Sourcing your lead generation to a third party can be tempting. You may think that you won’t have to worry about a thing and that all those leads will just come rolling in. But outsourcing your lead generation is actually not the best option for you or your company. Today we’ll outline 12 reasons why this is true!
| Takeaways |
|---|
| 1. Evaluating in-house lead generation potential is crucial. |
| 2. Control over lead quality might be compromised. |
| 3. Outsourcing may lead to communication challenges. |
| 4. In-house teams can adapt quickly to changes. |
| 5. Building internal expertise has long-term benefits. |
| 6. Outsourced vendors might not align with your brand. |
| 7. Confidentiality of customer data can be a concern. |
| 8. In-house teams can provide immediate feedback. |
| 9. Cultural differences might affect outsourced results. |
| 10. In-house teams can better understand customer needs. |
1. It’s Not Cost-Effective
Outsourcing lead generation will actually save you a lot of money. How much does it cost to hire one new salesperson? Let’s say you’re looking for an entry-level sales associate, and that person’s salary is $35,000. That’s not including tax, benefits, office space, or furniture they might need. All this adds up fast! You could be spending anywhere between $80,000 and $100,000 on just one new team member!
By comparison, outsourcing your lead generation costs you a fraction of the cost and only when the lead has already been generated. You’ll also be saving in terms of time and effort, with no interviews to go through or reference checks to complete before making a hire (which can take weeks). And if the new employee doesn’t work out? You have to start all over again with another round of applications and interviews.
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2. You Might Have To Hire Even More People
You might need to add more staff. Be aware that when you outsource your lead generation, you may end up needing even more people in your marketing and sales teams, to manage those leads.
That’s because the quality of your leads determines if they go straight to sales or if they require further nurturing by the marketing team before they are handed over. In either case, you might need extra people to help with the influx of new leads.
You might need a whole new department dedicated to analyzing leads. You may also find that you need an entirely new department devoted strictly to monitoring the quality of your various vendors’ work. This can be especially important if you’re using several different vendors at once and want to make sure none of them is underperforming.
3. Leads Could Become Stale
As your sales team works on an inbound lead, it’s inevitable that some leads will slip through the cracks. Your sales reps are busy and have a lot on their plate. It’s not uncommon for a lead to sit for too long at the top of the funnel and grow stale.
How long does it take for a lead to become stale? It all depends on your business and how quickly you need to contact prospects after they fill out a form or download gated content. If you wait too long, they may no longer be interested in learning more about your business—or even remember why they reached out in the first place.
After all, it’s been three weeks since you last spoke with them and their priorities may have changed. In order to avoid this, make sure you follow up as soon as possible with every single prospect who contacts you!
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4. You Won’t Be Using Your Resources Efficiently
Outsourcing lead gen is costly. Think about it: you’re paying not one but two companies to generate leads for you. One company is your marketing agency, and the other is your lead generation partner. You’re basically doubling the amount of money that’s being invested into generating leads. That’s a lot of money, and you could be spending it on something more valuable to your organization.
For example, instead of outsourcing lead generation, you could invest in sales training for executives or new employees for your sales team or better tools for marketing departments. All of these alternatives would get better results than outsourcing lead generation ever would because they’d put more people who are passionate about their jobs working towards the goal of increasing sales at your business!
5. Lead Quality Will Suffer
If you outsource your lead generation, you run the risk of sacrificing lead quality. When someone else is collecting leads for you, it’s tough to predict what kind of information they’ll be able to provide. Do their questions focus on quality over quantity? Are the data fields consistent with your CRM? Are they asking leading questions that result in leads that already have a bias before they reach your sales team?
It’s difficult to ensure these things when you don’t have control over how vendors ask for and collect contact information from prospects. These are just a few reasons why it may be wise to keep lead generation in-house rather than outsourcing it.
6. You Could Lose Valuable Data
Data security is a concern. There are two main reasons you may want to keep your lead generation in-house: You don’t want to lose control of your data. Your company’s data is its most valuable asset, and if you lose it, you put more than just your lead generation at risk. Even worse, if that partner suffers a data breach, so will you; You can’t access your data on demand. Your leads are spread out among multiple teams and platforms!
