What is best for your business? Outsourcing lead generation or building an internal team?
Lead generation is challenging. Businesses are opting, now more than ever, to outsource their lead generation efforts to grow their business revenue. So when building up your sales function, you’ll have to decide between outsourcing lead generation or building an internal sales team. But how can you positively impact your sales pipeline and revenue and what is the right decision for your business?
There are pros and cons of both working with a lead generation agency and hiring an internal team. But the real questions are: what are your expectations, and what are you looking to achieve? Here at Excelerate360, we have extensive experience in lead generation services that deliver high-quality leads as well as hiring high-performing internal sales teams. This blog covers the pros and cons of outsourcing lead gen, in order to decide what’s right for you.
The Pros of Outsourcing Lead Generation
Outsourcing your lead generation is a great model to help grow your business. Let’s take a look at just some of the benefits.
1. Rapid Deployment
The ability to start quickly without compromising on lead quality. Working with an outsourcing agency means that you can kick off lead generation campaigns very quickly. Timelines will vary from agency to agency, but at Excelerate360 this can be a short matter of weeks from initial conversation to generating leads. If you’re a start-up looking to drive revenue in the immediate term, or a larger enterprise needing to hit your annual targets, outsourcing your lead generation can be a rapid way to generate the pipeline that you need.
2. Access to Lead Gen Expertise
Following on from the need to start quickly, the BDRs delivering your lead generation campaigns must have the required expertise; not only in your industry but also the experience of generating high-quality leads. Outsourcing gives you immediate access to business development reps who have proven experience delivering successful campaigns. From working with a wide range of clients or industries and within different economic changes, your BDR will make sure to apply their expertise to your account for your business growth.
4. Lead Generation Scalability
Being able to react quickly to market changes can provide a clear advantage over your competitors, especially if they exclusively work with an in-house sales team, which can suffer from traditional challenges such as recruitment time, churn and hiring restrictions. Outsourcing gives you the flexibility to scale up or down efforts without having to worry about internal hiring needs or HR overheads.
5. Cost Savings
One of the main pros of outsourcing is saving on the hidden costs typically associated with building, managing and running an in-house team. In terms of team management, you’ll save on costs like:
- Management overheads
- Staff churn costs
- Staff scaling costs – up and down!
To be competitive in today’s market you need to invest in more than just management, technology is critical to today’s success of any outbound BDR:
- GDPR compliant data
- Performance management tools – CRM
- Reporting and cadence management tools
All of these tools, and more, combined to equip your team with the best tech stack, can be very expensive. Often these monthly ongoing costs, aren’t considered when comparing an in-house team vs outsourcing. Your budget can be slowly eroded by these hidden costs. Your lead gen agency however will provide you with management, BDRs, and a complete tech stack all included in a monthly retainer price, plus future enhancements to improve results.
6. Dedicated Support
When looking for the right agency, be careful to consider the type of delivery model they offer. Depending on the sales agency you work with, you may get varied levels of support. Simply put, some agencies provide a shared team model – which means you may never get to meet the person doing the calling. If you want a more personalised, value-added and targeted approach to lead generation, we advise working with agencies that offer a true Dedicated BDR model. Why? They:
- Provide consistency across the campaign
- Build one-on-one relationships with your prospects
- Allow for learning and campaign optimisations
At Excelerate360 you’ll also have full access to your dedicated BDR, as if they are a member of your internal team, with the additional benefit of hiring your aligned BDR should you wish to take the outsourced model in-house 🙂
7. Native Language BDRs
If you’re expanding into new territories and locations, a native-speaking BDR is critical to ensuring success when entering a new territory. Each country has its nuances and by having native-speaking BDRs, not only are you gaining language benefits, but you’re also gaining a deeper cultural understanding of your new territory.
If you’re looking at expanding into more than one country, working with a global outsourced lead gen agency gives you the benefit of deploying multiple native-speaking BDRs at once. You will have one single point of contact, management, and reporting processes that will overcome the challenges of running multiple agencies across the globe.
The Cons of Outsourcing Lead Generation
If you’re looking to outsource your lead generation there are a few things that you should keep in mind.
