Author: Kate Kirkham

If you are wondering whether outsourcing or in-house lead generation is the best option for you, then don’t look any further. Here is your answer :

Outsourcing telemarketing and lead generation to an established team means you can cut straight to the chase and immediately expect high quality leads produced by professionals who know just how to generate and nurture their prospects – after all, it’s what they do day in, day out, so you get to benefit from years of hard-won experience. Outsourced telemarketing and sales teams are driven purely by generating quality leads for their clients – they have the infrastructure, tools and training to get good results in a short space of time, ensuring your sales pipeline is healthy and productive.

Every business owner knows that the key to success is doing more of what you are good at. Hire in the experts and you can get a job done to a high standard, at a fraction of the cost of learning how to do it yourself. Sales and lead generation are no different – anyone can have a go, but to get the maximum ROI on your time and financial investment when sourcing leads, it’s important to ensure your prospects are high quality and have been handled correctly.

Hiring and training your in-house sales team is a job in itself. Talent can be hard to find and retain, and without the right mix of introductory, nurturing and closing skills in a sales team the leads that are generated can be at much higher risk of failure than you might expect. The overheads that come with dedicating a significant portion of your staff and infrastructure to the art of lead generation and teleprospecting usually add up to somewhere around 10% more than the cost of outsourcing the same marketing and telesales tasks to a third party.

At GoDemand our specialised team of experienced lead generators also have access to highly qualified marketing professionals, meaning we can seamlessly integrate outbound marketing campaigns to be followed up with personalised, professional contact, getting to the nub of your prospect’s needs, and ensuring we deliver a well nurtured, eager lead to your own account executives. Get in touch today to find out how we can transform your sales pipeline for less than the cost of an in-house sales team.

At Go Demand we know that the success of your business depends on us passing you and your sales team great quality leads. But how do we measure this and how do we ensure that our campaign will generate top quality sales leads that you can convert into revenue?

We’ve already talked on these pages about the importance of the SPIN, BANT and Gestalt sales models which drive the lead generation process. It is the outcome of this process though that ultimately defines the quality of the lead being generated.

Good leads need good data. We create custom CRM modules for every client which enables us to collect campaign specific data with every call. Designing the campaign and defining what information will be collected is a key part of this process. Our experienced team work with your sales and marketing stakeholders to establish the aims of the campaign and find out what data you need from each lead. As well as campaign specific data we have years of experience to share to ensure that we capture the demographic and firmographic data needed. Our CRM system enables us to create bespoke workflow models for every campaign meaning that our Inside Sales Representatives are able to follow standardised processes and collect data in a methodical and repeatable way. GDPR compliance is essential and for every call made we collect data on the permissions given so we know the recipient will be happy to be contacted in future.

Our CRM data is fully validated and verified against external sources to make sure that you can have confidence in the lead information being supplied to you. We regularly cross check our lead contact details across multiple social media platforms and company pages to ensure our database is fully up to date and won’t leave you high and dry with an old phone number or incorrect email address. This attention to detail in capturing accurate, detailed lead information along with thorough opportunity analysis is what can make a good lead great.

When we make contact with a lead and identify an opportunity one of the key data points to understand is what the buying process will be. Who is in charge of making the decision? What are the timescales that they are working to and is budget available or does it need to be reallocated or offset? This is all essential information to qualify the lead and ensure that you are in the best possible place to take the lead forward and convert it into revenue. Armed with good quality data about the contact, the opportunity and what the buying process will be, the final piece of the puzzle is to nail down a date and time for the next contact call with the lead. We score our follow up contact process based on the strength of the next contact and the level of the attendee within the DMU. A face to face with the business owner or CEO is weighted heavily against a scheduled phone call with the Technical Director, for example. This allows us to provide our clients with detailed reporting metrics to identify successes and areas for improvement and gives us measurable targets to drive ourselves to deliver the best leads possible to our clients.

High quality leads are the backbone of an efficient, productive sales process. Less time is spent chasing unengaged leads, or researching and gathering data that should have been collated at the beginning of the process. If your business could benefit from receiving high quality leads derived from professional, targeted campaigns get in touch with the Go Demand team today.

The Gestalt Sales Model does exactly what it says on the tin. It combines market-leading strategies with our own core values to create a state-of-the-art methodology that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Current strategies often focus on the use of acronyms and buzzwords whose purpose is to prompt the sales representative to ask certain questions in order to satisfy tick-box criteria. Whilst this is an effective strategy for information gathering, our extensive experience leads us to believe that this approach does not yield the best results. Simply memorising questions can stall conversations or lead to an interrogation-style exchange. We believe that developing skills in order to deliver the right open questions and apply the right solutions is more efficient and far more successful.

The Gestalt Sales Model encourages sales representatives to take control of a conversation and develop their ability to identify, analyse and apply their knowledge to any situation. This works by applying a three-stage process: Identify. Unravel. Overcome.

