Successful Lead Generation Part 1 – Two B2B Lead Generation Vendors May Be Better than One

The first step of initiating a marketing campaign is generation of leads. Before you get to this step, you must have a defined target audience, thorough and well-researched sales material, and approval of the budget you have quoted for your campaign. Only a campaign that has been thoroughly thwarted in such a way will help yield the expected results.

However, all this planning may well have been for nothing if you fall short on lead generation. This is why most businesses rely on a lead generation company, whose entire business model is based on being the best at generating high quality and high number of leads. For a pre-specified portion of the budget, this often turns out to be a good decision, especially since accountability ensures results.

The Success of Lead Generation is 2 Times 5

Before you employ a lead generation company, it is important to get the following 5 things down on paper, in as clear and concise terms as possible:

1. Number of leads expected: it is best to put this down in numbers, so the lead generation company knows exactly what kind of results you are expecting.

2. Level of engagement: what you want to do with the leads generated, and how your prospective lead generation vendor going to help you achieve this, should be clearly discussed: whether you only want to identify the correct people to talk to (i.e. MQL), or you want to get them to engage and inquire about your service or product (i.e. SQL).

3. Conversion rate expected: not all leads generated will progress all the way through to an actual purchase; set the expected conversion rate down on paper too. A good lead gen vendor should be able to delivery higher SQLs (comprising a majority of SALs) as compared to only MQLs.

4. Outreach methods to be employed: different vendors will have different lead generation strategies. Depending on the kind of campaign you are running, you may have specific requirements too in terms of how much you want to invest on a particular outreach method (more on email, less on telemarketing, etc.). These and other such details need to be clearly discussed with the lead generation company.

5. Basis of commercials: whether billing will be done basis total leads, or only SQLs, etc. While every lead gen vendor will have his own policies commercials in place, it is good practice to clearly state your preferred terms, and then negotiate if necessary.

However, it’s not over. Simply putting this down on paper and discussing it with your potential vendor is not going to give you the spectacular results you are expecting. A lot of things change when things go from being on paper to being out there in action, the main variable being the leads themselves. That’s why it is best to have the above discussion with at least 2 lead generation companies – 2 times 5.

You are sure to face certain roadblocks when it comes to generating leads. Conversion of the leads generated is going to be another hurdle. How would you know if your chosen lead gen vendor is capable of handling these situations? What if the approach they have is not working for your target audience? Is your vendor going to be able to improvise? These and such questions cannot be answered beforehand. However, one way to measure a vendor’s fitness is to run pilot lead generation campaigns (each employing as many unique lead generation strategies as possible) with at least 2 different vendors, and compare their performance. You can choose to go with the vendor who’s closest to your expected results.

Finally, make sure you pick the best of the best B2B lead generation company when running your pilot campaigns. Head over to TechConnectr Marketplace to take a look at top solution providers and get personalised advice regarding the same, so you can make an informed choice.

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