As a lead generation agency working with all different business sizes, we often see scale-ups struggle to maintain a healthy pipeline as business operations tend to take priority. While this means a smooth-running business, it also means sales take a back seat. So how can you balance the day-to-day of a scale-up and ensure new business is coming in? The answer could be outsourced lead generation.
After delivering successful lead generation campaigns for our scale-up clients, here’s how to identify when you might need to outsource your lead generation efforts and the benefits you’ll get from doing so.
Signs Your Scale-Up Business Needs to Outsource Lead Generation
Scale-ups experience a lot of pain points when it comes to generating direct leads and new business. Here are some signs that show you might need to outsource your lead generation efforts for new business growth:
1. Minimal Time to Dedicate to Top-of-Funnel Activity
A good number of scale-up businesses are founder-led. They’ve built an in-house team to run the day-to-day but are still spread across the whole business: operations, product, marketing, sales and more. Despite having the best intention of spending more time on sales, it’s quite common in a scale-up environment for sales to fall to one of the last priorities, as a founder’s time is precious. This means there simply isn’t the capacity for top-of-funnel activity and the pipeline suffers because of it.
If you’re struggling to find time for top-of funnel activity, lead generation could drive the top-of-funnel activity you need, whilst allowing your founder to focus on the areas of the businesses that they are more suited to.
2. Needing to Scale Fast
Working for a successful scale-up often means investment – great! This also means scaling quickly and ramping up sales efforts to hit the targets you need to deliver results back to your investors. If you’re looking at doing this in-house, this process is more lengthy when taking into consideration hiring, training, onboarding and notice periods, it can mean that you’ll need to wait 6-12 months before you start seeing the results from an in house sales team, which might not align with growth targets.
It can be difficult navigating the urgency to scale, driving high quality leads, as well as hiring the right team members. In this scenario, outsourcing is a perfect solution or way to supplement your growth plans.
3. Recruitment and Management Challenges
Continuing with recruitment, struggling to find the right BDR to generate leads at any point of a business’s size can be difficult; especially if you’re a B2B business and you’re looking for salespeople with relevant experience and availability. Once you do find the right salespeople, staff turnover is also a challenge when hiring a team, it’s completely normal to find yourself back at square one looking for the right employee again.
You might find yourself as a scale-up wanting to focus less on recruitment and more on the day-to-day runnings of the business. This is where lead generation outsourcing can take all of the above off of your plate, whilst still delivering high-quality leads.
If you’re experiencing any of these pain points or more, outsourcing your lead generation could be best for your business.
Key Benefits of Outsourcing Lead Generation
If you’re experiencing some of these challenges, you may want to consider partnering with an agency to ease these pain points. There are many benefits of B2B lead generation, especially for scale-ups:
Access to Expertise
A good lead generation agency will be able to provide the expertise you need to face your business challenges. Expertise can mean so many different things:
- Industry knowledge
- Sales expertise
- Staff with the right behaviours
- Language skills
- Market knowledge
By working with an outsourced agency, you’ll bypass the time it would take to set up the right in-house team. You won’t need to spend time on hiring, training, and management, as this is all done by the agency, and you’ll have a fully functional lead generation team up and running on very short notice.
Access to Technology/Infrastructure
Tech stacks can cost £50,000+s per year and are labour-intensive to integrate with the rest of your business. A successful outbound campaign requires a sophisticated set of tools that all work together:
- CRM
- Cadence Management
- Mult Channel (Email, Telephone, Socials)
- Up-to-date data
- User intent management
- Reporting and analytics tools
These tools ensure that you’re speaking to the right person, at the right time, with the right messaging; whilst also providing data insights to optimise your campaign. But this is a lot to set up for one team, especially when taking into consideration time, salary and monthly ongoing management costs for the tools themselves. When investing in a lead generation agency, you get instant access to their technology and infrastructure. Your BDRs will gain immediate access to a fully functioning and optimised tech stack so they can focus on driving leads from day one.
Performance Driven
Especially with founder-led scale-ups, we’ve seen that time can be spread thin and a focus can be shifted away from sales into more operational aspects of the business. This can mean that the sales pipeline doesn’t look as healthy as it could be, negatively impacting business growth. Partnering with a lead generation agency plugs this gap as their only focus is to drive high-quality leads. This allows you to focus on core business activities, whilst new business opportunities are being generated.
Lead generation agencies also measure, track and report on the whole sales funnel. For example:
- What channel is driving leads and why
- Activity to appointment close ratios
- Response rates and rejection reasons
Not only does this allow for data-driven decisions, but it also provides scale-ups with the insights required to know which investments are driving ROI. This allows you to reinvest in the areas driving the most growth, gives you feedback on the market you’re in as well as having data to report back to the board and investors.
Improved Flexibility and Scalability
This is the main benefit we see for scale-ups when it comes to lead gen outsourcing. The ability to be dynamic in investments. Working with an outsourcing partner allows you to:
- Scale up and down your lead generation as you need
- Test new markets and industries
- Trail new strategies and approaches with conclusive reporting
- Adapt to market changes very quickly
Whilst outsourcing lead generation is often best as a long-term solution, it can also be used as a ‘try before you buy’. If you have a limited budget and need to show results to unlock further budget investments, outsourcing can prove ROI until you decide to take it in-house. And if you do decide to take it in-house, you’ll have insights that you wouldn’t otherwise have if you were to start from scratch.
How Excelerate360 Can Help Your Scale-Up Business Grow
Outsourcing lead generation is a strategic advantage for many scale-up businesses. Accelerate business growth and drive high-quality leads with lead generation experts who have proven results. Gain the advantages of cost savings, scalability, market insights and more.
At Excelerate360 we take pride in driving quality lead generation campaigns, tailored to your business. Get in touch with one of our lead generation team members to see how we can help accelerate your business growth.