When companies need to get a quick burst of new leads to accelerate their sales funnel and increase the productivity of their internal sales reps they often turn to outsourcing sales and marketing as a viable solution. And that outsourcing sales company will use:
- Lead Gen Reps
- Email Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Lead Scoring
- Content Marketing
These integrated campaigns give you the ability to generate leads using a combination of outsourced sales reps and modern sales and marketing technologies. And with the advent of these integrated campaigns a lead may be ready for your closers without having spoken with your outsourced sales rep. This is done with marketing automation systems that score leads. You can download our leadscoring whitepaper here.
Below is quick summary of how we recommend you classify leads at different stages. It is also representative of the different type of leads you can expect from an outsourcing sales partner using modern technologies.
Lead Gen and Early Stage Leads – These are the earliest stage leads. They are typically leads that are the right type of decision maker in the right vertical. They can be cold lists or leads that have opened one email in an email campaign. They are not cold leads but they have not demonstrated any interest in your solution. All other leads are transitioned during a weekly meeting.
Marketing Qualified Leads – These are leads that have started to engage with your company. They may be opening emails consistently and looking at your early stage educational content. They are demonstrating early stage interest either by accepting additional information from a buyer development rep, or by reading blog articles.
Tele Sales Accepted Lead – If they are engaging with buyer developments reps and are agreeing to follow up calls (but not formal appointments). They are not volunteering what there pains or problems are yet.
Sales Accepted Leads – These buyers are starting to engage with your content in meaningful way. If you are scoring them in your marketing automation system that are watching demo videos or looking at your solutions page or even looking at pricing. If they are engaging with buyer development reps they are answering probing questions and discussing their existing solution or their problems.
Sales Qualified Leads – These buyers understand the problems your business solves and the problems you can help them solve. They have expressed a need, and agree to an appointment with your senior sales reps. Finally in many cases they have acknowledged that they have a budget, a path to budget of a timeline for making a decision.
Finally when should I take a lead over from my outsourcing sales team?
An outsourcing sales campaign will generate multiple types and stages of sales leads so there is no right time to take a lead over. When to take a lead over is your decision and depends on how much time your senior reps have on their hands. Over time, most leads will be either Sales Accepted or Sales Qualified but early in the campaign you can take leads sooner rather than later.
Long term we find that the best leads have both a high lead score in the marketing automation platform and are agreeing to next steps or appointments with your buyer development rep after being probed for need and other qualification criteria. In short, they are moving through a process. So by outsourcing sales you can take leads over at any time especially if your closers are cold calling because leads at any stage that are engaging will be more productive than a cold lead. A client will sometimes cherry pick the pipe early in the sales process if closers have extra time to develop leads or there is a great deal of pressure for early revenue. But over time you can expect your outsourcing sales rep to take them through sales ready to appointment setting.
To learn more about our new approach to outsourcing sales and how we can help you build sales and marketing operations we invite you to check out our approach to outsourced sales and marketing.
