Ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels when it comes to lead generation? You’ve hired smart people, you’ve gathered and crunched data, and you’re motivating your team to generate as many calls as possible per day. But transforming a call into a lead (and then transforming that lead into a sale) continues to be a frustrating puzzle for many lead generators, sales teams, and managers.
Let’s face it: The world of lead generation has experienced significant new challenges in recent years.
The most prominent among these is probably the rise of call blocking and telco carriers flagging caller IDs as potential spam. Without the right caller ID reputation management practices in place, this has a devastating impact on contact rates. And let’s face it, you can have the best marketing database in the world, but if you can’t reach people, there’s no conversation; and with no convo, there’s no conversion.
Compliance regulations have also increased significantly over the last few years, bringing more protections for consumers and more stringent requirements for telemarketers. The potential lawsuits and fees associated with non compliant outbound call centers operations have owners and managers scrambling to stay abreast of the evolving regulatory environment. All this makes compliance stack up as one three biggest costs for a lead gen call center.
Facing 5 of the most difficult challenges in lead generation
Let’s explore five of the top challenges for businesses generating their own leads, as well as tips for meeting those lead generation problems to improve productivity and drive results.
1. Having Accurate Data
One of the most important tools for lead generation is a centralized, up-to-date marketing database. A good marketing database will substantially increase your lead generation’s success. And, efficiently managing your leads with robust data analytics is imperative to driving the most value and profit from your efforts. (Let”s hear it for ROI!)
Making sure your salespeople have the right information can also help to generate internal conversations between different parts of the staff, increasing productivity. As the lead passes from generators to sales reps, each member of the team can suggest new clients, or add points that help to refine the messaging. This generates a strong informational loop and a greater sense of teamwork.
A strong database is a good first step towards providing your team with the right tools, the right systems, and the right people in order to generate profits.
2. Shaping the Conversation
Finding a good balance between the number of calls and how good the calls are a huge challenge in lead generation. Using a dynamic scripting tool not only trains but guides agents to say the right thing at the right time in the flow of conversation.
GET TIPS ON Cold Calling Sales Scripts That Get Results for Outbound Call Centers
A good generation call center agent should have a high number of conversations (possibly 120-170 calls per day/per rep), but he or she also needs those conversations to pay off with solid connections.
Be sure you”re tracking the right KPIs to monitor agent performance. Are your lead generators connecting with actual people when they call, or just leaving messages? Are they spending enough time with each call to really talk and develop relationships when having conversations? It’s worthless if you have 10 live conversations and each one is only 30 seconds long, but if you have 10 live conversations that, combined, make up 4 hours of talk time, that can lead to solid inquiries, and qualify enough people to reach your quota.
3. Generating Enough Qualified Leads
Who are you talking to, and what are you talking to them about? A good lead generator understands the importance of targeted marketing– spending time talking with someone who has genuine interest in your product or service. Companies with strong lead nurturing campaigns in place report higher ROI than those who don’t.
We’d suggest that one way to do that is to listen to your top customers. Hearing specific stories of specific needs creates a deeper knowledge of your target markets and their issues. This can help you to form a picture of who your client base really is, what challenges they face, and how your services can help. Lead generation tactics can then grow out of this deep knowledge and be more finely tuned and targeted to the markets you want to enter.
4. Turning Qualified Leads Into Sales
Providing data, having productive conversations, and generating leads can all help set up your sales team to close the deal. 
But how do you transform a lead into a sale?
One key is communication between sales and marketing: if everyone is on the same page, there will be a more efficient deployment of resources that can lead to sales. When each part of the team collaborates on phone calls and voicemails, direct market campaigns and other sorts of outreach, there’s a better chance for each end of the process to work in harmony with the other.
Be sure you are tracking the right lead management KPIs as well and make those metrics the basis for strategic decisions.
5. Hiring, Training and Equipping The Right Salespeople
Providing salespeople or outbound call center agents with accurate data and qualified leads and arming them (and their managers!) with effective tools is essential for meeting company sales goals.
But do you have the right people in place to begin with, and are you providing them with the training and evaluation they need to succeed?
We think one reason salespeople sometimes can’t meet quotas is that owners often hope prior sales experience among their reps will fill any knowledge gaps about a given product. However, sales experience in one area might not translate to another.
What’s needed is a common set of expectations that are constantly reviewed, updated, and utilized to help the salesperson improve his or her performance. A good company should provide its sales staff with the right script, and teach them how to overcome customer objections and ask the right questions.
And the training doesn’t stop with the first call. There should be consistent coaching of sales reps through reviewing their calls, and identifying and correcting mistakes that were made. Consistent benchmarking of results can clarify expectations and keep everyone on the same page.
