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MarketingStartup

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Sep 18, 2013
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Hi there,

Have any of you Guys used lead generation companies before?

What do you look for in your lead generation companies and what advice can you offer me to give the best possible chances in succeeding.

Thank you
Pierre
 
I haven't used lead generation companies that are large agencies but I've used freelancers and small lead generation businesses who advertise on PeoplePerHour, this is because they usually (the best ones anyway) come with genuine reviews and this makes me confident in their abilities. These are lead generation agents who charge an hourly or flat rate rather than those who work on commission only.
 
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"These are lead generation agents who charge an hourly or flat rate rather than those who work on commission only."

That is a double edged sword. I have found those that are on commission only actually work to make a living. Some of those on an hourly or flat rate are often sat at home watching Jeremy Kyle and content in the knowledge they are going to be paid whatever the outcome. They just tell you they had a bad day, bad area, whatever and hopefully tomorrow things will be better. They rarely are

I won't tar all of them with the same brush... I am sure there are good people on People Per Hour.I have just found in my experience that the dog needs to eat....so I would take commission only anytime
 
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I have used a couple of lead generation companies.

One thing i want from the companies is a decent refunds policy. For example if i can not get hold of the lead, if its a fake name/number i would want my money back.

I much prefer profit share leads, this reduces my risk and ensures the leads coming through are decent as its in the lead generators interest then to provide better leads.
 
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yeah - frankly I find them a load of rubbish. Have tried a number of times with no success, their product knowledge and sales skills basically mean they are trying to fish with a tin can in the sea.
 
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Quality varies from company to company. There are some good ones out there but there are a lot more bad ones. The best thing is to get them to do a trial for you and then you can assess them, the quality of their work and then decide if you want to take it further.
 
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Interesting topic! I am getting a lot of proposition of lead generating company, bur I can say that they don't make me trust them. Would be great to hear from someone with positive experience from usage of such services.
 
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Hi,

All these companies do is cold call. Isn't the greatest way to generate leads. Perhaps you could also look at:

Direct Mail - sales letters, flyers, leaflets, and postcards

When written (copywriter) and designed well (designer), these can be very affective in generating leads and interest. Just send them to prospective clients/customers.

They will need to be persuasive and highly targeted, but will do a better job than cold calling. May even cost much less to produce than these companies will charge you! Plus if the response is much better, will be money well spent and you will see a positive return. :)
 
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Elliottc26 said:
Hi,

All these companies do is cold call. Isn't the greatest way to generate leads. Perhaps you could also look at:

Direct Mail - sales letters, flyers, leaflets, and postcards

When written (copywriter) and designed well (designer), these can be very affective in generating leads and interest. Just send them to prospective clients/customers.

They will need to be persuasive and highly targeted, but will do a better job than cold calling. May even cost much less to produce than these companies will charge you! Plus if the response is much better, will be money well spent and you will see a positive return. :)
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That is a statement of fact is it?

In what business would this apply?

Where a leaflet works better than a conversation, the thing is they are not mutually exclusive and however well your written word, it will nearly always still require someone to close it, so whilst you are clearly trying to push your business you are only offering part of the solution.
 
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beasty said:
That is a statement of fact is it?

In what business would this apply?

Where a leaflet works better than a conversation, the thing is they are not mutually exclusive and however well your written word, it will nearly always still require someone to close it, so whilst you are clearly trying to push your business you are only offering part of the solution.
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I see someone's on the war path! Depends how much you want to spend, the size of your budget, etc.,. Not the most favourable responses about these lead generating companies on here. Direct mail generates a response (creates leads) - your website, sales people, etc, do the rest.

For best results, learn sales and do your own cold calling. You know you're business better than anyone else. Seems these companies are useless.
 
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I worked at a company a while back selling B to B, medium to big businesses with minimum 300 staff and up. We used people to get us appointments who were ex-actors, they seemed to be good at it. I think we paid them a flat fee per appt. I would have been quite happy to pay them some commission on top, but the lead times were very long.

