Are you struggling with the cost of outsourced lead generation? Is your cost to acquire a single new client more than the revenue that client represents? According to the folks over at Refine Labs, for every 100 leads coming through a typical lead generation program, only 2 will result in closed deals.
The investment needed to close the gaps in your growth architecture will usually be lower than your projected losses from hiring an outsourced lead generation partner too early.
Ironically, lead generation service providers complain that their clients are never satisfied. They’re delivering more leads than promised, but the sales team isn’t closing the deals. The agency is blamed when the leads don’t become clients.
Both sides say it’s not their fault. Both sides are half right. So what’s the real problem?
Lead Generation Alone Isn’t Enough
Most of the time, you either:
- Run expensive paid ads promoting gated ‘content’. Then deliver the email addresses collected to your sales team to follow up and make the sale.
- Reach out directly to a list of suspects who look like your target customers, using some combination of outbound email, outbound phone calls, or outbound LinkedIn outreach. Hand everyone who responds over to your sales team to follow up and make the sale.
Either way, you’re sending a lot of leads to your sales team that would make an iceberg feel warm and cozy. Something’s broken, but what?
You’re Selling to People that Don’t Want to Buy!
In a nutshell, you are following an incomplete recipe. Lead generation on its own delivers a flood of tire kickers into your sales pipeline, along with a few engaged prospects that are open to doing business with you. You might see an initial increase but pretty soon your results plateau.
This is usually when your agency brings up “content marketing” and “demand generation”. They might suggest increasing your ad spend, pushing out more content on your social media channels, writing more blog posts, or publishing more downloads.
For a while it seems to work. You’re getting more likes, shares, and comments on your social feeds. More people are downloading your content and your email list is growing. You SDRs are reaching out to a slightly warmer list, which means more qualified sales calls. You’re getting pressure from the C-suite to lower your customer acquisition cost. So you start reducing the budget and your results either plateau or, more likely, start dropping. Which causes even more pressure from the C-suite.
There’s no denying it. This system is broken.
How to Fix Your Broken Lead Generation Program
In the right situation, outbound lead generation creates significant growth. This is only possible after you establish the growth architecture you need to drive your success. If all the necessary ingredients aren’t there, your lead generation is doomed to fall as flat as a chocolate torte with no baking soda.
This chart shows the impact of a solid growth architecture on both your lead generation and demand generation tactics. The best part? Growth Architecture is a one-time investment that sets you up for long term success. You know how to:
- Optimize your lead generation and demand generation investments.
- Increase the capacity of your in-house team.
- Reduce your reliance on expensive outside help.
- Craft messaging that is more relevant to your community.
- Reduce customer acquisition costs AND generate more top-line revenue at the same time.
The wins add up quickly.
What is a Growth Architecture Blueprint?
A Growth Architecture Blueprint is our proven system for shoring up these three pillars of sustainable business growth:
- Define the Landscape. Way more powerful that your USP, your Blueprint identifies the niche areas of your industry where your company is uniquely positioned to thrive. When you connect with the heartbeat of your business and how it translates into a compelling advantage for your customers, your entire go to market conversation changes.
- Develop Your Community. When you uncover which customers are perfectly aligned with the unique way your business operates, your offers fit perfectly into their path to purchase, easily meeting both their intrinsic and external motivations. You’re way beyond buyer personas and target markets – you know the exact community that’s eager to do business with you.
- Craft Your Delivery System. Implement the physical structures and systems you will need to deliver on your promise. Designed specifically to meet the needs of your community and amplify the benefits of your chosen landscape, your delivery system encompasses everything from recruiting and training the right talent on your team, to choosing where you’ll focus your outreach and selecting the right technology to support your efforts.
When all three of these pieces are in place for your business, you automatically increase your internal bench strength. And that means you are in the powerful position of allocating those precious budget dollars more effectively, creating the opportunity for exponential growth.
Curious to know more? Ask us for a pipeline acceleration review to find out if growth architecture might work for your team.