7. You Might Not Get The Leads You Need When You Need Them
Even if you know why you should grow your own leads, the concepts can be hard to implement. You might not have a good lead generation system in place. Or maybe you do, but don’t know what to do with the leads when you get them. If this is true for you, we highly recommend working with an agency or consultant that can help you turn your lead generation efforts into sales opportunities for your business.
But be careful about who you choose to work with. It’s important to find someone who meets all of the following requirements:
- A thorough understanding of the product or service that your company provides
- Knowledge of the best strategies and tactics for generating high-quality leads and cultivating them into customers
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8. It Will Only Lead To Confusion/Miscommunication
It will only lead to confusion and miscommunication. You can’t be sure the person or team you’re working with has the same vision for your business that you do. Your leads are unique to your business, so you should be generating them yourself to ensure accuracy and quality.
Outsourcing teams are likely from different backgrounds, cultures, and geographies than you and so are their approaches to business and communication! If what is normal practice in one country doesn’t work for another, it’s better to avoid this whole problem altogether by keeping things in-house.
9. Nobody Likes A Slacker
Your sales team will be demotivated to work harder if they’re just getting outsourced leads. If you’re not giving your sales team the opportunity to develop and improve their skills, they’ll start looking for opportunities elsewhere, and we all know what that means: more time and money invested in hiring new reps. And even if you can keep them around, their performance will likely suffer, since they don’t have the same vested interest in bringing in leads themselves.
That’s why the best lead generation is done by your own team members. It gives them a meaningful task to perform as part of their overall responsibilities. More importantly, it also lets your sales reps build up relationships with prospects which will help them convert more leads into customers later on a win-win situation for everyone involved!
Plus it’s not just about getting prospects’ information either; this process allows both parties to get comfortable with each other through dialogue before moving forward with any kind of commitment.”
10. Outsourcing Limits Your Flexibility And Creativity In Finding New Leads
Outsourcing keeps your company from being able to find new leads and explore new opportunities on its own. For a start, you lose the ability to dream up creative ways to find leads. Your team members can’t brainstorm new ideas about how you might engage with your audience or who else might be interested in what you’re selling.
You’ll have to wait for an outsourced vendor to come up with something on their end if you want any innovation in your marketing strategy and even then, they won’t really understand what makes your company tick in the same way that your own team does.
You also lose the ability to experiment and try new things; if one thing isn’t working out, you have no control over changing it if it’s outsourced. And since there are no guarantees that something will work just because it worked for another company, this lack of flexibility is especially problematic when it comes to lead generation.
11. Your Business Processes Won’t Develop With The Rest Of Your Business
Outsourcing doesn’t just mean you’re missing out on your in-house team’s training and experience, but also that you lose out on the opportunity to optimize your processes. There are many variables to consider when outsourcing, and in order to get the best results, you might need to try a couple of different outsourcing services or strategies first.
It can be a learning curve but a valuable one. If your team is trained and skilled at doing the work themselves, they’ll know how to make adjustments as needed based on their own internal metrics. If they outsource lead gen now and then decide not to later down the line, they won’t have those metrics or know-how and will have to start from square one all over again.
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12. Outsourcing Vendors May Not Be Up To Date On Your Newest Offerings.
The only person who truly knows your business is you. If you have a new product that you haven’t launched yet or an older one that not many people know about, no outside vendor will be able to make sales around it because they won’t know it exists. A marketing company is likely to be on top of the latest trends and strategies in the industry, but nobody knows your business better than you do. That should be reason enough not to outsource lead generation!
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Wrapping Up
As you can see, there are many reasons you shouldn’t outsource your lead generation. However, there are a few good reasons to do it:
- If you have more leads than your staff can possibly handle
- If you don’t have an in-house marketing team
- If you need to save time and money for revenue-generating activities such as client development
If you decide to outsource your lead generation efforts, make sure you do your research. Get to know the vendor and make sure they’re a good cultural fit with your organization.
Further Reading
Here are some additional resources you might find useful to explore the topic of outsourcing lead generation:
The Benefits and Challenges of Sales Outsourcing Learn about the advantages and potential drawbacks of outsourcing sales activities, and how it can impact your business growth.
