If you are already working with a teleservices partner to qualify your leads and enhance your lead generation strategy, then you are already experiencing core benefits such as:
- Laser Focus – dedicated outsourced teams are solely focused on meeting and exceeding lead quality & quantity goals and objectives. There are no internal distractions pulling them away from their focus.
- Accelerated Scalability– outsource organizations give you the ability to adjust to market demands quickly without having to invest in your own infrastructure and personnel.
When engaging an outsourced teleservices partner, delivering Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to your sales teams is typically the ultimate end game. However, the process of how data is sent to your tele-partner and then how qualified leads are delivered back to you, can determine the success of your efforts and how quickly MQLs will convert into sales opportunities on your pipeline. To improve the efficiencies, companies can attack two areas:
Delivering Data To Your Tele-Partner:
Like most companies you are likely utilizing a number of marketing tools to acquire data and generate marketing responses or inquiries. Sales force automation tools, web inquiries, asset downloads, social media, syndicated media, events, etc…The options are endless! However, while all of this marketing data is valuable, each may have a different priority based on your strategy. Also, the format of the data obtained will more than likely be different for each method. Without the proper tools, this may mean that you are spending time sorting through data on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, prioritizing it and then putting it together in a format you can provide to your tele-partner. How often do you deliver data to your partner? Every week? Every month? In our experience, shortening the timeframe between inquiry and tele-qualification will have a marked impact on the lead conversion results. Some methods to shorten the timeframe for that initial first touch are:
- WebHooks – A quick way to expedite this process is to effectively use webhooks. Whether it is an asset download, event registration or some other URL based form, you always want to quickly qualify your “hand raisers.” Receiving data in real time is the simplest benefit to using webhooks. Allowing your tele-partner to utilize this technology will bring data to their doorstep as soon as it exists.
- Rank/Identify Data Source – All marketing data is not created equally! More than likely there are data sources that should be prioritized by your telepartner. For instance, a “free trial download” or a “contact me” inquiry should prompt an immediate phone call and time is of the essence. Whereas third party syndicated or procured data is less of a priority and can receive touches over time. Also through the course of an engagement, a qualified tele-partner will analyze source data pinpointing the top conversion rates. This analysis will help you make better spending decisions on your marketing data investments moving forward.
Delivering MQLs to Your Sales Team
Once MQLs are fully qualified and match the definition of what your sales team wants to receive, you’ll want to ensure you have a very quick and efficient lead-to-sales hand-off process. Prior to launching your tele effort, work with your partner on defining and setting up the most effective delivery system. A couple of methods that we recommend, include:
- CRM Access – A partner who can work within your CRM system is going to save you considerable time and effort. Making immediate updates and assigning MQLs to the appropriate sales representatives within your CRM will help to ensure timely sales follow-up and action.
- Shared Calendars – Appointment setting for sales may be one of the key criteria for your lead generation effort. If so, working with a tele-partner who can not only generate and effectively qualify MQLs, but also work within your sales team’s calendar software to schedule appointments will save you valuable time and shorten the lead to opportunity conversion cycle considerably.
These are just a few suggestions that an experienced teleservices partner can assist you with. As you explore your vendor options, make sure you ask about data/lead delivery methods as part of your qualifying questions.