Professional Services Lead Generation
Having used every tool known to man to drum up new business since 1988, I’ve learned some lessons the hard way.
One of them is that no matter the marketing vehicle (digital, social,
outbound, etc.), we can only expect to move a conversation from a certain point “A” to a more sales-ready point “B”. So if a prospect doesn’t know who we are, is it realistic to think we’re going to call them or send them an email and they’re going to miraculously drop everything they’re doing and pay attention? No, it’s not realistic, but all too often that’s the expectation in poorly designed lead generation
campaigns, specifically in professional services.
Another thing I’ve learned, having spent over 20 years peddling marketing services myself, is it is easier sell a tangible product people know and understand, than it is to sell an intangible service. Especially one you have to explain. Or one based on deeply-entrenched relationships. Or both. Like ad agencies.
Most agencies have invested the time to create amazing introductory content and make that content available via all channels. The good ones have programs in place to turn that content-generated inbound traffic into sales-ready qualified leads. Those programs start with intelligent conversations based on where, when and how the prospect interacted with the content. If your agency is doing one or both of these, that’s a great foundation.
One thing few agencies have done is paused to take a look at prior relationships, conversations, proposals, or projects that have fallen off the short-term radar. Ask any agency executive or sales development pro if they could come up with 5-10 prospects that meet those criteria and you’ll likely get emphatic agreement. Everyone who has been in the agency business 10+ years has 5-10 calls (or more) they’d make if they had the time. But they don’t. And even if they did, there are far better uses of their time at their hourly rate. That doesn’t change the fact that there could be opportunity – and that’s where Leads To Sales has helped.
we are here.
Professional conversations with intelligent people exploring complex purchases – that’s our sweet spot.
Lead generation
When our clients build an outbound lead generation campaign from the groupd up, the realize a 2% lead conversion rate.
2%
Relationship-based lead gen for professional services
When professional services companies leverage prior relationships, they can realize up to a 10% lead conversion rate.
10%
Leveraging prior relationships can help professional services companies deliver qualified leads at 5X the average of traditional outbound lead generation.
*Actual client results
We’ve had a couple of agency clients take the time to put together a customized list of prospects from prior conversations, past relationships, prior campaigns, etc. Complete with notes, history and all they’d have at their finger tips if they were making the calls themselves. And as I mentioned above, these agencies already had nice introductory content developed, so they were able to provide landing pages and additional digital support for our phone/email conversations.
What Leads To Sales did was apply our proven, unique approach to outbound lead generation to engage these prospects at a professional level aligned with a specific past interaction. Our team was able to use this “jumping-off-point” to transition into a dialogue about current projects. On average, we delivered qualified prospects ready to schedule a planning meeting at a rate of over 10%. Typical outbound lead generation campaigns are successful at a 2% conversion rate. Our clients converted these qualified leads at a rate of over 30%, and each campaign had an ROI of 5X of greater. As few as 50 prospects can deliver a pipeline of new projects within weeks.
If you’ve been in new business development at any type of marketing or advertising agency, you know it’s a tough game. I know it’s tough, because not only have I been in business development for agencies for over 20 years, I’m in it right now. As I type. As you read. And what I’m telling you is
we’ve found something that works for most agencies; it works for ours and it might work for yours. It’s certainly not cost-prohibitive to find out, as most outbound lead generation campaigns cost a fraction of the typical marketing campaign across other channels (digital, social, events, etc.). ROI can be measured, and just like my old boss at the direct mail agency told me in the ‘90’s –
“if it works we keep doing it; and if it doesn’t work, we stop and do something that does”.
Experience Counts
We’ve spent over thirty years in B2B lead generation. Learn from: