A lot of the businesses make a mistake of hiring Lead Generation agencies without having tested the waters themselves first. The result is only a realization that the Lead generation agency failed as it was setup for failure in the first place. The lead generation agency that accepts the job is also at fault due to poor qualification.
Businesses that believe have great products and services also need to get that validated by the market and the customers, first. How good is the Market/Product (or service) fitment? This applies to features, pricing, delivery, and many other factors keeping the other available options that the prospect has in terms of competition. You could have great features in line with the need of the target market segment, but the price might not be a good fit or vice-versa. The Lead generation agency is not a business strategist company nor is it a Feasibility Research company to validate a business or its USP or acceptable price points. The lead generation agency is an extension of your workforce to carry out Lead generation tasks and bring qualified leads to beef up your Sales funnel. This needs to happen only after the product or service being taken to market is tested for its acceptability by the intended target audience.
A lot of businesses skip this important step in the process and hire Lead generation agencies with the hope that the agency would do magic and get them loads of sales inquiries. The lead generation agency also needs to ask the right questions before signing up to ensure what they are taking on as a responsibility also needs to be delivered to keep their client happy.
The biggest loss to the businesses is the Opportunity Cost. They not only lose money, time, and effort that they invest in the lead generation agency but most importantly, they lose out on precious market opportunity only to realize that the goal post has moved from the time they started.
The business needs to drive the first few Sales cycles to closures themselves before considering outsourcing and scaling up Sales. This even applies to before setting up an expensive internal Sales organization. Also, it needs to be driven initially by the Founder/CEO to ensure best value proposition. Start slow to go fast.
A note for Lead generation companies too. Do not be in the rush to grab new customers in a hurry without ensuring the viability of bringing in quality leads for your clients. Many Lead generation agencies get tricked into believing that the product of service is proven and is hot, only to realize later that it does not have any taking and the blame will be all theirs for not delivering the required leads.
Good agencies take time, ask the right questions upfront, review the readiness of the marketing collateral, and validate market demand/acceptability based on experience and publicly available knowledge before signing up. These are the Lead generation agencies who mean business, are responsible and serious about delivering performance for their clients.
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