At a recent ATDC lunch and learn, we had Margie Bieler of Rare Agent provide an educational program to our members on lead generation, and in particular, on tactics to cold call successfully to get a meeting with a target buyer.
Should a small company outsource certain lead generation activities to a company like Rare Agent? What are the pros and cons?
In my opinion, for some young tech companies, hiring a good, cost-effective firm like Rare Agent, makes a lot of sense. Frequently tech startups have engineering-heavy founders who are not experienced or skilled at sales. Founders are wearing many hats simultaneously and often do not take adequate time and focus to develop the appropriate messages and processes to be productive with their sales campaigns. Moreover, it is time-consuming, difficult and expensive to hire a trained sales agent to work full time.
In the case of Rare Agent, they price $55 to $65 per hour for a 40 hour week and recommend a 6 week campaign to ensure adequate time and investment to achieve a payoff. The total of $12-$16K is not cheap, but compared to the time and costs of hiring in-house, this could be a good deal for a startup not yet ready to commit to a full year’s salary.
I know companies who have used outsourced lead generation and succeeded and others who have tried and failed. But some of those who failed did not scale their business on their own either. Was it the outsourced company’s fault or perhaps an unclear or uncompelling value proposition?
Please share your experience with successful or failed outsourced lead generation. We want to hear from you.