Leads are down.
Sales are down.
You're itching to grow your startup - and an outbound telesales company has just given you a great pitch. They can make calls on your company's behalf, and they'll charge you a fixed fee for each appointment they book you with a prospect.
Sounds great, right? An immediate solution to your problem. Your chosen telesales company does the hard work for you, and you'll only need to pay when you secure appointments.
Unfortunately it's not all sunshine and rainbows. In today's post I explain 5 reasons not to buy sales leads from SaaS lead generation companies.
1) Mis-aligned Incentives
The first thing to note is that when you're buying sales leads or appointments from SaaS lead generation companies: your incentives aren't aligned with theirs.
What do you want? Easy: as many new high quality customers as you can secure.
What does the lead generation company want? To secure as many appointments for you as possible.
This means that the telesales team working for the lead generation company will likely be using all the high pressure appointment setting tactics under the sun - doing everything they can to secure appointments for you. After all, that's how they get paid!
This results in lots of appointments with people that don't really want to see you. Many will have just eventually given in to the pressure, and set an appointment whether they have any interest or not. Are you likely to generate the sales you want from these leads?
2) It Damages Your Brand
Imagine being at the end of a call with a telesales person who is trying to pressure you into an appointment. Would you remember the company giving you that call in a good light?
It's terrible for your brand.
If your chosen lead generation company is phoning up everyone in your industry trying to set an appointment, it won't be long before your company is known as "that company that won't stop calling". Before you know it, you have a huge issue on your hands. Even when a potential customer has problems that your company could solve, they'll avoid buying from you out of principle alone.
3) It's a Huge Waste of Time
So your SaaS lead generation company is setting up appointments for you all across the country, and your sales team are travelling between each one, trying to open conversations whilst struggling to close the deals they need to meet their targets. That's a colossal waste of time, and de-motivating for the team.
Is it really a good use of your sales teams time to be travelling to meet leads without much pre-qualification? Attending appointments with tens of people that have been pressured into an appointment they don't really want?
4) You Need More to Convert
When your SaaS lead generation company is setting your appointments, they're not going to be trying to qualify the prospect. What's the point? They'd rather just get the meeting. Any meeting.
Before you have an appointment with a company, the lead you're meeting with needs to be well educated, so you can have a productive meeting. More often than not the initial appointment setup by a lead generation company is educational, teaching the prospect about your products and services. So the most you can hope to get from the meeting is a request for more information.
Would it not be more efficient if your prospect had been educated before they met you in-person?
5) It's a Short Term Solution to a Long Term Problem
Your company is always going to need leads.
So long as you want to grow, you need a steady flow of leads into the top of your sales funnel. Some lead generation companies will work through their lists of companies a few times, and after time start experiencing such low success rates that it's no longer profitable for them to try and set appointments for your company.
Your chosen lead generation company has no long term incentive to continue working with your company - they want to work with the companies that will be easiest to secure appointments for. This means you're always at risk of being abandoned by the lead generation company you work with, leaving you high and dry without the leads you need to grow.
Thankfully There's Another Way
Whilst guaranteed appointments can appear a tempting proposition, the above reasons should have you convinced that it may not be the best option for the long term growth of your company and health of your brand. Thankfully there's another way: inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is something you can control. It's about building your brand. You attract visitors to your website. You convert those visitors into leads with great content offers. Your sales team then converts those leads into sales.
An effective inbound marketing strategy will help you to sustainably grow your business over the long term. It's not a quick fix, but a sustainable way to grow.
Want to learn more? Download our free SaaS lead generation guide below.
