Out of the countless number of leads that are generated every single day, only 27% of those leads, according to research conducted by Forbes.com, ever get contacted. Unfortunately, your eyes aren’t deceiving you; over 70% of generated leads are not even CONTACTED, let alone converted.
So, why do businesses use so many resources to attain leads just to let them go to waste?
In my previous two articles, “Generate Leads by Optimizing your Landing Page” and “5 Critical Mistakes in Execution with Inbound Leads,” I discussed the first two parts of the Buyer’s Journey: Awareness, and Consideration. In this article, we will lay out the options in the final stage of the Buyer’s journey: The Decision Phase.
Essentially, there are three options you have when figuring out how you want to qualify and convert leads. First, you can hire an in-house SDR team. Second, you can simply do nothing with your generated leads = Bad idea. Finally, you can hire an external sales team to handle this task for your business.
Doing it yourself
Initially, hiring an in-house SDR team seems like the right thing to do, as you have more control — who you hire, how your train, and what tactics you use are all under your dictation.
However, as Uncle Ben in Spider-Man tells us, “with great power comes great responsibility”. With great responsibility comes great pressure, and a whole lot more on your plate as an executive/manager.
It is easy to research the best practices for a sales team, however, it’s a whole new ballgame when it comes time to actually implement them.
Training is arguably the most critical and the most difficult part of establishing a sales development team. Newcomers to the sales world will struggle with buoyancy. This is the ability to mentally stay positive and afloat from the persistent rejection, questioning, and doubts given by various leads and prospects. Furthermore, we see this with Forbes.com’s research which states that sales reps who do reach out to leads only make “1.3 call attempts before giving up and moving on.”
In addition to the performance struggles of having an in-house sales team, the logistical costs of constructing your own SDR team can be crippling in relation to their unknown production level.
Is the price of recruiting, onboarding and retaining a single SDR really worth it when you don’t even know what kind of production they’ll bring to the table? It’s a considerable risk, and one you don’t have to take, which brings us to the next two options.
Why do anything at all?
The second option is quick, easy, and will leave you little doubt as to what will happen. That is if you want to drain your sales pipeline and throw-out valuable relationships with new prospective clients. That’s right, the second option is to do nothing.
Forbes.com’s research tells us that “anywhere from 35% to 64% of leads never get called at all.” This is mind-boggling when you comprehend how many resources are put into marketing to actually generate leads.
If you love stagnation and have no desire to grow your business, then this option is perfect.
Obviously, NO business should intentionally neglect their generated leads.
Now, it might look like a bleak situation since hiring an in-house team possesses a number of risks, and doing nothing simply shouldn’t (and isn’t) a realistic option. Which leaves us with the question: What is the best route to take when trying to convert leads?
Hire the experts
Legendary author of the famous novel-turned-tv series Roots, Alex Haley, once said: “Anytime you see a turtle up on top of a fence post, you know he had some help.” Essentially, those individuals and those companies who stand out from the rest are intuitive enough to know when to seek help. The third and final option of lead conversion embodies this attitude.
Hiring an external sales team who specializes in lead generation, nurturing, and conversion, who also has the data to give you a good indication of what kind of production you can expect is the most sensible choice of the three.
Rather than waste extensive resources on your own sales team, look to a team who virtually guarantees the growth of your sales pipeline.
Our SDR teams offer an extra service that doesn’t even exist with most other sales-services; rather than settling when one of our SDR’s sets an appointment, our Lead Success Managers have the ability to take it one step further by turning those appointments into actual opportunities.
This is something that we’ve been doing at Inside Sales Solutions with some of the biggest names in the Tech industry, including Oracle, IBM, and HP.
From a case study that our marketing team conducted, we have shown an average of 31X ROI for FY 18 quarter over quarter. Our clients also experienced a 19.4% conversion rate from appointments to opportunities when leads were qualified by an Inside Sales Solutions skilled sales development representative. In addition to our industry-leading statistics, we excel in working directly into-and-out-of your business’s own CRM for convenience. We pride ourselves in serving as an extension of your sales team.
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