Why You May Think of Outsourcing Handling of Leads

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Outsourcing is a common practice among companies nowadays. Outsourcing is defined as the contract between two companies to allocate part of a core function to the second company on behalf of the first firm. Before you get on the outsourcing bandwagon, think first if outsourcing your lead handling functions can be beneficial and not detrimental to the company’s goals and visions.

Advantages of Outsourcing

Outsourcing, in the context of lead handling, has a variety of advantages. These advantages include the following:

It is less costly to outsource certain company functions to a third party. This is very true. When you outsource your lead handling functions to a third party, the only thing you need to worry about is the payment. You won’t even have to spend anything extra on payroll and equipment; the third-party company handles that for itself.

Another cost-saving feature in outsourcing lead handling is that you won’t have to train your people anymore. All you have to do is enter a contract with the third party, regularly pay the agreed fee, and they take care of the rest.

You have guaranteed expertise. The companies that handle lead handling for you are experts in the field. By outsourcing your lead handling activities, you can make sure that your company is in good hands. In fact, they could do a better job than you probably can.

You have more time for other business functions. Handling lead nurturing in-house can be good; however, it can be detrimental to the efficiency of your operation when you have to manage such a complex task. Your sales people may incur backlogs, which can be difficult to manage. Also, most of the times, these backlogs are totally ignored and not followed up on. This translates to a loss of a potentially qualified lead and potential customer.

Outsourcing greatly decreases the work load you have to encounter. You can have more time to devote to building sales since you won’t have to spend time sifting through lead information and filtering out the noise from the usable information. In addition, sales handling companies can do the research necessary for you to generate qualified leads--they are efficient. All these can be obtained for a fixed fee agreed upon on the contract.

Outsourcing gives a more professional approach to your marketing department. Lead handling services typically include 24-hour “live chat” service as well in-phone inquiries. The image of the person or company handling these services is judged greatly by how he handles inquiries. Because they are experts in the field, third parties that handle lead handling functions are able to take a more formal and professional approach to lead nurturing. This can make your company appear more impressive and reliable in the eyes of prospective customers, which is a plus point in converting leads into customers.

You have access to state-of-the-art lead distribution and data reporting solutions. As part of their expertise and specialization in the field, service companies that handle lead handling services use efficient and advantageous sales lead distribution software that makes it easy to exchange qualified leads between the service company and your salespeople. This data, when forwarded, makes it easy for you to measure the return of investment and other data necessary for making a report.

People who don’t understand the requirements of outsourcing can probably conclude that outsourcing is contradictory to a company’s goals. This is probably because you are letting a third party handle tasks that pertain to your own operation. However, if you look closely at it, outsourcing is simply delegating a part of your own tasks to someone else. It is still your company that benefits in outsourcing in the long run.


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More Ways on How to Distribute Your Leads

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If you can recall, we already talked about the different methods of distributing leads. We tackled about FIFO, LIFO, round robin, and a lot more. We also learned that even if there is really no definite and right lead distribution system, it doesn’t really mean that all of them are ideal. Some are not. For example, the round-robin approach, though the simplest, may not be appropriate to use for a number of reasons. First the leads may end up with the wrong sales agents, those who don’t know how to deal with them or sell your product lines to them. Second, it may establish unfairness in the sales team. Those who are fast in making deals will be the ones who get to do the job more than those who are slow.

Right now, you will learn more techniques. Again, keep in mind that you don’t really have to follow them to a T. I am giving these to you to provide you with more options. You do have the freedom to tweak them to suit the needs of your company.

Warm-up Telemarketing

This is one of the most popular methods these days. The concept is also simple. Once a lead places a call, a sales specialist will pick up the call and pre-qualify the leads. If the prospect is good, then the phone will be transferred automatically to the sales agent. The transfer is warm, which means that you don’t put the customer on hold or compel him to put down the phone. Moreover, these agents are trained to discuss about specific product lines. Thus, they can talk about the product extensively to the prospective customers.

