Outsourcing is a key strategy in a business. Today, you can outsource anything from HR payroll to marketing. However, no matter how strategic and beneficial it can be, it can also become a setback for any business.
There are horror stories to outsourcing. But if there is nothing good to it, it wouldn’t be a lucrative business and companies would stop using it as an alternative. Looking at the epic fails,there are some of the best results driven by outsourcing as well. Take marketing for example, some of the pitfalls of outsourcing can be seen in marketing, but a lot of wins also start with it.
In the IT industry, unlike in B2B setting, outsourcing becomes even more complicated, not only because it is more demanding, product knowledge should be exceptional.
But IT products are not a walk in the park. It takes a specific attitude and skills to learn all the technical jargon, let alone explain it to their customers.
Nevertheless, IT companies continue to trust marketing agency to generate IT leads for them. If you are thinking of doing so as well, here are some of outsourcing’s pros and cons to guide you in your decision.
Cons
Complex purchase cycle for unskilled marketing telemarketers. Unlike in B2C, B2B sales cycle is much more complex. Training a team to generate leads is a must. Because of this, your campaigns might not take off immediately. However, there are some who rush it, ending in unqualified IT sales leads.
IT companies see agencies as a separate agency. When outsourcing lead generation, it is important to see your marketing agency as a partner and not as a separate entity. This becomes a difficult culture change for IT companies as most have advanced ways and agencies cannot keep up with this. As such, companies fail to share the strategies needed to completely understand campaigns, concerned of confidentiality.
Lack of confidentiality agreement processes with agencies. Marketing deals with sensitive prospect and customer information. Because of this, some marketing agencies deal in selling these information to other companies. Because outsourcing is sometimes seen as a last resort tactic, policies such as confidentiality are often overlooked.
Pros
Outsourcing can streamline your marketing process. Let’s face it, marketing is overworked. Marketing not only supports the sales team, they support the entire company. Thus, bandwidth is stretched to the limit. When outsourcing IT lead generation, you are freed up of a less complicated marketing campaigns. This gives you the time to focus on different matters such as thought leadership campaigns, where a more high-level form of marketing is needed.
Outsourcing provides you another quality control level when it comes to quality of IT leads. Sometimes as long as marketing meets their numbers, quality is often sacrificed. This is where outsourcing comes in, where you can pass on all leads for further verification to moving IT leads to marketing qualified leads or MQLs. These MQLs are the most filtered out of all leads that you get. MQLs are sales leads that you can pass on immediately to your sales teams.
Outsourcing is flexible, it can be your foot-in-the-door or after sales support. Outsourcing lead generation often becomes your introduction to prospects, but it can also become a part of your after sales support. When outsourcing becomes a part of your after sales support, not only can you keep in touch with your customers but you have a chance to cross-sell products and services. That means, your lead generation is working non-stop.
Marketing can respond faster to leads. Sometimes, when strategy is working at its best, leads flow in seamlessly. This becomes a problem when marketing and sales cannot respond to leads immediately. That is loss of potential revenue and wasted marketing funds. Enter outsourcing. When you can’t handle the surge of leads, let your outsourced team handle it. This way, you don’t lose any leads.
The pros and cons will always be there, but you have a chance to prevent the cons from happening. Change the way you see lead generation and outsourcing, so you can start to harness its power to contribute to bottom line.
Aside from that, here’s a great infographic to describe the perks in outsourcing IT lead generation.
Learn more why you should outsource. Let us help you generate clients for your IT and tech business.
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