What goods/services do you sell?

And yes I agree that no one can know your business as well as you can, but it's not always easy to find the time to do an hour or so of calling. Or if you're having a $h1t€ day, you're not going to be in the best frame of mind!
 
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I have been a business developer for 15 years and have been successful in every campaign I have ever worked in across multiple industries.

What every poster here has overlooked is very simple.

You have good employees / average employees / poor employees.

Same concept with telemarketeers/telesales/business developers call it what you will and same concept with any staff you employ.

There are both positives and negatives to having in-house/outsourced staff and it is very short sighted to assume - this does not work.

E.G. I carried out work for an electrical sub contractor. He used a telemarketing company before and decided to give me a try. Yes, he paid more than he did initially and it was only for a three month period; that contract last seven months - but the results were far greater than what he had before. Why? because the people are different, their approach is different, their approach to data management and relationship building is different.

If you are going to get a battery hen to smash the phones, of course it won't work. That's like asking a chef to build a laptop.

In telesales (like any other profession) you need to be skilled in what you are doing.

As for the posters above who mentioned marketing, flyers etc. that is not a replacement for direct sales - it is just another route to market. You could spend millions on marketing and not see a penny in return for it as it is quite often unmeasurable. Saying it is cheaper is not necessarily so - it depends on how much you spend and how you apply the marketing
 
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Actually telemarketing lead generation is a great way to generate new business.

Its the only marketing activity that gets you speaking directly with decision makers.

Here is an article that i hope helps. People like to kick telemarketing, mostly because they don't understand the difference between telemarketing and telesales, what i would add is that B2C telesales should be banned, calling people at home in the evenings is not right, and is often done by off shoring companies which this country has no legal come back on for bad practices.

http://ebonybailey.co.uk/wp/ultimate-telemarketing-guide/
 
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Elliottc26 said:
...cold calling can also cost around 60% more than other methods. :)
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It would be interesting to see the concrete data, backing up this 'fact'. Also isn't it the return on that cost that counts in any form of marketing as opposed to the initial price?
 
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well said jonathan, that thought is often left out. ROI is the key. If you spend £1m but generate £10m, was it expensive?
 
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you will often find other people beating up other industries to promote what they do, extremely unprofessional in my opinion.
 
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If you mean correcting a comment that's complete garbage and clearly pulled of the air then yes that's what's happening here.

May I add what an excellent addition you have made to this thread.
 
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Still full of the same crap I see estwig . Glad u find soooo much time to spend all day on forums posting your very old rehashed rubbish, if you have nothing valuable to add its best not to bother at all. It's because of people like you, that are somehow moderators that ukbf has died a death.
 
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Guys, internet arguing does not work.

You both have your own opinion and neither of you are going to budge and it is just going to escalate into an open flaming session - just respect the others opinion - no matter how alien it is to you.
 
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ebonybailey said:
Still full of the same crap I see estwig . Glad u find soooo much time to spend all day on forums posting your very old rehashed rubbish, if you have nothing valuable to add its best not to bother at all. It's because of people like you, that are somehow moderators that ukbf has died a death.
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I'm not a mod, they ain't never gonna ask me are they?

What's got your knickers in such a twist? Me b+tching at you is hardly news, I thought you was over this years ago.
 
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Yes, every single one we've come across are garbage and sell you leads that simply aren't even leads, they're rarely even ready to 'buy'.

Some authority should clamp down on these idiots because there's loads of them, there's one big name in this field that run multiple trading names and they only have one aim, to rip you off.

Avoid like the plague and be very wary of any that approach you.

We're actually about to test a different approach to lead generation though (purely only trialling and testing the water at this stage though) and that's http://leadforensics.com/
 
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estwig said:
I'm not a mod, they ain't never gonna ask me are they?