There are a number of advantages of doing this. First, it can boost the morale of your sales agents since most of the leads that go through them are very easy to convert. They may already have high interest level on the product. You can also expect the conversion rate to increase. The leads, on the other hand, will feel confident over the company, as they can expect immediate response from your sales team.

But there are also downsides. As your leads continue to grow, this process may not longer prove to be inefficient for the simple reason that it’s time-consuming. There are also some leads who tend to provide wrong or incomplete information because they are not really expecting for sales agents to immediately talk to them.

Going through the Pipeline

Another method of lead distribution means the use of a sales pipeline. What is this? Sometimes called a funnel, it simply traces the movements of your leads until they become regular customers. Usually, they start out as prospects, then qualified leads. Depending on the effectiveness of the lead scoring or filtering techniques used, these qualified leads can become sales-ready ones. By then, there is almost 100 percent chance that they will purchase a product from your company once an offer is being placed.

How does the process go? Everything begins with a lead. Using their contact information—which include their phone numbers and e-mail addresses, you then qualify them. There are a lot of criteria that you can use, but usually, it’s about the capacity of the lead to buy the product you’re selling as well as his interest on it. If you are selling leather bags, for example, you may want to deal with leads who have their own businesses since they prefer luggage that can store as many documents as possible and are strong enough to last for a long time. The qualified leads will then be dealt with by the sales agents. Now replies can vary. They may say no or yes. Depending on how well you train your sales agents, those who say yes will then advance to the next level and would commonly become your new customers.

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Grave Mistakes You Do with Your Lead Distribution

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Unless you are willing to work on your leads alone—which is very impossible, you will have to assign your leads to your sales agents. They are the best people to work on them. They already have the negotiation skills. Besides, they are trained to do the job.

Sad to say, most of the flaws in lead management happen in lead distribution. When you get at this point, that’s when you start to mess up. There are actually plenty of reasons for the mistakes. Knowing them, though, will allow you to control their occurrence and even eliminate them:

1. You stick with wrong methods of lead distribution.

Today there is a variety of ways on how to distribute leads. Some consider the FIFO method. This means that sales agents will have to work on the older or the first leads in the database. Others would go with the round-robin approach because it’s simple. The leads will just have to be worked on by the agent who doesn’t have any. All these approaches may work with other companies but most definitely not with a lot. The problem is that they don’t put any value on the quality of your leads. Depending on the campaign that you have or the products you’re trying to sell, not all the prospects will qualify. You may just end up calling those who really don’t have interest over your offer.

2. You have the wrong lead distribution software.

If you just search through the World Wide Web, you will discover that there are countless lead routing programs that you can use. But not all of them will be ideal for your business. You have to consider what you need, the kind of lead distribution system you want to implement, and how it’s easy for you to customize your lead assignment program. You may also want to utilize a web-based lead distribution application. This way, you will be able to work on those leads anytime and anywhere you want to. You can also set up a centralized system to make sure that no lead will be assigned to different sales agents.

3. You failed to check your database.

You may have found the right lead distribution software, but if there’s something wrong with your database, then you’re still bound for mistakes. You may have utilized crude databases such as a spreadsheet or you failed to implement a fool-proof way of entering lead information. Thus, a lead may be listed more than once. The list will then be carried over into your lead assignment program.

4. The leads are assigned to the wrong person.

This can be one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever do when it comes to lead assignment. Having the best sales agents doesn’t really guarantee that they are also the most ideal people for the leads that you have. It will only get worse when these leads are assigned randomly. Your sales team may only end up providing wrong or misleading information to your potential clients. Some of them will not have an idea on what to do with the leads and how to effectively convert them to your loyal customers.

5. No one updates the lead distribution software.

Once a sales agent already makes a call on the leads assigned to him, he needs to update the application. This way, the sales supervisor can determine which of the prospects are already dealt with and which ones aren’t. It will also inform him which of the agents may be finding a hard time with sales leads. However, not all will be diligent enough in doing so. Thus, a lead who may have expressed disinterest may be contacted by another of your sales agent.

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