for 65% of B2B companies (source).

LinkedIn is a gold mine of potential sales for any B2B company, yet when it comes to outreach on LinkedIn, most businesses are doing it wrong. 

LinkedIn is a place where people expect to be contacted in a personalized way that fosters relationships rather than sales pitches.

Brightest Minds has nearly a decade of experience generating leads on LinkedIn for clients all over the world. Because of our highly customized LinkedIn strategies and personal outreach, we’re able to match clients with the right prospects. 

The results of outsourcing appear to be better in terms of saving money (in the long run).

Lead generation outsourcing is 43% more efficient than generating leads in-house because lead generation companies have more expertise (source).

No one in the world can do it all by themselves.

Collective action between multiple participants working toward a common goal is usually how big things get done. This means that spreading the effort across a bigger pool of agents will result in a bigger return.

You’ll need some money to outsource your lead generation. Nevertheless, it is something that can serve you in the long run.

Rather than chasing after the leads yourself and hurting everything else, they’ll be waiting for you in your inbox every day, while you improve your business in many other areas.

As you see, outsourcing your lead generation, for the right business, can be a great idea.

There are a lot of advantages to outsourcing lead generation. Outsourcing facilitates prospecting, identifying the best leads, and arranging meetings between the best leads and your sales team.

Your team and an outsourced lead generation company can work together to reduce ramp time and boost lead efficiency, so you can meet your growth goals faster.

Think of it as a cheaper way to extend your sales department.

Whether you outsource B2B lead generation, hire an in-house team, or mix the two, your biggest mistake is overestimating benefits and underestimating costs. Lead generation takes effort, patience, and resources.

A company can’t put 10 hours a week into lead generation and expect success. Creating an effective process takes experience, knowledge, tools, and talent from various disciplines.

It is crucial to follow a strong set of guidelines and rely on quality resources when considering outsourcing. Consider carefully the pros and cons of outsourcing to keep what you do best under your roof, and outsource anything else that’s not so great.

If you lack the expertise and tools to set up a complex lead generation campaign, then you can get warm leads it may be better to hire a team of expert lead generators to handle prospect targeting, qualification, and appointment setting. 

Brightest Minds has a team, tools, and expertise to send pre-qualified leads directly to your inbox. Simply request our services. 

The specialists at our firm have vast experience in generating leads in your industry and a wide range of tools to devise a targeted strategy for you. Our experts will pay particular attention to the characteristics of your industry and the details of your business.

What to consider before outsourcing

1. Think about your sales cycle and product.

An outsourced model might not fit your sales development style.

Particularly if you’re a B2C or B2B2C. Any product under $1,000 has trouble fitting into many outsourcing services. 

It’s probably hard to have a balance between account executives and sales development reps. If your product costs more than $1,000 and has a longer sales cycle, you might be better off outsourcing.

Outsourcing lead generation makes more sense when personas are a more important consideration than reaching a large pool of prospective customers.

If you’ve got a shorter sales cycle and a lot of potential leads, you’ve got to try and spread the word as much as possible.

Cold-calling can work, but inbound marketing strategies might be a better use of your budget. Before you outsource, think about your products and customers.

2.Take your budget into consideration as well as your Bottom Line.

In many cases, it’s the size of your budget that has the most influence on your decision to outsource, and it usually isn’t a problem. Even though it’s good to stay on your sales department’s budget, don’t let that be the only thing driving your decision to outsource or not.

On the surface, fees for outsourcing companies can seem like a lot of money. It always feels like “extra” because it exists separately form the company.

When you’re pricing out services, you should keep in mind your overall insourcing costs, and the potential revenue you’ll have with outsourcing.

Salaries for SDRs are expensive, ranging from $47K to $62K just for the base.

You also need to consider the training and overhead that goes into it. 

Don’t just think that you’re trying to find the cheapest labor. Look at the whole picture.

You’re trying to build an awesome sales department so they can increase their revenues and grow relationships with your clients.

3. The Illusion of Control

Some people think they are in control by keeping their sales department in-house.

This is a myth, and if control, or the illusion of control, is your reason for outsourcing, you may want to reevaluate your viewpoint.

The fact is, you can’t watch over everyone’s shoulder.

Although you think you have control over your SDRs, you cannot control everything they say or type; sales is an independent operation.

Outsourcing lead generation allows you to free up your in-house sales agents so they can execute more effectively.

So, residual benefits like that can help you gain control.

It’s up to you where your in-house employee puts their energy as you can leave more taxing tasks to the pros.

Control doesn’t mean listening in on every conversation, it’s about how you deploy and delegate tasks to the people that are the best at them.

Conclusion

Each business is different. 

So consider your unique operations and weigh your options.

Lead generation is vital to your business if it is to keep growing. If you are a forward-thinking decision maker, you will want to implement the best strategies and use the best tools to hit your targets.