The sales representative identifies key facts about the prospect such as:

• Who are the decision makers? What is their role in the decision making process?
• What solutions do they have in place now and what lead them to making this decision in the past?
• What issue is the prospect facing?
• What budget does the prospect currently have for the issue?
• What is the status of the budget and timeline for purchase?

This process is predominantly an information gathering exercise, but in reality, it is much more than that. Identifying key facts allows the sales representative to develop an understanding of the prospect’s position in the market and is a good opportunity to build rapport and to understand what their competition are doing. The sales representative is encouraged to use these key facts as a springboard to the greater issues.

Whilst discussing the key facts, it will become evident that some of the answers given by the prospect can be expanded on. The sales representative should identify these points and ask short open questions, using “clean language” techniques in order to discover the extent of the issue and how the prospect feels it impacts their company. Such questions may include:

• What is the likely outcome if the problem is not addressed?
• Where does the problem rank in terms of priority?
• What do you feel would solve the problem?

This process develops the sales representative’s proactive and reactive skills and opens the discussion to analysis. Questions should be tailored to the key facts with the aim of identifying how the prospect is dealing with the issue so that their approach may be analysed, and a potential alternative solution proposed.

Once the sales representative is aware of the extent of the issues, they should consider which products may assist the prospect. They may also consider whether the prospect is doing anything that may damage their path to a positive outcome. It is sometimes the case that a prospect needs to be challenged, particularly if they do not appear to be aware of the potential damage. That is not to say that the conversation needs to be aggressive, more, the sales representative should encourage the prospect to consider outcomes. Questions may include:

• What are the future steps you will be taking to tackle this problem? What issues could arise from these?
• What can be done to bring about an ideal solution? How are you going to enable this to happen?
• I am aware of a product *from client* that could solve these issues, let take a look.
• Why did they not address this issue sooner? Were they unaware?
• If the issue is ranking low on their list of priorities, why is it ranking low?

By way of an example, the following conversation is between an ISR and a company who are seeking potential cloud-migration:

ISR – Identify: I would like to know a little more about your IT infrastructure, what would you say are your mission-critical applications?

Prospect: SAP is the most mission-critical application, however we are unable to identify how many applications we have or what those applications are across our entire estate.

ISR – Unravel: How is this issue impacting your migration to the cloud?

Prospect: This is causing problems when migrating data as we need to know exactly what is going to happen with each and every application before they are moved, whilst they are moving and after they have been moved.

ISR – Overcome: I am aware of a product on the market that will allow you to identify all of your applications and effectively do a practice run of the move in order to identify any potential issues without delaying cloud migration or seeking external support at a greater cost.

Prospect: That sounds ideal.

ISR: I am going to set up a face to face meeting with *client*, does the 7^th of August at 1pm look in your diary? Or would you prefer an earlier or later meeting?

As you can see, the three stages may flow quite quickly into each other, there is no requirement to find all key facts before moving on the unravel them due to the bidirectional approach that this model creates. It is important to keep the conversation flowing and take advantage of each opportunity to expend on issues. Similarly, there may be some key facts that do not require expansion at all, and therefore can be noted but may be left without unravelling, such as who the decision maker is, once known, there is likely nothing to be gained from asking further questions on this matter and time is better spent unravelling higher priority facts. However, it is worth mentioning that you would need to speak directly to key members of the Decision Making Unit at a later date, but in terms of gathering information about a company and the problems they are currently facing, budget holders may not always knows the “ins and outs”.

The three stages of Go Demand’s sales model (the Gestalt Sales Model) combine all of the elements of effective sales strategies without the need for memorising questions or complex principles. It is as simple as identifying a key fact and following it through with appropriate questions.  It allows for the development of competent and confident sales representatives who can think on their feet and gauge their prospects responses in order to apply the right questions and suggestions at the right time in a measured way. We have no need for parroted questions or scripts; we believe our prospects deserve a tailor-made approach from a sales representative who understands their needs. If you think your business could benefit from high quality leads generated in an intelligent, nurturing environment, just get in touch and find out how we can give your business a boost.

Lead Generation is the action or process of identifying, attracting and converting ‘suspects’ and ‘prospects’ into leads. Leads are potential customers who have expressed some interest in your products or company and have provided information that you can use to follow up with. Generating a steady flow of new leads to fill your pipeline is a crucial part of developing a profitable business. Yet despite this, only 1 in 10 marketers say that their lead generation efforts are highly efficient and effective.

A survey by HubSpot in 2018 showed that 61% of marketers said that generating traffic and leads was their top challenge, with 85% of B2B marketers saying that lead generation was their most important marketing goal.

But what about the 10%~ of start-ups that are experiencing large success and rapid growth? What are they doing to fill their pipeline with highly qualified prospects who are ready to purchase their products?

