Almost every one of my sales calls starts the same way: "We used to have a partner that booked meetings for us, but nothing came to fruition with any of the meetings, and the metrics were always so difficult to follow. Hoping to understand how and why you’re so different…." Hints my major beef with "lead gen" and why we’re SO MUCH MORE than that.
Companies often embark on this initiative looking for a partner who guarantees meetings because it’s a risk to bring in a partner in the first place. So, you start the partnership with that agreement in place that they guarantee you meetings or at-bats for your sales team. By month six, you realize this may have been a huge mistake. A few meetings that you’ve had are either too small or unqualified. You didn't spend as much money because of the "guaranteed meetings" agreement, but the loss of time and effort is of great value. To me, that’s super expensive…
At this point, you've spent half the year counting on a channel that didn’t make any impact on your year, and now they’re sitting in my Zoom waiting room asking what makes me different. My philosophy is that those guys are trying to solve the problem backward. If we start with meetings without doing a fair assessment of the target, the number of people we can serve, and a series of micro-tests early on, then, how in God's name could you ever guarantee meetings?
We are not the cheapest partner out there. In fact, I hear we’re one of the more expensive, but at the end of the day, you do get what you pay for, and I want to believe that this problem that we’re solving is worthy of dedicated attention, experts, and guaranteed, thorough execution. Ultimately, I do not want to keep any business that is not working, and that’s where the partnership comes in. It has only happened once, but I have always promised prospects that if we’re not working, I will help them find another partner or hire.
I start all of our partnerships with the agreement that it would take about four months to build this program and see its fruits. Put the energy and effort behind the strategy, and then slowly launch it within three or four weeks of us being together. After several pivots and deep dives into the results, we usually land on a strong process and strategy that becomes repeatable and the strongest channel any of our clients have ever had. At the end of the day, people want to know they’re making the right investment, and I wholeheartedly understand that. However, guaranteed meeting offerings should be a major red flag. You need to find a partner who will pivot with you, test everything, and base their impact on a qualified pipeline and our leave-behind program that will sustain their company forever.
I previously wrote an article about my beef with lead gen, and Mallory wrote one about the science of booking meetings. These two assets showcase the more tactical differences between us and them. I am sure these lead gen companies will continue to do this reckless work that will perpetuate the negative connotation surrounding outsourced partners generating pipeline. But I look forward to cleaning up their mess, staying ahead of the curve, and building a program that actually fixes the problem and provides a clear path forward. Here’s to the next 10 years of the same battle card over and over.
A checklist to determine if your partner and/or strategies suck:
- Do you know how many touchpoints it takes for your prospects to convert?
- Do you know how long that takes?
- Do you know which persona converts the fastest?
- Do you know which sales messaging and call to action produces the best pipeline?
- Do you know how many times your partner exchanges emails with a prospect to land on a hard firm time?
- Do you know what channels or lead sources produce the best data for a meeting conversion?
- Do you know how many attempts your partner is making in order to book a meeting?
- What is that conversion rate? How does it stack up against others in your space?
- Do you have any idea how busy those inboxes are?
- Do they get 10 responses a day or 100?
- Are they being good stewards to your brand and sending reputation?
- Are your senders healthy and the domain reputation positive?
- If you have good momentum, are you able to find a scalable plan with them that doesn’t just include putting more into the top?
- Are they strategically guiding you as to where to put additional investment to help feed their funnel and improve their conversion rates?
My point is that it’s so much more than booking meetings, it strategically should guide every effort that marketing and sales prioritizes. Because we have insight and direct access to the pipeline as the ultimate goal, we understand what it actually takes to bring companies to market. It’s an absolute privilege and something to take super seriously and spend time in consideration before signing a new client. It takes a ton of time to do this right and it truly solve the problem, so do what it takes to find a partner like us or an absolute rockstar who’s excellent at math, creativity, and collaboration to join your team!
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