Cold-calling is a proven many for many small businesses to generate leads.

 

But, for many businesses, there’s always the question of who actually does it.

Even for larger companies with dedicated sales teams this is a valid question: should you use your own people or turn to a specialist telemarketing agency?

 

Let’s put aside how to find a good telemarketing agency, and focus on the question of whether you should use internal resource or outsource through a telemarketing agency.

 

For many companies, there are three compelling reasons to use a telemarketing agency:

 

1) Focus

2) Capabilities

3) Cost

 

This article examines these three reasons and suggests why, in many cases, it makes more sense to use the services of an external telemarketing agency.

 

1) Focus

Firstly, a strong reason for using a telemarketing agency is that they will focus on the task of generating leads for your business. Many companies, when using an internal resource, will hand this over to either an admin person or expect it to be done as part of their sales role.

 

But, let’s be honest about what really happens in most businesses: they find something else to do.

 

Unlike a telemarketing agency, which employs people who cold-call day-in, day-out, your employees have other duties to perform. And, believe me, they will find anything else to do rather than telemarketing. The same goes for if you choose to hire your own people “just to cold call” rather than use a telemarketing agency. After a few months, I guarantee, they will be doing something (anything) else rather than telemarketing.

 

Larger telemarketing agencies that recruit raw telemarketers have huge problems with churn. If you think that you can recruit and retain someone to do the role long term, think again!

 

Using a telemarketing agency means that you have a resource focused on telemarketing. By using a telemarketing agency you ensure a continual effort to generate leads, not the reluctant, ad-hoc approach you will get form your own people.

 

2) Capabilities

 

Hand-in-hand with the issue of focus is that of capabilities. By working with a telemarketing agency you will access people who are far better at telemarketing that your own people. Even if you have dedicated sales people they often won’t match a good telemarketing agency when it comes to cold-calling.

 

An external telemarketing agency also brings capabilities around data acquisition, segmentation, collateral development and “pitch” development which your own people will lack. Think about it; a good telemarketer working in a small telemarketing agency will pitch around 100 prospects in a week. Given that the best telemarketers have been in the game for at least five years, that’s over 20,000 pitches. That’s experience you will only get by working with a telemarketing agency; you’ll never get it from an in-house employee.

 

3) Cost

 

Finally, another reason for many companies to consider using a telemarketing agency is cost.

 

When comparing using your sales team, or even yourself as the owner of a small business, against the cost of a telemarketing agency, the costs are pretty compelling. A telemarketing agency will charge, on average around £250-300 per day for a telemarketer. That’s attractive even when you compare it against the cost of your sales people. But when you consider the cost of them not being in front of prospects and actually closing, the cost justification stacks up in favour of the telemarketing agency.

 

When comparing a telemarketing agency against an admin person making “a few cold calls” the costs need a little more study but they still make sense. Usually, the best approach is to consider two factors: a) the cost per lead and b) the opportunity cost.

 

When looking at the former, the telemarketing agency, which is always more efficient, typically wins. In addition, when you think about the opportunity cost of not getting new leads into your pipeline and the resulting lost new business growth, it’s usually obvious that using a telemarketing agency is the best investment.

 

So, in summary, when thinking about whether to use your own people or a telemarketing agency, consider the total picture of how much focused your own people will be, how good they will be, and what is the real return on their costs.

 

We believe that, taking all these elements into account, a telemarketing agency is the most attractive route for many businesses.



Thanks to David Regler for contributing this article to our Leads blog:

Annuity Leads

One of the most difficult tasks you will face as a businessman is generating legitimate business opportunity leads. It is certainly difficult generating any kinds of leads, but finding the ones that will benefit your business the most is the challenge at hand. So where do you start?

Before you begin generating your business opportunity leads, you have to do a few things. First, put together a plan of what your target market is and how you intend on reaching them. Your plan can and will change over time, but it will assist you in the beginning phases. Having a plan will help take you from the mediocre leads to the diamonds in the rough.