1. You Still Need to Invest Some Time
One common misunderstanding about outsourcing lead generation is the time investment required from the client. Although you are outsourcing, you are still required to work with the sales agency to make your campaigns a success. What you put in, is what you get out! Here are some requirements you need to prepare:
- A clear understanding of your ICP and buyer persona
- Training time to get your agency management and BDRs up to speed with your proposition and business offering
- Ongoing communication is needed to ensure all outbound efforts (Messaging, pitch, approach) are aligned with the business goals and expectations.
2. Finding the Right Lead Generation Service
There are a lot of lead generation agencies to work with. So how do you make sure that you’re working with the best one for your business?
- Firstly look at their experience and client base. If these align with your business, industry or niche, then they likely have relevant skills and expertise to help you. At Excelerate360 we specialise in B2B lead generation delivering high-quality leads within complex, high-value sales propositions, across multiple industries and countries.
- Consider your business goals, if you’re looking to expand into Europe, you’ll need a native-speaking BDR and work with an agency that is experienced in your target geographies.
- If you need to start quickly, consider asking the agencies what their timelines are to get started. Be careful if they can start immediately, as any good campaign should include a structured onboarding process, training and of course allocated BDRs right for the campaign.
- Look at the agency’s sales strategies. If you’re a business in the B2B space that has a complex service or product offering, it’s likely a pay-per-led, commission only or mass outreach model won’t drive quality leads. At Excelerate360 we find a targeted approach that is metric-driven, tailored to your needs works best and produces sales-qualified leads.
The Pros of Hiring an Internal Team
It isn’t always right to outsource your lead generation efforts, especially if you already have a strong foundation to build a strong in-house team. So let’s take a look at the key benefits of hiring an in-house sales team to execute your direct lead generation campaigns.
1. In-house Expertise
Hiring a dedicated sales team fosters an environment where your employees become experts in your business over time. A good outsource lead generation team will also do this, but a BDR who is in the office, living and breathing your products and services may result in faster progression of the individual’s ability or role.
2. Long-Term Customer Relationships
We are seeing sales cycles lengthen across industries, especially in B2B businesses. If your sales cycle is very long, with a niche target market, outsourcing might not be suited for this type of approach. Having someone in-house will allow your BDR to build a stronger relationship with your key clients over a more extended period of time, without the pressures of constant performance.
The Cons of Hiring an Internal Team
1. Cost
When hiring an internal team you’ll need to expect to invest more budget for a longer period of time. Salaries, benefits and other costs like technology and management support associated with hiring a team will need to be budgeted for. And remember too, that HR is a factor in flexibility to change personnel or approach by geography or location.
2. Industry Experience
It may be difficult to hire someone with the skills and experience level you’re looking for in a competitive employment landscape. Recruitment is more than just salary nowadays; benefits, working from home, and lifestyle synergies drive employment decisions.
Should you use an Outsourced Lead Generation Agency?
The right choice for your business depends on how quickly you need to get started, your budget and your business goals. A few questions to ask yourself:
- How fast do you need to start seeing results? If the answer is “quickly”, outsourced lead generation may be a better fit.
- How much time do you have to commit to lead generation? Whilst outsourcing can take a load off compared to running an in-house team, you still need to be ready to commit time to work with the agency. The best strategy that delivers high-quality leads is one that is worked on both with the company knowledge and the outsourced team’s sales expertise.
- Are you ready? Do you have an ideal customer profile, buyer persona, target market, and defined go-to-market strategy? This is essential for any successful lead gen campaign. If you don’t have this, a lead gen agency can help you build this out to ensure campaign success.
- Are you in a position to manage, set up and run your own in-house team? If not, it’s highly likely you’ll need to outsource your lead generation and sales efforts.
- Is your current sales strategy driving results? If not, it may be worth considering working with an agency to refresh or optimise your lead generation strategy to hit your targets.
Are you a B2B Company Looking for Sales-Qualified leads?
At Excelerate360 we are experienced in driving qualified leads for a range of B2B businesses. Get in touch with one of our sales experts for more information.