In any situation, communication is a major factor of human relations and as you must know communication demands for both individuals to speak the same language for the conversation to flow naturally. Now, put it this way, if someone is trying to tell you something in a foreign language and another the same thing, speaking in English this time, which one are you most likely to pay attention to ? The English speaking one of course. The same goes for conversations around marketing and sales, you need to match the language of the market you are trying to reach and be able to express yourself seamlessly in order to gain credibility. My advice for any business trying to reach a certain market is to find an individual or a multi-lingual marketing consultancy that can provide you with someone capable of speaking their language fluently or at least proficiently to guarantee a smooth experience for both buyer and seller. Therefore, by doing so you avoid all misunderstanding and confusions, which can sometimes be brought on by a significant language barrier.

Now, comes the question of where to find a multilingual sales person that isn’t going to ask for an extremely high pay rate or a white Mercedes-Benz to be included in the employment contract. Allow me to stop you mid-thought, they are not in fact that hard to find anymore as the world of today is constantly moving and sharing with each other. Multilingual individuals are becoming more of the norm than the other.

But then again, employing someone full-time can seem a bit daunting and somewhat a big and tedious task. As firstly, they will need training after they are on board, time to settle in to their position, etc. And even after all that, nothing proves to you that what they say they can do on their CV, is a realistic reflection of what they can actually do. So why not instead employ an entity like Go Demand Ltd as your in-house sales team.

We have helped companies such as Barracuda Networks, Virtual Instruments and many more, increase their sales footprint in the UK and beyond. In fact, after having worked for Barracuda Networks and having been so successful on their campaign, we were asked to help them build their own internal UK sales team. By giving their employees some basic training and some of our priceless knowledge of the industry, we helped them create a long-term marketing solution worthy of their investment. We still work for them to this day but now they have their own team, our work is focused on warming up the leads for them, so that their Sales Representatives can get straight into the negotiation process.

Finally, (let me read your mind again) you’re thinking of our costs and more importantly of the value for money ratio of our services, right? Well, please let me stop you right there once again, being a consultancy we charge a daily rate that can vary depending on the nature of the campaign – that price is always open for negotiation. We will create a bespoke marketing strategy according to your needs and to what your business can afford. As you now know, we are specialised in lead generation so we guarantee amazing results in a short period of time. Meaning you will definitely be receiving what you are paying for, if not more. Now, I’m guessing that sounds like music to your ears right? So I have one question, what are you waiting for to get in touch?

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Just like finding new customer leads, finding new channel partners relies on a focussed, data driven approach. Here we give you our secret on how to find channel partners.

A well-matched partnership can exponentially increase your business’s revenue, bringing in new leads, broadening your offering and promoting your brand to audiences you might not ordinarily reach. However, there are hundreds of potential partners out there and they won’t all be beneficial, so how can you select the right channel partner for your business?

At Go Demand we have run many successful channel partner campaigns to identify and introduce potential partners to our clients, and in order to make sure each partner lead is of the highest quality, we use a similar approach to when we are looking for a sales lead:

• Do they have the resources to invest in the partnership?
• Will the partnership benefit them as well?
• Is there a technical fit? A competence fit?
• Is there a culture fit?

Before any sort of campaign takes place to find a partner, we work with our clients to identify what their organisation wants from a partnership, and what their own business goals and values are. Looking at existing partners or finding out who else your customers work with will help to shine a light on this. And what do YOU want from a partnership? Is it to extend your brand reach? Increase your customer base? Upsell services to existing clients?

Once you have defined your requirements you should have a much smaller pool of potential organisations to work with. Now is the time to gear up on understanding exactly what makes each prospect tick. Really get to know their business. Read all you can about their recent developments – on industry news sites, blogs and LinkedIn groups – identify who within the organisation you need to engage with. Look at user review forums to see if you can find any information about a pain point that your product is addressing – this is going to be the selling point for your partnership pitch.

And this is where the hard work and research should pay off. With all that research you should be in a great position to get your conversation with your prospect off to a good start. If you can get an introduction to them, through mutual connections online or offline, you will be flying, but often businesses have to fall back on to a cold call or email to the new prospect.

At Go Demand we know that making a cold call as warm as possible is the key to success whether you are looking for sales leads or partner leads. Being clear and concise about why you are calling – that you want to organise an opportunity for a 15 minute call to discuss how partnering could benefit you both is useful as it allows the recipient to have time to think about your offering and they don’t feel pressured or harassed. Additionally, if a prospect isn’t engaged enough to commit to a further conversation, they are unlikely to be engaged enough to cement a successful partnership with you. Make sure you make it clear what’s in it for them – this is where your earlier research should stand you in good stead to demonstrate how your proposed partnership will address a pain point for  them.

As with all good sales leads, it’s important to establish what the next steps are going to be to take the opportunity forwards. An online meeting, face to face or a further phone call – the right medium will depend on a number of factors. And of course not every prospect will become a partner but by closely questioning your own goals for a partnership, and scrutinising potential prospects before you invest time and energy courting them you should enjoy a successful partnership campaign.

If you would like to find out more about how Go Demand can help to design and manage a channel partner campaign for your business, get in touch today.