Next, study up on the business and know everything about it inside and out. Selling people on your business opportunity is not an easy task, especially when you are unfamiliar with it. Knowing everything there is to know about the products and business as a whole will make it much more comfortable while selling to potential leads.

As soon as you have developed a plan and become an expert in the business, you are ready to begin generating your business opportunity leads. It can be difficult determining where the best place will be to look. But to make things easy on yourself, ask friends and family first. This way you can potentially reel in a few easy ones to build up your confidence.

Building a list does not happen on its own. You have to be willing to work at it and be direct with people. When talking to your friends and family members, do not be afraid to ask them if they know people you can contact. Keep in mind though that you want a list of people that will truly benefit you, not just take up space.

Part of being direct is collecting information from people. Whether it is in person, over the phone, or online you want to collect as much information as possible for your list. This means getting people’s phone numbers, email addresses, business cards. Whatever you can get from them, try not to leave without something.

If you are struggling to come up with business opportunity leads, do not give up just yet. You can purchase leads for your list through most business opportunities, but be cautious. Make sure you look into the quality of these leads because they can sometimes be random people with no interest.

You can also generate your own leads also by placing free classified ads.

Instead of advertising your opportunity advertise an incentive such as a free gift such as an informative ebook or report. You could also give away the rebranding rights as a way to spread the word.All this can be done on auto pilot by using a squeeze page and auto-responder.

Putting together a list of business opportunity leads is critical to your business for a number of reasons. It will allow you to stay in touch with customers, inform them of specials and new products, and it will allow you to keep a personal relationship.



Thanks to Charles for contributing this article to our Leads blog:

How to Make Money Online

 

Imagine being the owner of a brand. Now imagine it making losses and some other competitor making big profit with the same kind of product although yours is superior to that of them. Is the imagination horrible? Of course it would be. Because sales is the major demand of any business and if a business is not making profit then it is a serious issue. If you make good use of certain advertising channels then it can be beneficial. B2B lead generation is one such channel and with the advent of online advertising it is growing with leaps and bounds.

Generally saying, in business to business lead generation or B2B lead generation, one product or brand takes the help of other brand for the sake of its online promotion. Here one website promote other website and both are getting benefit and it is not a new concept rather its an age old concept. Also, it is important that organizations find other companies to do business with. You can find many examples of the importance of good business-to-business lead generation. For example various manufacturing firms need other companies to supply them with a variety of parts.

And it is important that the makers of the parts establish themselves with compatible manufacturers in order to benefit both companies. This is how compatible companies help each other in generating sales though generating leads for each other. Now, this lead generation market is larger than ever before due to the advent of Internet. Now many companies are running an Email campaign and also utilizing options like auto responders, creation of opt in mailing lists, registration form offerings and business to business referrals. These days the offering of free services is also a nice option for bringing more customers to a particular website.

You would have seen some websites offering business reports, company profiles or horoscopes to invite users. This is also B2B lead generation. Their initial services are free and later they are used to link into products for selling. These sales techniques are working and are generating leads. This, if you are an owner of a brand then don’t imagine worse, rather adapt to B2B lead generation and feel good.



Thanks to Lalita N for contributing this article to our Leads blog:

Making Money Online

The practice of exchanging service, goods or both is called trading or commerce. In the past, trading was originally in the form of barter. It was done simply by exchanging a product with another product or service. TradeLeads.at is a website that offers export import service to international trade and global trade. It is a market for exporter, importer, manufacturer, wholesaler and supplier.

TradeLeads.at gives so many benefits to manufacturers. It is an international market that is available online to aid even the smallest companies in doing business. TradeLeads.at helps increase the company’s gross income and penetrates even international trade market. It is a business to business or b2b company. It helps another company get the right sourcing. It assists the company’s’ needs in buying or selling services or products both domestic and international. You can choose to buy from over 200,000 offers in around 1,100 global trade leads.

