Keeping your sales pipeline full of hot prospects is crucial for a successful Web Development, SEO or Internet Marketing business, but finding clients that are interested is easier said than done. Generating enough leads to run a one-man-show might be easy while generating enough to run a large company is incredibly difficult. Sometimes it can be difficult to assess whether it’s time to reach out to a lead generation company or continue trying it on your own and hopefully this article will help you make that decision.

There are times when it makes sense to generate your own leads and times that it doesn’t. If a company can generate their own leads in a manner that is more profitable than leads that they could buy from 3rd parties, and if those leads are as good or better quality than the leads that come from a 3rd party, and if the quantity of the leads that they can generate is sufficient to meet their business goals, then it doesn’t make sense for the company to ever contract with a 3rd party to generate leads for them. Those are very rare cases though. Most companies have problem with at least 2 of the 3 main areas: profitability of the leads (lead generation costs too high), quality of the leads, or quantity of the leads.

Why Do Most Companies Fail In Lead Generation?

There are so many ways to generate leads and many things that almost anyone can do, so why do most companies fail when it comes to lead generation? The basic answer is that lead generation is much harder and more expensive than most companies are willing to accept. The fact is that it takes about 10 times the time, effort and 3 times the money that most people are willing to put into it to generate a lead, and even before getting to that stage there is a prerequisite of learning how to generate leads in a profitable manner, which also takes much more time, effort and money than most people are willing to put in. Some businesses get fooled into thinking that lead generation shouldn’t be hard because there are some clients that come to them naturally without them even having to spend any money to get those clients, but this is a fallacy. Your easy clients will always come to you easily, but getting beyond the easy clients is hard work, and getting a high quantity of the non-easy clients is very hard work.

Skilled lead generators are generally full-time lead generators. Becoming a skilled lead generator is not something that someone can turn on with the flip of a switch. Some people have a natural ability to be a great networker, or a natural ability to use social media to generate business, but the vast majority do not and will do nothing more than waste time and energy trying to use these methods or any other methods to generate leads.

In addition, it’s very hard to be motivated to do the things that you don’t enjoy doing, and if you don’t enjoy the long and painstaking process of generating leads then it’s unlikely that you will spend very much time on it. In those cases, you don’t really have very many options. You still need to get good leads, or you’ll end up going out of business.

My Company Is Not Good At Generating Leads – What Are My Options?

If you can’t generate enough leads to run the size of company you want to run, or to keep the company solvent, you have a few options:
1. Hire a Lead Generation Company
2. Hire a Skilled Lead Generator On Staff (Extremely Difficult to Find and Very Costly)
3. Dedicate a large portion of your resources to learning and generating leads
4. Downsize / Go Out Of Business

What Are The Benefits Of Hiring A Lead Generation Company vs. an Employee?

Hiring a Lead Generation company is usually the best and easiest route to take for multiple reasons.
1. The commitment is generally fairly minimal in terms of cost and duration
2. The lead quantities are generally strong enough to support your business
3. The lead quality is generally good enough to convert a reasonable number of leads into sales

If we compare this to hiring an in-house lead generation expert, the story is far different:
1. A skilled lead generator is very expensive (if they’re not skilled, they’re not worth hiring)
2. The commitment will be much longer much harder to break if it’s not working out
3. It will take a while to get leads flowing in
4. They usually won’t be able to deliver the quantity of leads necessary to justify their own expenses

We talk to many companies each day that have told us their stories about their lead generation efforts. Every company is different and lead generation skill of the individuals in those companies is different and thus the answer to the question of whether to generate your own leads, hire an employee to generate leads, or buy leads is going to vary greatly depending on your circumstances.

The Takeaway & A Few Words Of Advice

We talk to many companies each day that have told us their stories about their lead generation efforts. Every company is different and lead generation skill of the individuals in those companies is different and thus the answer to the question of whether to generate your own leads, hire an employee to generate leads, or buy leads is going to vary greatly depending on your circumstances.

Many companies have kicked themselves for not coming to us sooner. Many have come to us after struggling for years with lead generation on their own only to find out that the leads that we generate for them are cheaper and better quality than what they were generating on their own, but not only that, we were able to generate several times the amount of leads that they were ever able to generate and their businesses are thriving better than ever as a result. Other companies have done quite well with lead generation on their own but have still hired us to help generate more in order to take their business to new heights.

My advice here is that there isn’t really a great reason to not at least try using 3rd party leads, whether those leads come from us at www.RankLeads.com or other providers. Keep in mind that not all providers are equal and you will see a significant difference in price, quality, and quantity from every provider you choose. In general terms, the higher the price, the better the quality is, and even though the leads are more expensive you will still be more profitable with higher quality leads than lower quality leads.

If you’re interested in finding out more about RankLeads.com’s lead generation to see if it’s a good fit for you, please give us a call at (866) 512-7463 or Contact Us and let us know a little about your company and what you’re looking for. We’ll provide you with all the information you need to help you make the right decision for your company.