What are the drawbacks to lead generation outsourcing?

Hi Ryan,

I just came across your question today. We do outsourced lead generation and lead qualification, so I'm going to answer the question from that perspective and tell you what drives a successful program, and what can cause a program to fail. These are in no particular order, but I hope it's helpful!

1. The outsourced firm should act as an extension of your sales and marketing team. They should work closely with both sales and marketing, participate in sales meetings, get substantial product training, and clearly understand your product, your market, your ideal prospect, and your sales objectives.

2. You will need to provide quality content for use in nurturing the leads that are not yet sales ready. Don't depend on the firm to be able to keep leads warm if you're not providing thought leadership and other educational content that they can use to facilitate your prospects' buying process. If you don't have strong content, consider hiring a firm that can provide both content development and lead generation/nurturing. Here is a link to an article about using thought leadership to facilitate the buying process: http://landing.propelgrowth.com/thought-leadership-to-support-the-entire-buyi...

3. Work closely with your sales team and the outsourced lead generation team to define the following - Raw Inquiry, Engaged Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Accepted Lead, Sales Qualified Lead. Make sure that the lead generation firm is clear on the specific criteria for a marketing qualified lead (MQL) as this is probably the lead level that will be passed to sales. Also define clear steps for how a lead is to be worked once accepted, and how it gets recycled if deemed to be not sales ready. Ask the lead generation firm to continue to nurture leads that aren't ready.

4. Encourage the lead gen firm to sit in on sales meetings that they generate. This will help them understand the right questions to ask to improve their qualification skills (see #1).

5. Work closely with the lead gen firm to constantly to review the program, evaluate the leads, refine the process, and improve the program's effectiveness.

6. Find a firm that is familiar with your space and your target market. Make sure that the reps assigned to your account have experience in your space. This is critical. These people will be talking to your customers, and if they don't know what they're talking about, not only will the program be unsuccessful, but it will also run the risk of alienating your prospects.

7. Having a huge number of leads is a great place to start, but don't assume that you have enough. We've received thousands of leads from clients, only to find out that the leads they considered "hot" were actually 2-3 years old. That means that many of the people have moved on, or are no longer interested. A good firm will be able to stir up some interest in an old list, but you should also continue to run demand generation programs to bring in a continual supply of new fresh leads. Make sure that the lead generation company you select tracks lead source and provides you feedback on the quality of the various programs you run. This will enable you to direct your spending to the most effective sources and help ensure the success of your overall program.

8. Make sure the firm has the technology to effectively support their programs. They should be using an integrated CRM and marketing automation system to provide them with the tools to manage workflow and gain visibility into prospect activity. And let them put the tracking code from their MAP on your site. The tools don't do any good if they can't see what the prospects are doing on your site.

We find that the more closely we're integrated with the client's organization, the better our programs work.

I hope this is helpful!