Should You Outsource Sales Prospecting? Discover seven compelling reasons why outsourcing sales prospecting could be beneficial, along with considerations you should keep in mind.
Why Outsource Lead Generation Services Explore the reasons why outsourcing lead generation services could be a strategic decision for your business and how it can enhance your lead generation efforts.
People Also Ask
What Does Outsourcing Mean?
Outsourcing means handing over the reins of a particular part of the business to someone else in this case, to a company whose expertise lies in generating leads for their clients. Outsourcing lead generation can be extremely cost-effective because it saves you from having to hire employees and train them specifically for that task within your own company. It also allows you to focus on other aspects of running a business like maintaining relationships with existing clients while the experts handle the other stuff.
How Does Outsourcing Work?
Outsourcing works by taking care of those pesky little things like lead generation so that you can focus on other important aspects of running your business
What Are The Benefits Of Outsourced Lead Generation?
The main benefit of outsourcing lead generation is that you don’t have to do it yourself: you can outsource the work and focus on something else.
How Can I Generate Leads For My Business?
You can generate leads by creating landing pages or digital ads. While this can be done in-house, many businesses choose to outsource their lead generation needs. If you’re looking for ways to generate leads for your business, consider outsourcing.
What Are The Problems With Outsourcing Lead Generation?
Some companies can end up spending more than they would have by just doing the work themselves, or they can end up with low-quality leads that don’t go anywhere. And it can take a while to find the right outsourcing partner in the first place: there are a lot of good companies out there, but not all of them are going to be a good fit for you.
How Can I Find An Outsourcing Partner That Is Right For Me?
It depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for quality leads, you’ll need to make sure that your outsourcing partner has access to a pool of qualified customers and is able to generate high-quality leads from them.
If you’re looking for cost-effectiveness, you’ll need to make sure that your outsourcing partner charges a reasonable price for their services. You should also make sure that they have experience working with companies in your industry or sector, so that they know how to reach the people.
What’s Wrong With Having Someone Else Do My Lead Generation For Me?
While it might seem easier to have someone else do the work for you, it doesn’t always work out that way. Because most lead generation companies aren’t immersed in your business and it’s unique needs, they often approach lead generation from a one-size-fits-all perspective that produces lackluster results for many businesses.
How Can I Make Sure My Lead Generation Is Effective?
If you want to make sure your lead gen efforts will be effective, then you need to take control of that process and make it happen yourself. The best way to do this is by creating an inbound marketing plan where you research how leads are generated via different tools like blogs, social media marketing, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).
What Are The Risks?
Many companies outsource lead generation because they think it will be cheaper, but this is far from true. Lead generation is an integral part of your business and should not be treated as anything other than that.
Why Do Companies Outsource Lead Generation?
Because they don’t know any better! Many companies fall victim to the idea that someone else doing it will be faster or cheaper or better, but this simply isn’t true. When it comes down to it, you’re better off investing in people who know your brand and your product to create those relationships with potential clients on behalf of your company than you are hiring someone outside who doesn’t have the same investment in your success.
Can’t I Just Use An In-House Team?
You could, but that’s usually more expensive and less effective. An in-house team would have a higher salary than an outsourced one, and it’s hard to find people that are quality enough for our company.
What Are The Downsides Of Outsourcing To An Agency?
When you choose to outsource to a lead generation agency, you are essentially agreeing to pay for a service that could be more expensive and less effective over time than if you were to invest in inbound marketing. In addition to being costly, this method is outdated, and it won’t help you reach potential customers online.
Is There A Better Way To Generate Leads Than Outsourcing?
Yes! If you want to generate leads without paying an agency or spending hours researching each prospect on your own, then inbound marketing is the right strategy for you. Inbound marketing is an approach that focuses on drawing in leads through useful content, personalized messages, and other techniques that don’t rely heavily on cold calls or spam emails.
Costantine Edward is a digital marketing expert, freelance writer, and entrepreneur who helps people attain financial freedom. I’ve been working in marketing since I was 18 years old and have managed to build a successful career doing what I love.