Selling the products on TradeLeads.at is simple. The first thing to do is to be a member of TradeLeads.at. Registration is offered for free. Your business will then be included in the company directory. It is now easy to post your products. You can even add other details and specifications of the product and edit them any time. A Company Profile will be given upon registering to introduce the business and any other general information about it.

The company’s products can be posted at TradeLeads.at through the product catalog. This will increase your chances to be identified by buyers. Multiple products can be posted. Paying members can place more products and will have the chance to buy extra spaces. But those who availed the free membership can post a maximum of five products only. The trade lead should contain information and availability of the product as well as the timeliness of the company to deliver the goods to clients.

Most of the buyers prefer to search for suppliers and products by browsing through the website. But some of them opt to publish trade leads for the sellers to find them. You can now look for the posted buying trade leads and then you can send them price quotation. You can also post a proposal to sell your product or service. TradeLeads.at makes sure that the offer is made to the most visited trade leads in the world. All the notifications are done through electronic mail. TradeLeads.at can even provide your company with an email account for immediate facilitation of the whole process. However, majority of the buyers only allow paying members to view their information and to make contact.

A buyer can post a trade lead. Trade lead is one way of inviting sellers to submit price quotations together with its terms and conditions on a particular product. If you think you have not found the product you are looking for, post trade leads. There are some suppliers who do not post all their available products that is why buyers are urged to post a buying lead so as to let the sellers come to you instead.



Thanks to Brown Heys for contributing this article to our Leads blog:

Online Lead Generation

When you look at the landscape of American Business, you will see a whole heap of failures.

In fact, about 75% of American businesses go “Belly Up” within the first year of opening. 75%…that’s down right disgusting.

It’s amazing that anyone would even consider starting a business with stats like that. But every year tens of thousands of people risk everything they have and give it a shot.

In contrast, FRANCHISE’S maintain a Surprising 75% success rate.

Why do you think that is?

Operating Procedures Provide Control

I’ll tell you why, it’s because they are based on a systematic way of doing things. They have operating procedures for almost every function that a business has. Therefore they have control over all areas of their business.

Now on the other hand, without systems you never have control. You never know the value of your average client…you never have consistency…”So You Never Grow Your Business…Thus You Fail To Survive!”

Michael Gerber, author of “The E Myth” and “The E Myth Revisited” addresses this topic at great length in his writings. In his books he digs deeply into the franchise phenomenon that has swept our nation and the world over the past 50 years.

Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonalds what it is today, was a 52-year-old salesman when he first walked into the San Bernardino hamburger stand back in 1952 to sell the two McDonald brothers a milkshake machine.

Something magical happened that day…a seed was planted that would change the world of business forever.

Mr. Kroc thought it was a miracle. Hamburgers were produced in a way he’d never seen before—quickly, efficiently, inexpensively, and identically…and best of all, any bone-head could do it. The rest is history!

Ya see, with systems in place, you can make your business work for you instead of you working for your business.

System for a Life Insurance Agent

Imagine this…

You come into your office in the morning; you check your fax machine. You have 3-4 faxes sitting there, all of which are new life insurance leads that were sparked by your latest issue of your newsletter that is set up totally automatic for you.

Next thing you do is say good morning to your secretary…she tells you about the 4 appointments you have this morning of which 3 will be over the phone and all of them were responding to your Free Report which you also have set up on autopilot.

She then tells you she cleared the calendar for the afternoon because Judge Powel wants to play a round of golf with you and discuss his retirement planning.

This dream can be your reality if you only believe in it and actually start to take the steps to make it happen.

What it all boils down to is this…if you ever want to have total control over your life and have the freedom to come and go as you please…and not be a slave to your business…you MUST have systems in place.



Thanks to Dean Cipriano for contributing this article to our Leads blog:

Sales Lead Generation