What's got your knickers in such a twist? Me b+tching at you is hardly news, I thought you was over this years ago.
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This thread has been here for 3 months, ample time for you to pitch your oar in if you care so passionately about the subject of lead generation. Suddenly a telemarketer makes a comment and your all over it like a rash.
 
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If you talk to someone like they are human being with respect at the other end of the phone they will at least listen to you. You can't ask anything more than that.
 
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telemax said:
If you talk to someone like they are human being with respect at the other end of the phone they will at least listen to you. You can't ask anything more than that.
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Yes, but they never asked you to call them about your product/service did they?

So what's the difference between unsolicited phone calls (phone spam) and unsolicited emails (email spam)?

Wherever you sit on the fence on the ethicalness of this approach, the fact remains that it is still unsolicited, so many are going to call this spamming.

Please feel free to prove me wrong though.
 
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zigojacko said:
Yes, but they never asked you to call them about your product/service did they?

So what's the difference between unsolicited phone calls (phone spam) and unsolicited emails (email spam)?

Wherever you sit on the fence on the ethicalness of this approach, the fact remains that it is still unsolicited, so many are going to call this spamming.

Please feel free to prove me wrong though.
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Lets say I start up a flower import business for example. Is it unethical for me to build my business by ringing local flower shops trying to build business relationships with them in order to potentially become a supplier?

Or a car part distributor , ringing local motor factor shops?

Also if you don't like intrusiveness I think you might be on the wrong road with Leadforensics and their ilk. Just because I take a gander at your website doesn't mean I asked for a call or email from you either. I'm sure not many will take kindly to being spied on when they browse your site.
 
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telemax said:
Lets say I start up a flower import business for example. Is it unethical for me to build my business by ringing local flower shops trying to build business relationships with them in order to potentially become a supplier?

Or a car part distributor , ringing local motor factor shops?
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Okay, not a great deal wrong with this in my book, but at least this is targeted. You know that they have a specific interest and potential need for what you have to offer.

telemax said:
Also if you don't like intrusiveness I think you might be on the wrong road with Leadforensics and their ilk. Just because I take a gander at your website doesn't mean I asked for a call or email from you either. I'm sure not many will take kindly to being spied on when they browse your site.
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We don't necessarily have to contact them, we can identify what types of visitors are viewing our content and improve how we engage them based on the additional information we collect (of which we will be transparent with in our privacy policy).
 
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zigojacko said:
Okay, not a great deal wrong with this in my book, but at least this is targeted. You know that they have a specific interest and potential need for what you have to offer.
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Great, we have agreement on this. It's precisely where I stand. Also I think it's also not unethical for smaller companies, with a great product and limited funds to pick up the phone and speak to larger companies with a view to securing contracts.
 
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zigojacko said:
We don't necessarily have to contact them, we can identify what types of visitors are viewing our content and improve how we engage them based on the additional information we collect (of which we will be transparent with in our privacy policy).
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Fair enough!! :)
 
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telemax said:
Great, we have agreement on this. It's precisely where I stand. Also I think it's also not unethical for smaller companies, with a great product and limited funds to pick up the phone and speak to larger companies with a view to securing contracts.
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It's undoubtedly a tough one. I've contacted small businesses before with absolutely atrocious websites which we know we can transform significantly. It's still unsolicited though even though we did our homework first but as far as the recipient goes, we're spamming them (we've never been accused of that but to many, that's what they'd say).

Going off on a different tangent here... How about abandoned cart emails? If the customer got to checkout and never opted in to any form of emails, is it okay to send them an email with their abandoned cart contents? Hmm.
 
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zigojacko said:
Going off on a different tangent here... How about abandoned cart emails? If the customer got to checkout and never opted in to any form of emails, is it okay to send them an email with their abandoned cart contents? Hmm.
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A fine line indeed!! You know what I think, if you have gone that far on a web site then some form of contact is appropriate. A world apart from contacting some random person who checked your site out.
 
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